Part I: Avon

The man who cleaned the grounds was staring at me. It had been so long since anything had aroused my curiosity that it took a real effort to think about it, to realize that I'd seen him staring at me before, that once or twice he had seemed about to speak then had turned away quickly, perhaps repelled by the empty eyes that stared back at him without really seeing him. I had kept the numbness trapped around me like another layer of skin, and I knew dimly that too much awareness would hurt. Unbearably. Even the doctors didn't try to help me--it should have been their duty, but they were not trying. Vaguely and without much interest, I wondered why.

Though I did not comprehend the reason for my knowledge, I was aware of being in an institution. I recognized the other patients as mentally ill; some given to bizarre and destructive behaviour, some catatonic, some nearly normal if one did not look too closely into their eyes. I knew that I had cloaked myself in apathy, that this awareness I now felt was new and therefore threatening. The apathy shielded me from the hurt, but as long as I stayed apathetic, I was safe. It wouldn't hurt. The dreams would be forgotten with the sunrise. I could live with that vague uneasiness. I could not live with the memories the dreams invoked. No, better by far that I did not think, did not wonder, did not remember. I went through the days in a state of carefully controlled numbness, eating mechanically whenever food was placed before me, washing when instructed to wash--though I felt a fastidious need to be clean that might have overcome a lack of instruction--sleeping when the lights were dimmed. How long this state of affairs would have continued, I don't know. I was willing to let it continue indefinitely.

But the man who cleaned the grounds made me curious, and I allowed myself the risk of thinking. He was an unprepossessive specimen, scraggly long white hair and a drooping moustache, rough labor grade clothes, and a hat that kept the hot sunlight off his face. Hot sunlight? Why should I remember a paler sun? No, it isn't important. Think of the man who cleaned the grounds. He might be safe. He was small of stature, and his face and hands were always dirty. If I had been the man I once was, the man I dimly perceived through the mists, I would never have noticed him at all.

But I was not that man--I was just a semi-alive creature who was going through the motions of existence. Sometimes I wondered why they did not try to treat my illness, then I allowed myself the luxury of gratitude that they did not. The nightmares might prove real if they did.

The man who cleaned the grounds took a few steps closer. Slowly, cautiously, probably not certain if I were one of the dangerous ones or not. I only looked at him, neither encouraging nor rejecting. It had been a long time since I had seen the need to speak to anyone, but I found my voice, rusty and harsh from disuse, and said, "It's hot." I knew instinctively that I disliked such pointless conversations, but even the dead must begin somewhere.

He beamed. Probably he was unused to being noticed. He nodded quickly, then made a great show of clearing his throat, blowing his nose--on a disgusting old rag from his pocket--and rubbing his eyes. "It is hot," he agreed. A brilliant conversation.

It wasn't an old man's voice. That stirred the curiosity still further. I said, "Are you new here?"

"I've been here three months." Why should he make that sound like an accusation? "Three months and you're always here, and finally you talk! 'It's hot,' you say. Now that's worth waiting for, isn't it, then? It's hot. It's always bloody hot."

I did not know what to reply to that, but I found myself retorting with a trace of cold scorn, "Be very careful. You should not expect a profound statement from a madman." He seemed to shrink somehow. Why would that hurt him? He said fiercely, as if in accusation, "You're not a madman."

"I am not sane. I know that. The doctors who choose to ignore me know that."

"You sound sane. Why didn't you ever talk before?"

"I never saw you before, not really." Why I should justify myself to the man who cleaned the grounds was a mystery to me. Once I had hated an unsolved mystery, but now I knew not to probe too deeply. The wound was still raw and bleeding, and I was not ready to disturb it.

Perhaps I never would. "Oh," he said. "You looked right through me before. Made me mad, it did. I thought maybe...."

"You? Thought?" Another instinctive response. Oddly enough, instead of being offended by this slur, he grinned encouragingly.

"Yes. I can think if I have to. Anyway, I thought they were drugging you, that's what I thought."

I considered that. It was a safe enough subject. "Perhaps they do," I decided. "In the food."

"And if I brought other food for you, would you eat it instead?"

"Why?" I saw no need to bother.

"So you'd know. So we would know. Three months. I've been here three damn months."

I thought he was actually going to cry, and for some reason, that frightened me. I said quickly, "Yes, I would eat it." It did not really matter. It would not make me sane to eat food that was not drugged. He beamed again.

"Good. That way we could know."

I frowned, thinking again. It was hard; I was out of practice. "I thought I was only mad. If I am also a prisoner, the doctors' inactivity would make sense." Why it seemed almost natural to voice this idea to the man who cleaned the grounds I was not certain. But there was something about the sound of his voice that pushed the nightmares away. Not all of them. Some of them would never go, I knew that. But it was easier somehow. "Am I a prisoner?" I asked him.

"Yes."

"But I am also mad."

"No. You're not. I won't have you mad."

"There appears to be very little that you can do about it," I snapped.

"That shows what you know," he snapped right back. And then his face crumpled, and he stretched out his hand to me, tears running unchecked down his face. I looked at his hand and at his face, and all at once the nightmare was back, and the sunlight was gone, and in its place was a room with alarms blasting and lights flashing and corpses strewn untidily about the place, corpses I had once known as friends. I screamed...

#

After awhile, I became aware of voices again. "...don't know what set him off," the man who cleaned the grounds was saying wearily as if he had repeated this over and over and over. "I always talk to the loonies if they talk to me. They never did anything like this before. Gave me quite a start, it did. He said it was hot. I agreed. Then he said he was a madman. I didn't need him telling me that, did I, Doctor? Look, I didn't mean to do anything. I'll never pass the time of day with one of them again."

"It was bound to happen one day." The chief doctor, Farner, I think his name was. Odd how much I knew without remembering learning it. "He holds too much inside himself, you see. I doubt it was anything you said. Six months he's been here, and that's the first outburst. I expected one long ago, but I forgot how much control he's always had. You've been here what, Rendall? Three months? No, I don't think you did any harm."

"I don't want to go through that again," Rendall said. Rendall? That did not sound quite right somehow. Should I know him by a different name? He continued, protesting as I had known he would. "I mean, he might be dangerous."

"His psych profile shows that it is now totally impossible for him to inflict harm on another human being."

"It does?"

"It does. I know you're not trained as a medic, but I have a request to make of you. You got through to him somehow. Look, he's a political prisoner, you know that. He is also quite mad. I'm a doctor. I'd like to heal him. He reacted to you. I hope you won't avoid him."

"Political prisoner? Quite mad? I only clean the bloody grounds."

"But maybe you can help him. We'll raise your pay."

"I don't know. He might hurt me. I might do something wrong." But a beautiful note of greed had crept into his voice.

Farner heard it. "Ten percent pay increase. Look, stay with him now. I have to make a report to the commissioner. She is quite interested in this patient."

"Oh." He sounded very nervous. Commissioner? Why did that sound familiar, and ominous? "Well, all right. What's his name, then? I can't call him 'hey you' can I?"

"No. His name is Avon."

#

Avon. My name is Avon. I thought about that with no real interest, then I opened my eyes to see the man who cleaned the grounds, Rendall, or whatever his name really was, searching my room carefully. I knew somehow that he was checking for listening devices. He was satisfied with what he found because he took a parcel from inside his jacket and opened it. Sandwiches.

"Avon?" he ventured tentatively. "Here. This is my lunch. You have it, all right?" He added, "You don't know it, but I've been sneaking you food for a week now. Do you remember?"

I shook my head. I did not remember. I did not care. I looked at him and something clicked. "You look ridiculous in that stupid wig," I said.

"Stupid wig! I'll have you know we worked hard on this. It's a masterpiece. Itches, though." His eyes sharpened. Why had I known that there would be unexpected shrewdness in them? "Wait a minute. How d'you know it's a wig then?"

"I have been here six months," I explained patiently. "Farner just said so. Your hair could not have grown that fast." A name came to me. Impossible, but undeniable. "Vila," I said. "You are Vila."

His entire face lit up. "Yes. I'm Vila. I didn't think you remembered."

"I...don't. Vila? If you're Vila, you're here--you're alive. You can't be... alive. Can you?" My voice suddenly sharpened with a desperate intensity. He would lie to me. He would tell me he was here, alive, Vila. No. I couldn't think of that. I struggled to wrap the apathy around me again, but it was starting to fray. I said, "Vila," and it shocked me to hear the pleasure in my voice.

"I suppose they told you we were dead," he said angrily. "We're not. None of us. Tarrant, Dayna, Soolin." He hesitated. "Blake."

The nightmare was coming back. I pressed my hands to my face. "Stop it. Stop it."

"Alive. They're all alive." He chanted it like an incantation, a spell. "All of them, Avon. Blake's not dead. You didn't kill Blake. Blake's alive, Avon. Blake's not dead. He's perfectly well now. Really. Believe me, Avon."

I remembered. For the first time I remembered. Tarrant speaking. "He sold us, Avon. All of us. Even you." I remembered a hurt past bearing, a gun in my hand, Blake falling, stained with blood.

"You are lying," I said to Vila--if it was Vila. If this was reality. There were tears on my face. Once I would have minded crying in front of Vila, but if none of this was real, then why would it matter? Illusions didn't matter. I could cry in front of an illusion, and no one would know. And there was no one left alive to matter.

"I'm not lying, Avon." Vila's voice was quiet, but he was crying too. Odd. Illusions should not cry. Then he grabbed my arms and shook me. "Damn you, I'm real. And you are going to be all right. If you're not, I'll never forgive you."

Vila. That kind of fool's logic was precisely what I might expect from Vila. I only looked at him, weary, drained. Hoping that somehow he was really here, really alive. It hurt. All of this hurt. Blake... I shook my head. "I--can't," I began, choked on the words. And Vila, dear idiotic Vila, held me tight in his arms and continued his litany. "Blake's alive. We're all alive. You'll be all right. I won't let them do anything else to you. You're safe now, Avon."

And for the first time in six months, I fell asleep without fear.

#

The nightmare was worse, as if I had somehow presumed to challenge it and now must pay the penalty. Alarms and flashing lights and Blake's body, grotesquely sprawled at my feet. Sometimes in dreams that I never remember until the next time, I went on shooting him until there was nothing left but a bloody pulp, then when the troopers came, I invited their shots, wanting nothing so much as to have it all ended, to die in the same manner as Blake had died, Blake, the man I had once cared enough for to trust.

I think I believed with a fool's logic that rivaled Vila's that if I were to die in the dream, I would die in reality. A madman's logic perhaps. Vila's logic had urges of self-preservation; mine only wanted an end. I tried nightly to make them kill me, but they never would. Over and over I killed Blake, and each time, he got up and came at me again. "Yes, Avon. I betrayed you. I betrayed you." And he laughed at me.

"NO!"

My own shout woke me. Vila was gone. I knew that he had never been there, that I had allowed myself a luxury that was too expensive--hope. Blake was dead. Dead. I shuddered and wrapped the blanket around me tightly. Breathe deeply, Don't think. Apathy. Numbness. I stared into space...."

"Avon?"

I opened my eyes again. "Vila?" My voice was shaking.

"I can't leave you alone for five minutes, can I?" He had a damp cloth and was wiping my face calmly. Calmly? His hands were shaking. He said conversationally, "I got it. I got your file. I got it to Tarrant; the ship's here now; and Orac will copy it, then I'll put it back so they don't know we've got it. That'll give us something to work on. But I'll have to leave again to get it back."

"File?"

"Record of your treatment--lack of treatment, really. Avon, this place is Servalan's little private torture chamber. People she can't kill, but who can't be allowed to stay free wind up here. They've been ordered to leave you alone until she can come to see to your treatment herself. I think she'll be coming soon. We'll have you out of here before then, Avon."

His words only made sense later. Right then it mattered more to listen to his voice. It was a link with something that warmed a cold inside that rivaled absolute zero. Vila. Vila was a fool, but he was my fool. Right then all that registered was that he had not gone away. I said, "I don't want you to go away." I knew instinctively that I did not normally say such things to Vila, to anyone; further proof of my madness. I did not want him to go. But to say so?

He looked horrified as if I had violated the rules of a long forgotten game. "I won't," he said, barely above a whisper. "But I have to meet Tarrant. Only minutes, Avon. I promise."

"No."

He sat down on the bed and put his arm around my shoulders. Something else that was not done. "All right. He'll come here." He looked at me doubtfully. "D'you really want to have him see you now? I mean...."

The question meant nothing. I only knew that the dream was waiting if he went away.

He looked at me, then said, "Right." And then, fiercely, "Damn. I don't care about being careful, about timing. You can't stay here any more. Now the ship's here, why should we wait? They're not helping you, not one bit. You can't stay." He pushed his sleeve back to reveal a bracelet. Teleport? But Scorpio was gone..

"Vila," he said. Dayna's voice. Was Dayna real too, alive too? "No contact, Vila. You could risk everything."

"I don't care. Now he knows me and you're here, we can't stay. Tell Blake, Dayna."

And, even more impossibly, Blake. Now I knew this was not real. Blake was a Ghost from my dreams. Not here, not alive. "What's wrong, Vila?" the ghost asked.

"Blake, he won't let me leave him. I can't just go back under cover and watch. The doctor talked to me; he'll get suspicious, and Avon's not up to pretending yet. He needs us, Blake. He needs to see you. Come down and bring a bracelet. I know I'm right. It's time to leave here."

A silence, then hesitantly, "All right, Vila. I trust you on this. I'll be there."

Vila giving orders, a new experience. I thought it might be good for him. It was easier to think about that than it was to think about the voice I had heard, impossibly alive.

It took years. Minutes, Vila said. Then a shimmer effect. Different. Not Scorpio. Not Liberator. And Blake. Standing there. Breathing. Alive.

The nightmare. Lights, alarms. A confused jumble of sounds. Voices. Then, blessedly, darkness.

#

There was someone sit tine beside my bed. Now that I considered it, I remembered a series of different faces, of people talking, soothing and comforting words that did not completely pierce the apathy. I looked at them and listened to them, and warmed myself at them as I might have done before a fire. And the nightmares came every night and someone was always there to wake me and talk to me. Sometimes I would answer them, but mostly I was passive. It was better here than the asylum, but it was dangerous too. The hurt was closer now. It was lurking just below the surface. I must be very careful.

But I woke up aware. Alert. And suddenly angry. I put a name with the face.

"Tarrant."

Fool that he was, he did not seem to hear the cold fury in my voice. "Avon!" His face lit with a broad smile--surely not even Tarrant could be that stupid. "You're finally awake, aren't you? It's been six days since we got you away. Blake was really getting worried."

Blake. It always came back to Blake. I suppose my face must have changed. "I'll fetch Vila," he said. At least he was not fetching Blake. I did not want to see Blake. Yet. Paradoxically, I knew that I had to see Blake. I wanted him to walk into the room. Blake. I had seen him before, seen him in the nightmares, heard his voice in the stillness after waking, heard his voice offering comfort, and I had denied that it was real. I did not dare believe he was real. But Vila and Tarrant believed that he was alive. Could they possibly be right?"

Then Vila was there, a bright smile on his face, the kind he must have put on just outside the door. The wig and the moustache were gone; he looked like Vila again, not that that was an advantage. He said, "It's about time, Avon. You'd better stop malingering. One of these days, we'll need a computer fixed; then what'll we do?"

I ignored that. Most of what Vila said could safely be ignored. It was what Vila did not say, what Vila kept to himself, that was important. And I was out of practice at reading Vila. Once it had taken no effort at all.

I looked around, curious. "Where are we, Vila?"

"On our ship, of course, the Venture."

"Venture. What an idiotic name."

He said warily, "Blake named it."

Blake. I ignored that. "There's a teleport?" I remembered that much.

"Blake built it."

I wished that he would stop mentioning Blake, but that provoked an answer. "Blake may be a competent engineer, but I doubt he could build a teleport, Vila."

"Why not? He knew the Liberator. He worked on a teleportation project once. Besides, he had plenty of time. It took him eight months. We helped him finish it up after he...." He caught himself abruptly.

"After what, Vila?"

He said, "After we got together with him again." It was not what he had meant to say.

"Tell me about that," I said. Suddenly, I wanted continuity. Let them tell me all their stories.

He hesitated. "Are you sure you're up to it, Avon? If you flake out again, Blake will have my hide."

"Oh, don't worry, Vila," I said sweetly. "I'm already mad. How much more harm can you do?"

He winced at that, but he said, "All right. But you're not mad, Avon. Just you remember that."

"Saying that changes nothing, Vila."

"It might." He shrugged. "Well, all right. We hoped you would ask. It started about a month before we came to Gauda Prime." He saw me cringe away from the name and reached out to touch my arm. I should have been affronted, but that took energy. I only looked at his hand and hoped that he would keep it there. He said, "That's when Blake was captured, Avon."

"Captured?" Oddly enough, that interested me. "But he was free...."

"They let him go, Avon. After they programmed him."

"Programmed?" A deeply buried part of my mind was beginning to be scornful of the questions I asked, echoing Vila's words. "What kind of programming, Vila?"

"Well, you know about the bounty hunter but--Orac told you." I nodded. "Blake was selling Federation sympathizers to the Federation. Anyone with rebel sympathies joined Blake."

"That sounds like the sort of foolish game that Blake might play," I said scornfully.

"Well, it worked," Vila defended him. "Until one of the people he had turned in remembered who he was. So then the Federation sent someone after him and took him. It didn't take long, but it wasn't meant to last forever. They programmed him and let him go. Not long enough to make his people suspicious. With his new conditioning, he was supposed to turn in rebels instead. Not all, of course. That would have made his people wonder. Just the important ones. And one in particular." He looked at me seriously. "You."

"There was no reason for anyone to think that I would come to Gauda Prime," I said. It was only a story, not real, and I could listen to it easily.

"Yes there was. You see, they snuck information into Federation computers for Orac to find. You'd been picking up the rumours, now they were giving you the facts. It was Servalan's doing, Avon. This way, she would get both of you--and the rest of us too. You see, when you came to Gauda Prime, Blake was supposed to 'get' you. Servalan had him conditioned to do it any way that would be effective. I think the way it worked out was as effective as they could get. No matter what Tarrant said, no matter what Arlen said, Blake was programmed to get you. He really was betraying you, Avon."

I closed my eyes. I did not want to hear any more of this. "Go away," I said, and my voice was little more than a whisper.

"No." Vila talking back in that tone was new. "I won't. You'll hear the rest, Avon. Now. You have to. You know what happened there, I don't have to repeat that. After he found Tarrant, Blake notified Servalan. He didn't have a choice, Avon. She was there, with her people. She came in right at the end. I don't know if you remember her being there or not. I do. I was just starting to wake up and I heard her voice. I played dead. She had her people leave us and take you away." He shuddered suddenly. "You were quite docile. You didn't even fight. I couldn't do a damned thing. There were troops guarding us until she had you secure.

"Then she went away and Blake's people came in and rescued us. They knew something was wrong, but not what. We didn't even know about the programming until later. It was made to wear off as soon as the Federation had you."

"He's dead," I said. "Blake's dead, I killed him, Vila."

"Don't you listen? He isn't dead. He almost was. If they'd got to him five minutes later, he might have been dead, but they saved him. The first thing he said when he came around was, 'Is Avon all right?' He knew what had happened--and why."

I looked at him. I heard the words and knew what they meant, but I didn't care. I didn't dare. "You tell a good story," I said lightly.

"It's the truth. Avon, Blake's here. Every time he comes in here, you go into some sort of trance. That's why he isn't here now. We talked about it. We thought it was better that I be the one to tell you. But you didn't even listen. Avon, don't you want to be sane?"

"I don't see why it should matter, or why my wanting it or not wanting it would matter one way or another."

"It matters to us," he said, then looked dreadfully embarrassed. He added quickly, "Do you think it's much fun to have you sitting about like a great lump while we do all the work?" When I didn't answer him, he jumped to his feet. "You really don't care, do you?" he demanded.

"No. Why should I?" I closed my eyes. I did not hear him go away.

#

Dayna came into the room. She hesitated in the doorway, then came across and bent to kiss my cheek. I stared at her in astonished resentment, and her eyes widened. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'd just gotten into the habit. I didn't realize you were with us today."

"Today?" I echoed. The changing of the days didn't mean anything to me.

She perched on the edge of the bed. "Well, Vila talked to you yesterday. Do you remember that?"

"Some foolish story about Blake being programmed?"

Dayna smiled. "You do remember. He wasn't sure you really heard him at all. Don't you think you owe Vila better treatment than that?" Ah, a new tactic. She was trying to shame me into sanity. I doubted that it would prove any more effective than anything else, but then it made sense that they would try and go on trying. I caught myself at that. Why should they bother? What could I matter to them that they would go on trying? They were fools to care that much--if that was why they did it.

Dayna continued. "Vila sits with you every day. We all do, but mostly Vila because you don't seem to mind him as much as the rest of us. He's exhausted half the time--I'm afraid he'll get sick. You won't let Blake in here; he comes but only when you won't know it. I've seen him sitting by your bed sometimes in the middle of the night." She saw my look of polite disinterest and flung herself to her feet. "Oh, why do I bother?" She turned back to me. "I think it's time you got up. I'll give you a tour of the ship. You're not sick. Vila says you were up and around back at that...place." She spat the last word with a fury I had seldom heard before. Servalan's place. And Dayna hated Servalan.

Why did I stay in bed? Why not? I had seen no reason to get up. But now Dayna was saying fiercely, "Avon, if you don't get up and get dressed, I'll dress you myself." A sudden flash of smile. "I'll enjoy that--but you probably won't." She pointed to a door. "There are clothes for you in there. If .you're not dressed and out in the corridor in five minutes, I'll come back in here and make you dress." She swept out of the room.

I found that I was smiling. I was tempted to call her bluff, but I had been conscious of a growing curiosity about this ship of Blake's. Why was Blake here? The Gauda Prime base would have been compromised, I realized, surprising myself for thinking of Gauda Prime voluntarily. I shivered a little, but I got out of bed and began to dress. The clothes were not mine; any clothes I had would have been lost with Scorpio. But they fit me and suited my taste. I wondered where they had come from.

Dayna came back as I was pulling on a pair of boots. She brightened at once. "Good. Ready?" She did not seem to expect an answer but came forward and took my arm. I pulled it away from her. I was going to have to put a stop to such liberties. It occurred to me that to do so I would have to let myself be aware all the time, and I knew I was not ready for that yet. But I did not want to be led about the ship like a cripple.

Unoffended, Dayna said, "This way. We'll go to the flight deck."

The Venture (stupid name) was bigger than Scorpio, though not as big as Liberator had been, and it was certainly adequate. I asked Dayna about speed and armaments, and she said, "Well, it's not the Liberator. But it will outrun anything the Federation can throw at us. It's specially adapted."

"How?"

"I don't know. I'm a weapons tech, not a starship designer. Blake had a lot of connections. Someone he met after Star One was a genius; he'd worked with Dr. Plaxton a long time ago--" a sideways glance at me which I ignored-- "and then came up with some variations of his own. Blake isn't stupid, no matter what else you might say about him. He and Kellner started working on this ship about a year ago. The teleport was Blake's contribution. And I've been working on the weapons system. We can fight. Now that Blake's base on Gauda Prime is gone, we'll fight from this ship--that's what we've been doing ever since Blake recover...." She let her voice trail off and favored me with a worried look.

I was growing impatient with such treatment. "Dayna, I know perfectly well that I shot Blake. If he is alive, he would have had to recover from his injuries and I would rather you said so than pretend not to know anything about it."

"Oh." Surprisingly, her eyes were bright as if she were fighting tears. That didn't make any sense to me, and I still did not care enough to try to find out why. But Dayna was continuing. "You see, usually when that subject comes up, we lose you," she said. "I've seen you shut yourself away too many times in the past week."

I said, "I don't remember much of the past week."

"What do you remember?"

I considered it. "Clearly? Waking up yesterday. Tarrant." My voice hardened when I said his name. "He got Vila and Vila talked to me. And now. You coming in. Nothing else. And not clearly, there were people always sitting by my bed. Am I never to be allowed any privacy, Dayna?"

She grinned. "You make it rather difficult, Avon."

"I could make it more difficult for anyone to stay," I shot back at her.

"Oh, I know you could. You can freeze a person out better than anybody I know. I wish you wouldn't, though. Avon, I wish you would see Blake."

"I've never seen Blake," I said.

"Blake has seen you lots of times. After the first few times, it has always been when you're sleeping."

"Why?"

"Because...well, because you don't see him. Sometimes you don't even seem to know he's there. Other times you...." she caught herself. "Maybe I shouldn't say anything."

"You began it. Finish it, Dayna."

She looked at me steadily. "All right. If Blake comes in, we lose you."

"You said that before, Dayna."

"I mean, you get the way you do when you have your nightmares."

I shuddered. Usually I could ignore the nightmares when I was awake but having them brought to my attention forcibly made me remember them all too vividly. I wasn't seeing Dayna anymore, but the room on Gauda Prime instead, Blake's base, with Blake's body on the floor at my feet. Dead. I knew he was dead.

"Avon!" Dayna was shaking my arm. "Avon, please."

My eyes focused again. I was not on Gauda Prime; I 'vas in the corridor of a ship and Dayna was there, very much alive. In the dream, she was dead, always dead, but the dead could not shake my arm with such fierce strength. Dayna had been stunned, like Vila. But not Blake. I knew Blake was dead. As I stood over his body, his lifeless eyes had stared at me blankly. The eyes of the dead sometimes see more than they should. The eyes of the dead...

"Stop it," Dayna said. "I'm sorry, Avon. Sorry. I didn't mean to remind you. But someday we'll have to stop watching what we say. I was just too early, that's all." She looked at me to see if I were listening to her or to my dream voices, decided I was still alert, which I was unfortunately. "The flight deck's just here," she said.

The flight deck was vaguely reminiscent of the Liberator, the positions arranged the same, though the space was smaller and there was no Zen. Orac was there, on a table near the control position, and Tarrant was questioning it about a planet the name of which I did not recognize. Vila was there too, sprawled uselessly on a couch, drinking something faintly green from a tall glass. Soolin was monitoring equipment. Blake was not there. Good.

Vila was the first to see me, and he smiled then covered it up at once. "Well, so you've decided to stop lying around and do something useful," he said.

"I have your splendid example to follow," I said pointedly.

He put the glass down quickly and got to his feet, straightening his tunic. "I'm entitled to take a break, just like everybody else, Avon. Besides I'm really working very hard. Very hard."

"The way he usually does," Tarrant said to me, giving me a wary look. So he was remembering to be cautious around me. Someday, if I ever found the energy to bother, I was going to have very hard words with Tarrant, and I think he realized it. I would let him wonder when it would be, and the thought of him worrying about it brought a faint smile to my lips.

" Now that you're here, Avon," Tarrant went on, "I think we'll have to put you to work. The rear scanner is acting up. Would you have a look at it?"

"Why not?" I would humour the fools. And it was plain from the first look at the scanner that they were humouring me. There was nothing wrong with the scanner except that some maniac had put it out of adjustment. Deliberately, probably. I tightened the connection and turned to favour them impartially with a scowl. "Next time, make it more difficult," I said. "Or simply don't try to make work for me. You cannot trust a madman. I may have now programmed it for self-destruct."

Tarrant actually came to his feet as if he were going to check, then he relaxed back in his seat. "I don't think so," he said. "You did it too automatically."

"With you monitoring every bit of it," I replied. "Tarrant, you and I have a score to settle."

"What score? You can't blame me for what happened on Gauda Prime." Any of the others would have gone more carefully, but not Tarrant. If Tarrant had ever had the slightest bit of affection or concern for me, he had concealed it like a master. He would not be one to worry about my recovery or lack of it.

"Can't I?" I let an ominous note creep into my voice. "You don't know that. You don't know what I am capable of doing. Do you really want to risk...."

"There's no risk," he cut me off smoothly. "I've read your psych profile. I know you can't hurt anyone. I don't know if they did that to you down there or if you did it to yourself, but I know I'm quite safe."

"Shut up, Tarrant," hissed Vila viciously.

"You don't give me orders, Vila."

"I'll give you whatever orders I want to," Vila replied.

"And so will I." That was Dayna, joining the fray. I stood back and watched them. One thing the people around me had always done well was disagree.

Instead of getting angry in return, it soothed me. Except for Tarrant, of course. I was going to have to do something about Tarrant. I took a step toward him, intending to silence him, to shut him up. It would be very satisfactory to wipe that smug smile off Tarrant's face. I raised my fist.

And the next thing I knew, I was collapsed on one of the couches trembling violently, covered with cold sweat. My hands were shaking uncontrollably as waves of unreasoning panic poured through my body. But oddly enough, my brain was detached from the fear, and I could think. What was wrong with me?

Vila flung a curse at Tarrant and dropped onto the couch beside me and put his arms around me. One part of me wanted to pull away, to freeze him with a scathing remark, but instead I let myself be held. "It's all right." And in a totally different voice, "Tarrant, go away."

Tarrant's voice was raised in-protest, but then Dayna and Soolin converged on him and each took an arm. They dragged him from the flight deck.

I said rather stupidly, "What happened?"

"You're still with me? Good." He heaved a sigh. "Avon, he was right. The doctors down there did some preliminary tests and work on you, and one thing they found out was that for some reason, you're not able to hurt anybody. It will probably wear off as you get better--and you are getting better. But right now, you'll have to let someone else beat up Tarrant for you."

I considered that without interest. No, Tarrant could wait. But I was curious. Damn my curiosity. That was the only thing that kept me from sinking back into peaceful numbness. I asked, "Why?"

"Why?" he echoed reluctantly. "Avon, I don't know...."

"Why, Vila?" I made my voice hard and commanding, and he shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, all right, but iú you don't like it, it's not my fault."

"It never is," I murmured."

"Well, it isn't. Anyway, Avon, we checked your file--it's not a very helpful file, by the way. That doctor, Farner, he was in a bind. He wanted to try to help you--mostly I think because you'd be a challenge, not because he's sympathetic or anything. But he didn't dare because Servalan didn't want anything done to you before she could get there and watch. Well, Farner ran a few secret tests and that was one thing he found out. He thought, and so do we, that it was because of Blake. You know what happened back there. Well, Blake practically made you shoot him--and part of that is that in spite of the programming, he knew what he was doing and he was fighting it. I think maybe he thought that if you shot him first, you might still be able to get away."

"Why should I want to?" I muttered under my breath.

"Well, he wasn't making much sense then--I know what Federation programming can be like. It's not easy, Avon. He was confused and didn't know what it would do to you in the long run. Anyway, it happened; you shot Blake." He said it very carefully, still holding on to me. "And then it all went wrong. Arlen admitted that she was the traitor; unknown to Blake, she'd been sent to monitor him, to check on the conditioning, to see if it was holding. She just happened to arrive right before us. So she was there, and she said what she did. Blake was innocent, at least that's what she made us think. If Blake was innocent, then your shouldn't have shot him."

"That's brilliant, Vila," I said, but my voice wasn't steady, and I had to shut up quickly to avoid giving any more away.

"No, but don't you see, Avon? It was a mistake, the worst mistake anyone could make--even if none of it was your fault. Farner thinks that you decided somehow that you would never make that kind of a mistake again, so you won't let yourself do anything violent--even to someone who deserves it. Like Tarrant," he added.

I did not know if that made sense or not. I didn't really care, though it might prove awkward if there were no way to reverse it. "Are you sure," I asked, "that it is not some type of programming?"

"Not completely, but Orac doesn't think it is. He ran some tests."

I found that the waves of fear were ebbing now, and I struggled free of Vila. He let me go at once.

"Anyway," he said, "we think it will clear up by itself. It'll just take a bit of time. Once you're feeling better and you can talk to Blake, we think that'll help." He grinned suddenly. "And you're coming along, Avon. This is the first time you've gone over the edge and stayed alert. Usually it takes time."

"I was alert to begin with," I reminded him. "I do not remember the other times."

"No. But you're alert two days in a row." He looked at me suddenly, and his eyes were so vulnerable that it scared me. "All we want is for you to get well," he said, and then he had to look away. "After all," he continued in a muffled voice, "I haven't had a really good argument in just ages. None of the others are half so good at it as you are."

Dayna came back then. She flashed me a bright smile. "We took care of Tarrant for you," she said, her eyes full of mischief.

"What did you do to him?" Vila's face was brimming with eager anticipation.

"Well, remember how Blake has been wanting Someone to clean out the cargo hold?"

"Someone meaning me," Vila replied. He began to smile. "You mean Tarrant...." He started to laugh.

"Yes, Tarrant. You got lucky, Vila, this time. Blake was furious." She caught herself and looked at me warily, but I was getting accustomed to hear them mention Blake. Let them talk about him. I concentrated instead on the thought of Tarrant cleaning the cargo hold, and I could not help but smile. Dayna relaxed. "Tarrant's furious now, but he knows better than to try anything like that again." She added, "You look tired, Avon."

"That is not your concern." Everyone seemed to like it when I snapped at them; masochists, the lot of them.

She grinned. "All right. Stay here then. But don't blame me if you fall asleep right there."

I was tired. Wearily I climbed to my feet and almost lost my balance. Both of them jumped to support me and with a bit of self-honesty that was rare, I wondered what I had done to deserve their loyalty and concern. Then I shoved the thought away; why should it matter? I knew the hurt was closer to the surface than it had ever been. I closed myself away from it, only dimly conscious of Vila and Dayna calling my name, then the numbness came back.

Part 2: Blake

I stood outside the door to Avon's cabin and cursed myself. It had been ten days now since we had brought Avon aboard the ship, and his progress, if any, had been agonizingly slow. Avon hadn't even seemed to know anyone at first, then after a week, he came out of it a little and started to speak to people and to ask questions about where he was. He had been bullied into going onto the flight deck by Dayna, and now he had the run of the ship. But he seemed to know instinctively how to avoid me, and much as it hurt me to have to do it, I knew that it was best that I avoid Avon--for the time being. After his first venture onto the flight deck, I had gone to Avon's cabin. Avon had not even looked at me, not after the first glance. I think he saw me and knew me, which was more than he had ever seemed to do before, but then his eyes filled with shadows, and a wall came crashing down between us. His eyes went blank again, and I found myself sending for Vila. Poor Vila, I thought tiredly. Everything seemed to fall on his shoulders these days. He had come at once, though he had been sleeping, took one look at Avon and began to swear. He recognized the signs.

After that I didn't dare to try again. But I couldn't leave it. Avon seemed more alert these days; now that he was prowling the ship, he always seemed to know the others. He asked them questions, very carefully impersonal questions, and seemed interested in the answers. Most of the time. I had been told that Avon still went off into trances at the most unlikely times. He could listen now when they talked to him of me, and that was progress. But I couldn't be satisfied with that. I had to do something to get through to him. I sat with him at night and watched him when he slept and knew when he dreamed. It was what he dreamed that disturbed me most; sometimes he called my name in a voice that was filled with anguish and it was almost more than I could bear. I yearned to wake him, to talk to him, to let him know that what had happened was my fault too, that the programing they had done on me this time was responsible for the entire fiasco. That there had been no other alternative for him but what he had done. I could live with his actions-I had come to terms with that long ago. Avon had shot me because I'd made him do it. I'd made him do it because the Federation had forced me to. The entire blame rested with the Federation. I suspected that Avon blamed himself; the memory of his words were indelibly etched onto my brain. "Is it true? Have you betrayed us? Have you. ..betrayed me?" And I longed to tell him that there had been no betrayal, neither on his part nor mine.

I'd missed Avon; I would have done anything to get him back. It was far more than the continual attempts to argue with me--Tarrant did that constantly, challenging my authority as much as Avon ever had, but it was not the same. It wasn't the challenge that had made me remember Avon after our paths separated at Star One. It wasn't the fact that I could count on his cold blooded reason to point out the flaws in my planning, to tether my idealism to reality. It was more than that. I had been right when I'd told Avon I had always trusted him. I needed him. I couldn't explain it, but it was there. Now he needed me, more than he had ever needed anyone perhaps, and I could not help him. I hated feeling helpless.

One day, Avon would have to talk to me. I don't think that he could even begin to recover before that. We had to have things out between us. I knew that his continuing alertness need not mean anything. It could simply be that once he was totally off the drugged food, he would be more aware. But the other problems, his refusal to face me, his inability to do physical harm to anyone, those problems were still there. I sighed. Avon was worth it, he would always be worth it, but it hurt.

There was a sharp cry from inside his room, and my good resolutions vanished at the sound of it. Avon needed someone; he dreamed the same dream every night, and if someone sat with him afterwards and talked to him, he could fall asleep again and usually get some rest. But if he were left alone, he would lie awake for hours, fighting sleep, afraid that the dream would return, and his physical condition would worsen. In the morning, he would be remote, and it would be harder to get responses from him. So Avon was no longer left alone at night, even though he resented it. The fact of his resentment was one of the more promising signs.

I opened the door and went into the cabin. Soolin was there; it was her turn to sit with Avon. She had taken his hand and was speaking softly, but Avon was not awake yet, he had gone quiet again at the sound of a voice and relaxed back into sleep.

She looked up at me. "He's still sleeping," she said.

"Good." Soolin and I were not close; she did not seem to be very close to anyone, but she stayed with the ship and did a good job of it and helped with Avon. His reaction to her was neutral, not like the more positive responses he had toward Vila and to a lesser degree Dayna, or the clearly negative one for Tarrant. But he did not mind her presence, and as such, she was a help to us in caring for him.

I sat down across from Avon and looked at her over his body. "How is he?"

"The same." She pitched her voice low so as not to awaken him. Soolin was usually cool and in control of her emotions, but the look she flashed at Avon was warmer than usual. "I never knew him at his best," she said. "By the time I met him, he was already on his way to this. He'd just lost Cally and the Liberator, he'd thought he'd found you on Terminal but it was all an illusion, another of Servalan's games. All that might have shattered a lesser man, you know. He has got to be one of the strongest men I've ever met." She made a shushing sound at Avon as he stirred slightly on the bed between us. When he was quiet again, she continued. "So many things in such a short time. Did anyone ever think to tell you about Anna Grant?"

"What about her? I know who she was."

"Do you? Avon went after a Federation interrogator who was supposed to be the on who killed Anna." She was not looking at me as she spoke; her eyes never left him, and I knew that she would stop telling the story if he awoke. "He found out that Anna had supposedly been killed by an agent named Bartolemew. So Avon went after Bartolemew. And found Anna Grant. She had been betraying him all along. When he found out the truth, she tried to shoot him in the back, and he killed her," She shrugged. "It was before my time, of course; they were still on the Liberator then, but Vila told me. Said he didn't want me saying something stupid about it that would get Avon mad. I think he was trying to protect him, but at the time I didn't know Vila very well."

Anna Grant. I remembered Albion and the confrontation between Avon and Anna's brother. Avon had talked to me about Anna once, not then but later, and only briefly, but I had felt his pain at the thought of her death. It was a wonder Avon hadn't cracked under everything that had happened to him long before we met on Gauda Prime.

I went back to her last words. "Vila has been bearing up well. He hasn't even complained about the time he had to spend down there under cover."

"Vila has changed," she agreed. "I think he was always protective of Avon, at least until Avon tried to kill him."

"What?!"

"Nothing came of it, of course," she said. "I don't think Avon could have done it really." She explained to me about how Avon and Vila had been trapped on a shuttle that could not achieve escape velocity, how they had lightened the load but not enough, and when there was nothing left to throw out, how Avon had gone after Vila with a gun. At the last minute, Avon had found another solution and Vila had lived, but things were strained between them after that. "Until GP," she said, "And afterwards. When we all revived and your people had got us away from the troopers who were guarding us, Vila was blaming himself for 'not taking better care of Avon."' She smiled a little. "I didn't like Vila at first," she said. "I thought he was just dead weight in spite of his ability to open locks. I didn't see why the others put up with him, why Avon put up with him. Now I'm beginning to think that Avon needed him. He certainly wasn't close to anyone else, though Dayna would have liked to be closer.

"It was different before Cally's death, I think," she said. "No one ever talked about Cally. I wondered why, but now I think that Avon couldn't. Vila would have talked about her with Avon--I think he tried and was rebuffed. Vila kept on trying with Avon, but he's not a medic and that's what Avon needed. We didn't realize it, of course, not then. We didn't want to realize it. It wasn't until GP that we saw what had been staring us in the face for months."

"There's got to be some way to break through to him, Soolin."

"He's that important to you then, Blake?"

"Yes," I said honestly. "He's that important. He always has been. I didn't contact him right away after Star One. I wanted to; I wanted to go back to the Liberator and take up where we left off, I wanted that more than anything I've ever wanted. But I'd promised him the Liberator, told him it would be his after Star One. Star One didn't turn out like we'd planned but I had given him my word and I couldn't go back on that. By the time I knew that I should have contacted him before, so much time had passed. I didn't think things could ever be the way they had been. Then I got word the Liberator had been destroyed. I didn't even know if any of them had survived it; it was only later when Avon began to contact rebel groups that I knew he was alive--and apparently following in my footsteps. That gave me a start as Vila would say. Avon's never been a rebel, and I don't understand, even now, why Avon was doing that."

"For you," she said gently. "I think maybe it was for you."

I would have liked to believe that, but I knew I couldn't simply because I wanted to. "Whatever the cause, it meant that I had to find him again," I said. "But before I could do anything about it, I was captured. You know all this, how they conditioned me, how I didn't even remember it consciously, how I didn't even start to break through the conditioning until Avon came at me with a gun and by then it was far too late. I had a lot to think about while I was getting well. I had the others back--well, Vila anyway. I had this ship. And I knew Avon was alive. If only we'd found him sooner. These past six months without any treatment may have made the damage irreparable."

"No." She shook her head. "Not irreparable. He's coming back, Blake. It took a long time for him to reach this state. We can't expect him to come out of it in only ten days."

"And what if he never recovers, Soolin? Then what?"

"Don't borrow trouble, Blake. It's too soon to think of that."

Avon moaned and stirred restlessly; Soolin and I exchanged a worried look; he was dreaming again. The two of us held him down while he thrashed about. It sickened me to see Avon like this, helpless in the grip of a terror that he could not face in his waking hours, a terror partly of my making. No matter how I rationalized it, I couldn't get past the fact that if it were not for me, this need not have happened to him.

"Blake!" He came awake, sitting bolt upright in bed, sweat drenching his body, his eyes wide and staring. I knew I should have gone then, before he saw me and made it worse, but this time I could not go. I had to try once more. I reached out gently and touched his arm. "Avon, it's all right. You're awake now. It's over."

He looked at me, and incredibly enough, he saw me. When I'd been there before after a nightmare, he had not recognized me as Blake, but simply as a comforting voice, a reassuring presence. But this time he looked at me and said in a voice that was hoarse and shaky, "I shot you, Blake."

"Yes, Avon. But you can see I've recovered."

He continued to stare at me, and he was shivering, the tremors shaking his body so hard that it t:lust have hurt him. Cautiously I reached out my hand to him, ready to pull it back if he reacted badly. He watched it with a mesmerized fascination as if it had been a snake, then at the last moment, he jerked back a little. His eyes came up to my face. He was still seeing me. He said, "Blake...." not as if he were recognizing me but almost as if he were trying to convince himself that he had.

"It's all right," I said again.

"Is it?" There was almost a trace of his customary tartness in the question.

I said, "Not really, but it's getting better."

"Yes, I can see that it would. A madman to care for does so brighten the atmosphere."

I felt the urge to cry at him that he was not a madman and must stop saying that he was, but I had to go carefully; it was all right for Vila to protest, to criticize and complain, but my ground was too shaky for that yet. I said instead, "How do you feel?"

"Like hell, Blake." He stared at me more closely. I aware of Soolin beyond him, her body tense, ready to intervene if necessary, but I didn't want her to have to intervene. I said, "Avon, I'm sorry for everything."

"Do you want a blanket absolution?"

"No. I only want us to talk about it. Vila said he explained to you what had really happened."

"Vila told me a story. Don't imagine any of it matters, Blake."

"If it doesn't matter, then why are we going through all this?"

He looked at me a moment more then the wall came back and he turned away blindly, no longer seeing me. I cursed myself silently, knowing I had pushed too hard, tried to do too much. Soolin put her arm around his shoulders protectively, a mother with a sick child. She shook her head at me while she murmured soothing words to Avon's bent head. Wearily I got to my feet. Progress had been made; he had seen me and talked to me. As I let myself out of Avon's cabin, I only hoped that it hadn't been one step forward and two steps back.

#

In the morning, Avon came to the flight deck again. I was working on the detectors, just routine maintenance, with Vila helping me, and as we worked, I'd been telling him the events of the previous night. When I told him that Avon had known me and spoken to me, he had smiled broadly; he didn't hide from me how he worried about Avon. I had always known that Vila was fond of Avon, though he would have denied it vehemently in the days before Star One. From the way Avon reacted to him, it was apparent that Vila mattered a great deal to Avon now. I was human enough to be rather jealous, but I knew that Vila could do more for Avon right now than I could, and that had to be the most important thing.

I finished telling Vila everything, and he was frowning when I was done. Even now I found it hard to reconcile this Vila with the man who had once complained over every task and jumped at his own shadow. I had known even then that there was more to him than met the eye, but I had never expected to find this much, and I was grateful for it. I only hoped that if (when, I corrected myself) Avon recovered, Vila would not revert back to the way he had been before he had been needed.

"You pushed too hard, Blake," he complained.

"I've seen you push harder, Vila."

"True. But he knows me. I mean, even aside from Gauda Prime, it's been two years since he's seen you, and he's changed. I know you care about him, Blake, but try to take it slow. I mean, I don't know very much about it, really, but even I can tell that he needs it to go slow."

"Vila, I'm beginning to wonder if you don't know all about it. All right, expert, what do you suggest we do next?"

"Don't do anything, Blake. Leave it to him to make the next move. I think he will. I think he's starting to get bored with the way he is. You know what he's like; he can be impatient--in fact he's always impatient. He'd stop thinking about anything, but once he let himself think and get curious, then that was a good step. It's only been a bit over two weeks since he had any of that drugged food. It takes a long time for a person's system to really adjust. I know." His eyes darkened.

I knew Vila had been through a long and exhaustive period of Federation interrogation and programming and had finally been sent to Cygnus Alpha as unprogrammable, but I hadn't really had a chance to think about it much. Vila must have been stronger than he let people know to have come through that so well, but he hadn't been completely unscathed either. I wondered if the fear he had so often exhibited had not become a defense; let them think he was scared and unresisting and perhaps they would not try quite so hard; they wouldn't expect great things of him. It had become a habit with him, but he'd shed it now for Avon's sake.

The door swished open then Avon walked in. He looked the way he always did in the mornings, dark circles under his eyes, a sort of wary alertness in his face as if he expected someone to jump on him at any moment, and the threat of that blank, unnerving stare lurking just behind his eyes. When he saw me, he stopped dead in the doorway, and for a moment, I thought that seeing me would set him off again, as it usually did.

Vila jumped to his feet. "I don't believe it. You're on time for the first shift. Does this mean we might even get some work out of you?"

It was a typical Avon-to-Vila comment, not the reverse, and Avon reacted to it with a look of mild outrage. "The sight of you working industriously is bound to make anyone suspicious, Vila."

"Somebody has to. We're doing detector maintenance. Want to help?"

"Help?" Avon echoed. He shot a sideways glance at me. "You may help me if you choose, Vila. Not the other way round." He added in a curiously flatter tone. "Blake, you must be desperate to rely on his skills."

"Would you rather I used Tarrant?" I asked, striving hard to sound normal. "At least Vila is good with his hands."

"At least he is good for something. Tarrant on the other hand...." Genuine curiosity touched his face. "Frankly, Blake, what do you think of him?"

"Of Tarrant? I think he's brash and occasionally obnoxious, not quite the pilot that Jenna was." I sighed at the thought of Jenna, lost to me forever, and continued. "But he's young, Avon. Maybe he'll improve with age." I added frankly, "He's difficult because he thinks he knows everything. Give him five years and you might even like him."

Avon looked as if he doubted it. He said, very slowly, "What was your impression when you first met him?"

"I thought he had a damned annoying habit of jumping to conclusions."

Vila drew in his breath sharply behind me, but to my surprise, Avon began to laugh. I added, "Conclusions that weren't as far off as I could have liked them to be."

That was a mistake. Avon's laugh caught for a moment, and I realized that his present stability was too precarious for laughter.

Vila was on his feet at once, gabbing Avon's arm and shaking it. "Avon, stop it," he said sharply.

And somehow Avon did. He hauled himself back from the edge of the precipice and sat down abruptly, shivering. Vila sat beside him automatically and put his hand on his shoulder. He looked at Avon and didn't say anything else for a moment. I thought he would order me from the flight deck, but he didn't do that. He just waited, giving Avon time to collect himself.

After a few minutes, Avon drew a careful breath, steadying himself, then shrugged off Vila's hand. He got up, turned and walked out of the room without another word, practically running down Dayna who was just coming in.

She stopped and looked after him in concern, then turned to us. "Is he all right?" she asked. "Blake?"

"I hope so. He talked to me and he didn't go over the edge, but it's so hard for him."

"At least he's trying now," she said. "That's progress."

#

"I know he's improving," Tarrant said, "Or at least the rest of you seem to think he is. I admit I haven't seen it."

"You haven't seen him either," Vila said under his breath.

"Our fearless leader ordered me not to," Tarrant replied with a sneer. "All right, so I set him off last time. Don't you think he'd be suspicious if I suddenly started being nice to him? It wouldn't be in character, Blake. I thought we'd all agree to act as naturally around him as possible."

"Naturally, not nastily," Soolin said. "You went out of your way to rub his nose in it, Tarrant." Tarrant gave an exasperated sigh. We'd all met in one of the rest rooms the day after Avon and I had spoken briefly on the flight deck, to discuss the situation, and so far, things were not going well. I knew that Tarrant would be difficult, but I hadn't known that he would be quite so angry about it.

I said, "Tarrant, what do you Suggest we do, since you seem to think you have all the answers?"

"you won't like it, Blake, but the fact is that none of us are trained to cope with mental illness of any kind. We might be doing more harm than good, with the best possible intentions."

"Best possible intentions," Vila muttered.

Tarrant ignored him. "I think we have to consider that he might need more than we can give him. That it might be smart to find a place where he could get proper treatment. We've been lurking here outside Federation space, wasting our time while we play nursemaid to Avon. How long are we going to keep it up before we realize that we're not helping him? I say we find a place where he can get good care and leave him there."

I don't remember ever being so angry, but my voice was icy as I replied. "Tarrant, you are expendable. He is not."

"No, I know he's not. Avon, Avon, Avon. It's always Avon. And for what? He's no use to any of us the way he is. You only want to keep him here because you think his condition is your fault. I know you had a God complex, Blake, but you're not responsible for the entire universe."

"Shut up, Tarrant," Vila said. "What's wrong with you, are you jealous of Avon because he gets all our attention? You never understood Avon, Tarrant."

"And you did? You don't understand anything until you've had a drink or five."

"That's not fair, Tarrant," Soolin said. "When was the last time you saw him with a drink?"

"Just the other day."

"That was a vitamin mixture," Dayna said. "Tarrant, you don't really mean to abandon Avon, do you?"

He shurgged, realizing that opinion was against him, and then he turned to me. "Blake, don't decide on that now. I'll admitI haven't always liked Avon, but be honest. Don't you think we might really be doing more harm than good?"

"No!" That was Vila. "You didn't see him back there, Tarrant. I did. He didn't even know who I was at first. Now he recognizes us all and talks to us, and he's even talking to Blake now. I don't think that someplace else would help him, Tarrant. I don't think he needs treatment as much as he need us." He loooked around and added in a placating tone, "Well, that's what I think."

"I think you're right, Vila," I said. "And I'm not going to give up this easily. I remember the way Avon used to be, and I think he is worth all the time we can give him." I turned to Tarrant. "I know you don't like Avon, Tarrant, but won't you give him more of a chance than this?"

He looked at me uneasily, resentment not very well hidden--well, I'd resent being told I was expendable too. That hadn't really been fair of me, but I'd been too angry to think about what I was saying. He said, "I don't hate Avon, Blake. You should know that he's not an easy man to like or even to be comfortable with, but if there's anything that we can really do to help him, then I do owe it to him. It's just that if there's no more hope, then I want the rest of you to be able to admit it."

"Fair enough, Tarrant. We'll deal with that when the time comes."

He nodded and climbed to his feet. "If that's all, I'm going back to the flight deck."

"Orac will alert us if there's trouble," Dayna said.

"I think I'd prefer to be there waiting for trouble," Tarrant replied and went out.

Dayna said, "Blake, I wish you hadn't said that to him about being expendable."

"So do I, Dayna. He's not expendable, even if it is only as a good pilot, but I was angry at the idea that we might abandon Avon."

"We might have to," Soolin said. "We can't keep this up forever, Blake."

"I don't think we'll have to. I think Avon's stronger than we are giving him credit for. I think he's going to make it."

"I hope you're right," Vila said. "I don't like any of this, Blake. I can't wait to have him normal, have him yelling at me, let somebody else do all the work for a change, the way they ought to. I'm not made for this, you know. A life of leisure, that's my style."

"Vila, you've been a lifesaver," I said.

"I have?" he brightened. "Yes, I have, haven't I?"

"Egotist," Dayna told him fondly. She stood up too. "I'll go and check on Avon," she said.

"Where is he?" Soolin asked.

"He said something about working on the computer relays," Dayna said.

"I hope he doesn't meet Tarrant on the flight deck," Vila said uneasily.

"So do I," I said. "I'll go, Dayna. I ought to speak to Tarrant anyway."

But I found Tarrant alone on the flight deck. Sulking. He had flung himself dowm on the couch and was staring at the forward screen which held nothing more interesting than a grid pattern interspersed across the starfield. He looked up briefly when I came in, then turned away. He said flatly, "There are no ships in detector range."

"Out this far, I should hope not. I think we could take them if there were." I added, "I almost wish there were, sometimes. Inactivity gets on my nerves."

He could have taken that badly, but instead he grinned. "I know what you mean. Do you want to apologize first, or shall I?"

"Why don't we consider it said. And I hope you know that you're not expendable."

"Oh, I'm quite sure of that," he said with a grin. "Without me, who'd fly the ship."

" True. "But I meant what I said, Blake. It wasn't spite either. We do have to consider that we might not be able to help Avon."

"I don't intend to give up on Avon. And I don't believe you would either. The others have told me that you wouldn't abandon a fellow crew member. I don't think you really want to abandon Avon."

Tarrant shrugged. "I don't," he admitted. "Maybe for some of the same reasons you've got." He was silent a moment. "Gauda Prime."

"That's not the main reason."

"No. But it's one of them. Between the two of us, we handled that badly, you because of that programming, and me because you did it so well that I believed it."

"And told him about it with such relish," I said.

"Damn it, Blake...."

"I known, we've been through this before. It's just that you'll have to have it out with Avon one of these days."

He made a wry face. "I'm not looking forward to it."

"At least he can't hurt you," I said with more than a little bitterness.

"Do you know," he said, "I almost wish he could."

#

The next few days were days of tension, because Avon had suddenly decided that he was ready to resume his place in the crew and started coming to the flight deck every day. Since we were simply sitting in space with everything on automatics, there was not a lot for anyone to do, but Avon insisted that he was ready to work and that the computers would obviously need overhauling since none of us came close to his level of skill. That much at least was true, and I was glad to have him back at work, even if it was something routine. It would do him good to be doing it. Where the uneasiness came in was in my exchanges with him. He was perfectly all right as long as we did not get close to any important subjects, such as Gauda Prime. If we talked computers, the ship, future plans for taking on the Federation, things went all right--or as close to all right as possible. But an inadvertant remark could set him off, and while he did not lose contact with reality any more, he had an even more alarming tendency to start to shake, to break out in a cold sweat, and once, to my utter horror, to cry. The only good thing about that was that it obviously disturbed him to reveal so much in public, and that he had tried--and succeeded--in gaining control over hioself amost immediately.

Vila said that he had taken a bottle of scotch to Avon's cabin one night and given it to him in the guise of a vitamin mixture. Avon had, of course, recognized the taste for what it was, as he told me the next morning, obviously slightly hung over, but for some reason he had accepted Vila's offering in the proper spirit and consumed a good share of it. Vila told me later that Avon had confessed, in the lack of inhibition that comes with too much to drink, that he knew that there was some terrible hurt waiting just below the surface, and that he did not think he could face it.

I knew what it was, of course. It was everything that had happened to him since I had left the Liberator, with a few eariler things thrown in for good measure, and with special ewphasis on the fact of my shooting on Gauda Prime. Vila had tried, very very carefully, to bring him around to that, but Avon would not be led. He knew that way lay disaster.

"I didn't know what else to do, Blake," Vila said, "So I let it go and went back to easier things, things that he could remember without any hurt, like when we broke the wheel at Freedom City. Ten million credits," he said reminiscently. "Do you know, Blake, when we lost the Liberator, I didn't even try to take any of that wealth away with me."

"You did even better than that," I said. "you took Orac."

"Nobody thanked me for it, of course," Vila said. "No one ever thanks me for anything."

"I know," I said. "We take you for granted, Vila. Because you don't let us down."

He beamed at me, then said, "Avon's mad at me this morning. He's got a roaring hangover, and it's all my fault."

"And how are you feeling?"

"Me? I can take it," he bragged, then winced as Tarrant, on the other side of the flight deck, dropped a laser probe on the floor with a loud clatter.

"So I see," I said, amused.

But none of this was solving the problem. And it was frustrating because we knew that the problem was, we just couldn't do anything about it. Avon had been back on board for over three weeks now, and at times there was quite a semblance of normalcy on the flight deck. Vila was good at it. He could spout nonsense nonstop, working at it until he provoked Avon into an angry retort. Making Avon angry was a lot more challenging for him than it had ever been before, because Avon would not let himself care very much. But even he could not resist flinging criticisms at Vila, especially when Vila drove him to it. I let them fight it out and enjoyed it; it reminded me of the old days.

Tarrant could do it too, but it was a bit more dangerous for him because Avon could lose his temper with Tarrant far more easily than he could with the rest of us. And it wasn't in Tarrant's nature to be placating. I hoped that Tarrant would keep himself in line. I did not want Avon provoked too far and have him brought up against that compulsion not to harm anyone. He wasn't ready for that yet. In a way, it reminded me of Gan's limiter, except that Avon had somehow done it to himself.

It was several days after Avon had considered himself fit to return to duty that I found myself alone with him on the flight deck; it was the late shift, and the others were sleeping. I had arranged things very carefully--I thought I might talk with Avon better if no one was likely to burst in and interfere. Avon looked tired; I know he had been up earlier than I had. Another dream, maybe? He had passed several nights without dreaming, or at least without being disturbed by the nightmare. We were still taking turns sitting with him, a fact he grew to resent more and more with each passsing day. I was glad of that resentment; it felt more normal. I knew things weren't normal yet, were a long way from normal, in fact, but I was beginning to hope that things might be normal again one day, that Avon would be.

Avon busied himself with the computers. He was just beginning to get them up to his high standards of performance, and I watched him fondly as he checked a relay, consulted with Orac, went back for a final adjustment, then straightened up, a satisfied smile on his face. "There, that's done it," he said. "Your computers are now up to standard, Blake." A challenging look. "What do you intend to do about it?"

"What would you suggest, Avon? A full-scale attack on Earth, perhaps?"

"It would keep this crew of yours from falling asleep at their positions," he said.

"This crew of mine, as you put it, seems to be as much yours as mine, Avon."

"Does it matter?" he asked. "This is your ship. You have commanded them for six months. I never wanted to lead, Blake."

"You never gave any evidence of wanting to follow either, Avon."

"He smiled a little. "I gave you trouble, didn't I?"

"More than a bit."

"Why did you do it, Blake ? Why did you come after me?"

I looked at him sharply. He had never asked that type of a question before. He knew as well as I did that such a question could invariably lead to the subjects that he avoided with all his concentration. I said lightly, in reply, "You might say that I owed you, Avon."

He had tensed, but he relaxed a little as I spoke. I think he had regretted the question as soon as he had asked it, but his damned stubborn pride had not let him withdraw it. Sometimes I thought he was his own worst enemy.

He said, "And Vila. I remember that ridiculous wig he was wearing when I saw him down there." He smiled a little. "Vila as an undercover agent? Not that he didn't do surprisingly well, Blake, but why did you use Vila for that?"

"Vila volunteered. I know, I'm as surprised about it as you are. But when you think of it, Vila was the one we could best spare for that mission. Not that Vila isn't useful here, but what we were doing then was tests on Venture, pilot and weapons tests, and finishing up the teleport, And when you consider it, who better to pass unnoticed down there. Vila's very good at blending in the scenery."

"He's had plenty of practice," Avon said.

"True."

"He said he had been there three months," Avon began, then paused.

"And you want to know why it took us so long to get you out of there?"

"It would be of mild interest."

"Several reasons. One, until just recently, we did not have a functional teleport. And secondly, we didn't dare interrupt a crucial treatment."

"Of which there were none."

"And we didn't know that, did we," I replied sharply. "Vila was supposed to keep an eye on you until we could get you out. You don't know it, but that's a maximum security base there--without the teleport chances for getting you out were next to none, considering the state you were in when Vila arrived. It took him a long time before he could reasonably risk substituting undrugged food, and he only dared to do that when we got the teleport ready and were standing by, in case of problems. But when it came right down to it, you came out of it all at once, the day Vila was to steal your file, and we didn't dare leave you there any longer. Does that make sense?"

"More or less," Avon replied.

"Good. Any more questions?" I'd learned already that Avon did not take too kindly to having me volunteer information. I think he was afraid I would say something he was not ready for yet.

He looked at me for a long moment, then he said to my utter surprise, "Did they tell you about Cally, Blake?"

I was astonished, worried, touched that he would mention her to me, but I knew that I was risking a lot to let this go on. I said quietly, "Yes, Avon, they did. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? I lost Cally and the Liberator through my own stupidity, and you're sorry?"

I saw the signs and knew that it was too late to do much about them. He began to temble, the colour draining from his face, and he turned away quickly to hide his e:cpression, but not before I had seen the pain in his eyes. He muttered something under his breath that sounded like 'damn' and drew a ragged breath as if he were fighting tears again. I wondered if maybe I should let him cry, if it might not do him good but I was afraid to risk too much. Vila could have gone to him and put his arms around him--Avon had suffered that from Vila for some reason when he had not permitted it of the rest of us except in the aftermath of the nightmares--but I wasn't sure if he would let me help him that way now. Still, I couldn't just leave it, not when his shoulders were heaving and his whole body seemed to reflect such misery. Avon. To see him brought to this was one of the worst pains I had ever known.

With a curse I abandonded caution and went to him, drawing him into my arms. He didn't even try to fight me. I don't think he even knew who it was who held him, only that it was a form of security, a way to stave off the darkness. I held him and spo!te to him quietly hoping that no one would come in and interfere. I had never thought that Avon would come to this.

I knew it when he began to gain control again, sensing it when he tried to draw away, freeing him and standing up again, going over to check the instruments until he had managed to pull himself together. He said, after what seemed like hours, "Blake?"

I turned to find him watching me, I said, "Yes, Avon?"

"Someday soon, Blake, we are going to have to talk."

"When you're ready, Avon," I said. I couldn't believe that I was actually hearing this. Avon was getting better. The cure was proving difficult, but at least, there was a chance of success now.

"Don't expect too much, Blake," he said warningly. Then he added with a bitter humor, "Or do you enjoy scenes like this?"

"No more than you, Avon." I continued, "For your sake. Just tell me when you want to talk,"

"It isn't that I want to talk, Blake," he said coolly. "It's that I must."

And with that, he turned and walked away, and suddenly I was afraid. After Avon was well, would he want to stay with us any longer, now that he had come as close to him as this? That might be more than he could permit. Would we manage to heal Avon only to lose him? I sat alone on the flight deck for a long time, and my thoughts were not kind ones. I could see more of the risks now, and I felt cold, cold and very much alone.

Part 3: Avon

"Is it true? Have you betrayed us? Have you betrayed me?"

Blake came at me, and I shot him, watched his body collapse with a horrified satisfaction. Then a voice, new, different. "Avon!"

"Cally?" I raised my head from my contemplation of Blake's body and saw her walking toward me across the room. "Avon, what have you done?" she decanded accusingly. "What have you done? What have you done?"

I shot her. I saw the shock and surprise and hurt on her face as I raised my gun again and shot her. And went on shooting her, watching her stagger and fall, watching her body shattered by my gun until she looked like the crumpled, broken thing that I had found on Terminal. Cally. Cally, who had become my strength without my realizing it, Cally, dead at my hand. If there had ever been another woman that I could have allowed myself to trust, perhaps even to care for, after Anna, that woman might have been Cally, but there had been no time for that, no time and no hope. Cally was dead, and I knew that I had killed her as surely as if I had shot her, the way I had shot Blake.

I awoke, shaking with the horror of the dream, struggling with tears. That was the worst part of being mad, I thought, this disgusting urge to cry, to cry in front of the others.

I felt a presence near me and fought against the tears. Not this time, I vowed. Not this time.

"Take a deep breath," a voice said beside me. "Yes. Like that. Now another. One more."

I obeyed and it worked. I still felt sick and drained and disgusted with myself, but in control. I opened my eyes and saw Vila's worried face bending over me. Vila. How had he known? I said, "I killed Cally, Vila."

"No you didn't." And to my astonishment, "I did."

That penetrated the misery. "You?"

"I should have got her out of there. I got Tarrant out. But not Cally." He looked at me in abject misery. "I loved her, Avon."

I had not known that. I had never thought of that. Wrapped up in myself, I had not seen something that had probably been obvious. He went on. "Nothing would have come of it, but I did. I loved her." He added, "Don't tell any of the others."

"No, I'm hardly likely to bring up such a subject."

He gave me a weak grin, then continued, "I wish I could have saved her, Avon. But I couldn't bring them both, and she was still on her feet. She said she was all right, and I believed her. Cally was strong, stronger than me. I thought she was right behind me, but she wasn't." He said, "You went back for her."

"For Orac," I corrected automatically, then I shook my head. I would not lie to Vila now. "Partly for Orac, true. I was certain that Cally was already dead. But I had to be positive. I might have left Tarrant there without checking, but not Cally. Never Cally."

"You loved her too."

I shook my head. "No. Not the way you mean. I might have done one day. But it is futile to discuss it. She is dead. And in spite of what you say, had I never brought you to Terminal, she would not have died."

"As I remember, you did everything you could to keep us away from Terminal," he said. "But it happened. It's over. It's easy to say 'if' all the time, but what good does it do anybody? You have to get over it and go on living."

"The way you did?"

"I never said I was perfect, did I?"

I smiled a little. "No. It would have proven humorous if you had."

"At least I know better than to expect the impossible from myself."

"Is that what I was doing? I thought that was Blake's forte."

"Not only Blake's, Avon." A disgusting idea, but I knew that I had always considered myself so highly that I had not allowed myself to fail. When I did fail, I realized, I blamed it on other people. My attempt to steal the five million credits; I heard myself saying to someone by way of an excuse t:mJt it had failed because I had relied on other people. It was always the other people who had failed, not me. I remembered Tarrant, flinging a stream of criticisms at me; he was faster than I was, better, younger. He succeeded at life. And I had fended off his accusations with a glib and hasty reply. "You also talk too much." I would not allow myself to fail--but I had failed. I had failed Cally and I had failed Blake. And drove myself into madness as a result.

"Avon?" Vila asked anxiously. "Avon, are you all right?"

"Yes, Vila, I was only thinking."

"You ought to watch that," he said. "Too much of it is bad for the brain."

"The reverse is certainly true," I said pointedly.

He grinned at me. "Well, you know me, Avon," he said. And then he added, "I think you look better."

"Another miraculous diagnosis?"

"Yes. I'm getting good at that. Go back to sleep, Avon. You're tired."

He was right. I was more tired than I could remember being in years. I closed my eyes and slept again. I did not dream any more that night.

#

It was peaceful enough on the flight deck when I arrived there the next morning. Blake was arguing with Tarrant, but not with any malice. Those two seemed on slightly better terms lately; since my abortive altercation with Tarrant, Blake had been cold toward him, but of late, they were dealing easier together. Blake, of course, was incapable of holding a grudge; witness the behavior he had put up with from me and howl he kept coming back for more. A glutton for punishment, Blake.

Dayna and Soolin were talking to each other across the flight deck, laughing a little. It seemed as if they were enjoying the argument.

"But we've got to think of it one day," Tarrant was insisting.

"One day. Why right now, Tarrant?"

"You could say I'm bored."

I decided to join the fray. "With so little capacity for amusing yourself, Tarrant, it is no wonder that you are bored."

He spun round, an angry retort already forming on his lips, but he bit it off with a degree of control he had never possessed in the old days. He said, "I see you're fast becoming your old self, Avon. Unfortunately."

Blake started to protest that, but this morning I was fighting my own battles. "Unfortunately for you, perhaps. Blake, what is it that Tarrant wants to do to alleviate his boredom?"

"It's a raid, Avon, on a Federation supply base."

"I thought we were outside of Federation space. And I thought that suggesting daring missions was your job, not Tarrant's."

"I'm always open to suggestions, Avon. That doesn't mean that I will act on then. In this case, I think we might pass. We're not ready to fight yet."

I suspect he meant that I was not ready to fight yet. I was certainly not ready to find out. The memory of the incident with Tarrant was still too vivid for me, and I did not want to risk a repeat performance.

Dayna changed the subject. "Have you seen Vila this morning, Avon?"

"No. Why should I have seen Vila? I'm not his keeper."

"It's just that he's late," she said. "He should have been here an hour ago."

"Only an hour late?" I asked. "Is that so unusual for Vila?" Especially, I remembered, since he had had duty in the night, sitting beside my bed. Probably he had overslept.

Dayna nodded. "Maybe you're right." But she looked uncomfortable about it.

Tarrant had begun to talk about his plans for a raid again, and Blake returned to the argument with interest, but Dayna was still frowning. "Avon," she said to me, "maybe I'm being silly, but I've got a bad feeling about: Vila. Would you go and see if he's all right?"

"I have better things to do than check up on Vila," I replied, then caught myself. Perhaps Vila had better things to do than check up on me, but he had always been there, ever since I'd been aboard the ship. I did not like feeling guilty, especially over Vila, but I found myself nodding.

She smiled, and I realized that she had been humoring me as much as she had been worrying about Vila. No doubt she thought I needed something to do now that I had redone the computers to my satisfaction, something to keep my mind occupied. Occupational therapy, as it were. I gave her a disgusted look and went out.

Vila's door was closed, but it was not locked. I knocked and said, "Vila. Wake up, Vila." There was no answer. I knocked again then tried the door.

I knew as soon as I opened it that something was wrong. The lights were dimmed, but in what little light there was, I saw Vila sprawled on his bed. At first I thought he was drunk, but when I approached the bed and looked at him, I realized that he was ill. Heat seemed to radiate from his body, and when I touched his forehead, it was so hot that I jerked my hand away. He stirred restlessly at the touch and opened his eyes, but he didn't see me. He was not seeing anything.

I went to the intercom. "Blake?"

"What is it, Avon?"

"Vila is sick."

I think he realized, even though my voice had been flat and controlled, that it was something quite serious. He said, "I'll be right there, Avon," and it seemed like only moments before he, Dayna and Soolin burst into the room. They took one look at Vila and stopped, staring at him with horror on their faces.

I said, "He did not seem ill last night."

"He hasn't had a good night's sleep in weeks," Dayna said. "I've been afraid of something like this happening."

"He had too many responsibilities," Blake agreed, stooping to check Vila's pulse. "I should have made sure he got enough rest." Typically Blake. He was going to blame himself for everything; he always did. I wonder how he survived such constant attacks of guilt; I knew that I could not have borne them.

I said, "Vila did not tell anyone that he was ill. How could you have known?"

"I should have done. I knew he was taking on too much. We all depended on him to help with...."

"With me," I said when he did not finish his sentence. And realized that I must be learning guilt from Blake. I did not like the feeling.

He must have guessed what I was thinking; very good at that sort of thing, Blake. "Avon, I won't have you saying it's your fault."

Dayna stepped forward to intervene. "The two of you can argue about whose fault it is once we've seen to Vila," she said. "We must get him to the medical unit--now."

Blake carried him there. It was odd, but Vila seemed to have shrunk. All the days of my illness, it felt as if he had somehow grown, but now he was the Vila I had always known, helpless. That he had never been half as helpless as he pretended, I had always known but chosen to overlook. But this time, he was. Vila had always been a survivor. The rest of us were hurt occasionally, but it was very rarely that any thine too serious happened to Vila. His urges for self-preservation were second to none; they would have had to be for him to have survived as long as he had. But this time, he had not protected himself. I did not want to think of the reasons for that. It brought back the shivering, the lack of control. Dayna noticed that I had stopped, leaning against the wall, fighting to still my shaking hands. She reached out to touch me. I pulled away.

"Avon, are you all right?" she asked.

"Yes," I said repressively. A remarkably stupid question. "Of course I'm all right." My voice was coming from a far distance, and I noted clinically that it was shaking. This time when Dayna reached out for me, I did not pull away.

She took my arm, changed her mind and slid her arm around my waist. "Come on," she said gently. "No."

"We're going to the medical unit."

Why that should have made any difference, I wasn't prepared to consider, but I stopped fighting her and let her lead me there.

When we arrived, Blake had Vila in bed and already connected up to various diagnostic instruments. He was speaking into the intercom, requesting Tarrant to bring Orac, and Soolin was reading the instruments, her face grave. She was not one to give anything away, but I thought she was concerned for Vila.

Blake looked at me and I saw concern in his eyes and disappointment too. Had he accepted the guise of sanity that I was learning to wear for something more than it really was? Ever the optimist, Blake. I could have told him that pessimism was a far more practical mode, preventing disappointment, and even, occasionally, allowing for the odd pleasant surprise.

"It looks like some kind of virus, Blake," Soolin said, pulling Blake's attention away from me. He went over to check her readings, and Dayna eased me into a chair. The trembling in my hands was less now; was I leaning to control the body's overt symptoms? An interesting theory. I considered it intently for a few moments, then I lost interest in it in favour of current reality.

"How bad is it, Blake?" I asked.

He glanced over at me. "I don't know yet, Avon. It's something that even Orac might have trouble with--something I've never seen before."

"Wonderful," I said sarcastically.

Tarrant arrived then on the run, carrying Orac. Had it been the urgent command in Blake's voice that had brought him so quickly, or had Tarrant actually been concerned for Vila? I discarded this idea instantly. No, not Tarrant. That would be too much to expect. But he was turning to look at Vila, asking,"Is it serious?" with every indication of concern.

"Yes, it's serious," Blake said. "I don't know what it is yet; but I can tell from these readings that Vila was seriously run down, easily susceptible to whatever came along." He inserted Orac's key. "Orac, I want you to run a check, cross reference Vila's current symptoms and see if you can find an analog for it in any medical records, and any suggestions for treatment."

"That will take time," Orac replied. "These symptoms are most interesting. I note a similarity to a variety of viruses, but the matching is not exact."

"I don't care how much it takes, Orac, except that you do it as quickly as possible," Blake insisted.

Soolin had prepared an injection of some sort. "His fever is too high, Blake. Unless we can bring it down, he might go into convulsions."

"Do it, then."

She obeyed. There was no immediate change, but then she nodded. "That helped a little. It's not normal, but it's better. We can't go on giving him this, though, Blake. After too long, there'll start to be unpleasant side effects."

"We'll worry about that when the time comes," he said wearily.

#

Blake sent Tarrant and Dayna back to the flight deck, keeping Soolin to assist him with caring for Vila. He did not suggest I leave, and I did not do so. I suspected that he wanted to keep an eye on me as well, and while I once would have resented any such supervision, I no longer seemed to mind quite as much. Part of it was that I still did not let myself care for anything deeply, though I was losing that peaceful ability more and more quickly as the days passed, and the rest of the reason was that I wanted to know how Vila was. Once, the thought that I would have spared any worry for the thief would have made me laugh, but I knew how much I owed Vila, though I had never asked for his assistance, and I could not go away without knowing. I kept my face carefully impassive; I did not like this new involvement. It left me too open to be hurt. It made me realize that these people had seen more of me than I would have liked to allow, and that one day I was going to have to find the energy to do something about it. But it would wait until Vila recovered.

If he recovered...

My hands were shaking again. I willed them to stillness, remotely pleased that I could so, and Soolin, who had been passing at the time, reached out and touched my shoulder briefly. I glared at her, and she had the effrontery to grin at me in reply.

Blake continued to check the monitors, and to harass Orac from time to time. Orac's checks through all available records were not as helpful as Blake would have liked. Whatever form of virus it was that had attacked Vila could not be isolated. There were various possibilities for treatment, but they were not the exact way, and Blake did not conceal his worry.

"Accept it, Blake," I said. "Orac isn't going to find anything else because there's nothing else there to find."

"What do you suggest, Avon?" he snapped at me. "That we let him die for lack of trying?"

"Blake," Soolin called from Vila's side. "Help me." He abandoned the potential argument at once. Vila had been thrashing about on his bed, now he had begun to vomit, and the two of them held him through the bout, then wiped his face, cleaned him up and lay him down again. He was quieter this time, but from the look on Soolin's face as she checked the monitor again, there was still no sign of improvement.

As soon as she was certain that Vila was quiet once more, Blake came back to me. "Avon, I don't know if it's wise for you to stay here."

"I do not take orders from you, Blake."

"It wasn't an order, Avon, only a suggestion. You look tired."

"So do you, Blake. So does Soolin."

"I don't want to risk your having any relapses, Avon. You've been doing so much better lately."

Better? Did he call the little scene I had enacted for him on the flight deck last night 'better?' "Blake, you see only what you want to see."

"Maybe that's something I learned from you, Avon. Why can't you admit that you're improving all the time? When we brought you onto the ship, you didn't even recognize us. You wouldn't even see me, couldn't see me, for days. I know there's still something to be resolved between us, and maybe you're not ready for that yet, but at least I've got enough faith in you to know that you're going to be ready one of these days. Why can't you have as much faith in yourself?"

I only looked at him a moment, then I said wearily, as if it were not important, "I don't dare."

"Avon, we don't live in easy times; you know that; we all do. We learn early not to let people get too close to us, not to care too much because the people we trust will either betray us tomorrow or die. It's not an easy way to live because human beings weren't meant to live that way, but we've all been like that. Even when we were still back on the Liberator before we lost Gan, when we almost seemed invincible, we were all on our guard, not really daring to trust, or care, or the ultimate sin, admit to caring. I know that, and so do you. From what I hear from the others, it got worse after Star One, and still worse after Cally's death. Even the way you and Vila fought was different. It used to be a way of showing that you cared--no, don't disagree with me, Avon, hear me out." He made a weary gesture that I could not interpret, glanced over at Vila, sighed, and continued. "I let that state of affairs continue on this ship for a long time, Avon. I thought, as you did, that it was the way to survive what fate throws at us. Now I'm realizing that I was wrong. In the long run, all any of us have is each other. If we don't admit it, then one day we realize that it might be too late, that it is too late, and that the hurt might be easier if only we'd let things be good before. When I think of Jenna...." He caught himself on her name, and to my horror, his eyes were suddenly too bright, as if he might cry. Somehow the thought of Blake in tears was unbearable.

But he pulled himself together. "I know now that I was wrong to wait, to think that someday, maybe, when the times got better...." He shrugged. "The times we live in are right now, and they're all we've got. Just surviving isn't good enough. Avon, all of us care what happens to you. And we're going to do everything we can to see that you don't give up on yourself. You can fight me on this if you want to, but I'm better at fighting than I used to be, because this time the stakes are higher, and I don't dare lose."

"And when it all goes wrong, Blake? When someone dies or betrays you?"

"You told me Cally once said that her people had a saying about a man who trusts not being betrayed, only mistaken." He smiled a little. "If I'm mistaken, I'm mistaken. At least I'll have had some times to remember. If bad times come, there will have been good before. It's worth the risk, Avon. You know it is."

I was not ready to consider such a thing yet, but neither was I prepared to reject his words. I thought suddenly of Cally, of how I had told Vila that I might have loved her one day. Though it would not have changed anything in any significant way, I suddenly realized that I wished that I had let myself care--or, more honestly, that I had let myself admit that perhaps I did. If I had, then perhaps Cally would not have died so alone. "May you die alone...." An Auron curse. But that was the way Cally had died.

My hands began to tremble again, and this time I could not will the shaking away. Blake looked at me a moment, then he came forward and gripped my hands in his, holding them steady for me until I could manage it for myself. He caught my eyes and held them.

"When do you want to have that talk, Avon?" he asked.

"I'll let you know."

#

There were times when I was almost grateful to Vila for his illness; it put off the talk that Blake now seemed determined to have as soon as possible. I knew that I did not want to have the talk at all. I told myself that I was not ready, not prepared to face the hurt once I let it out of its tightly sealed container. A Pandora's box, I thought wryly. And yet, I could think about Gauda Prime, could accept the fact that I had tried to kill Blake and had nearly succeeded. Why then, could I not admit that to Blake? I did not know, and I did not want to know. What I did know was that thinking about it too much made the nightmares more savage brought the trembling back to my hands, sent waves of icy cold racing through my body and threatened to bring back the blank numbness in which Vila had found me. But sanity was beginning to grow more attractive, and I fought the nightmares and the shakes, and the other annoying symptoms of my continuing illness. Functional. For the most part, I was functional now, at least on Venture. But Vila's illness prolonged my half-formed state, and I was grateful to him for it.

He was not getting any better. Two days passed, then three, and I could see that what little resistance he had was fading. He was losing ground. And whenever I thought that, I realized that I had let myself become dependant on Vila, a dependence that might soon be shattered, and I cursed Blake for being a fool. His lofty ideals of trust and caring were not worth the pain they inevitably entailed. Before, if Vila had died, I could have adapted to his death easily. Now I did not know if I could endure it at all. If Vila died, the tenuous contact I had with reality was going to shatter again. I knew that. And I cursed myself for being fool enough to care. How often did I have to make this kind of mistake before I could learn? I had called Vila a fool, but I was more foolish than he had ever been.

"Avon?" Blake came into the medical unit to find me sitting beside Vila's bed. Why not, I told myself. He had sat beside mine often enough. Besides, if Blake wanted a good excuse, I was the one most easily spared these days.

I looked up at him and said, "What do you want, Blake?"

"I want you to go to bed and get some sleep before you collapse."

"Me? You're only on your feet because you are too stubborn to fall down."

He acknowledged the truth of that with a nod. "I know that, Avon. But right now, I've got a few more reserves to call on than you do. I am not going to accept a relapse from you. I know what you are capable of, Avon, and I know you've got the guts to make it."

"I am growing increasingly weary of pep talks, Blake."

"I know you are. Do you think I like making them?"

"Of course you do. You thrive on it."

He grinned reluctantly. "Perhaps you're right, Avon."

"There's no perhaps about it, Blake. You're a glutton for punishment, and you can't resist beating a dead horse. It's a wonder you're still alive." I heard my words then and drew in my breath. That was too close to the topic I had forbidden myself for any degree of comfort. Automatically, I looked down at my hands to see if they were shaking. They were. I clenched them hastily into fists.

"Maybe I'm just lucky," Blake said with an attempt at lightness that failed utterly. "They say fate protects fools." Another mistake. That recalled Vila to us, and we both looked at him. He was frail and thin, and only the slightest rise and fall of the coverlet indicated that he still breathed. The pillow was scarcely whiter than his face, and his hair was matted down and damp with sweat. With sweat?

Blake cried out something in surprise and jumped forward to put his hand on Vila's forehead. "Avon! His fever's broken."

We grinned at each other like a pair of idiots, then Blake went to the intercom and summoned Soolin and Dayna to assist him. I drew back into a corner of the room as they took care of Vila, and waited. Finally the instruments proved it. Vila's fever was down. He was on his way to recovery.

I did not forget the thoughts that had plagued me before we had known. I still did not know if it were better to care or not to care. The relief I had felt at Vila's recovery proved to me that somehow I had lowered my barriers enough to care about him. No matter how I rationalized it, I knew that I had done precisely the kind of thing that I had vowed would never be risked again, not after Anna. Not after Cally's death. And certainly not after Gauda Prime.

But even that logic was flawed, because if I had not cared, then why would Gauda Prime have mattered at all? Why would I have gone over the edge if there had been no hurt?

I put the thoughts away, to consider later. Right now, Blake was right about something. If I did not get some sleep, I was going to collapse. I turned toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Blake's voice came after me.

"To bed. I suggest you do the same."

He smiled. "Just a minute and I'll walk along with you," he said. "Maybe we can hold each other up long enough to get there."

#

"No, I'm not getting up. I'm sick, remember. You can't expect me to...."

"Be quiet, Vila," I said automatically. Blake had come to the medical unit to check on Vila's condition, and I arrived just as Blake had suggested that Vila might like to take a short walk. After listening to a string of protests that reminded me of days gone by, I had reacted automatically, and Vila turned a gave me a nasty look.

"I don't remember anyone making you get up," he said in return.

"You are mistaken. Dayna did. In fact, she threatened to dress me herself if I didn't get up within five minutes."

"There, you see," Vila said accusingly to Blake. "You're just not using the right tactics. Why don't you send Dayna down here. If she's so keen on dressing someone, she can practice on me, then."

"I doubt Dayna would be so desperate."

"That's unkind, Avon."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Am I supposed to be kind to you?"

He grinned at that. "No, why should you start now."

Blake laughed. "We won't rush you, Vila, You need the rest."

"At last, I'm appreciated."

"Yes," I told him. "We appreciate your absence. You cannot do anything wrong if you are not even there."

Vila abandoned the argument, possibly because he was losing, and stared at me with frank curiosity. "You look better," he said. "I should have known," he went on. "Just when I had you where I wanted you, where you wouldn't talk back and where you appreciated my true worth, you had to go and change. Now you're as nasty as you ever were." He made a mournful face, exaggerated by the fact that he was still too thin and too pale. "Avon, go away and leave me in peace, I can suffer better without an audience,"

"Especially an audience who can see through you so easily," I replied. "Very well. I'm going to the flight deck."

"Say something nasty to Tarrant for me, will you?" Vila called after me.

"With pleasure." I left, and Blake followed me.

"Avon?"

I stiffened a bit; I still had not found a way to be entirely comfortable in Blake's company, though it was easier if the others were there as well. I looked at him. "What do you want, Blake?" I asked him warily.

"I want to have that talk we've been putting off for days. Vila is better now, or getting that way fast, and from the way you were just talking to him, I think you're much better too. When was the last time you had a nightmare?"

I gave him a resentful stare, but he only waited impatiently, and I said, "Not since Vila started to get well."

"Good. Then this is as good a time as any. I don't think it will be easy for either of us, but I'd like to get it past us and go on from there."

I had told him once that we needed to have this talk, and I knew as well as he did that until we did, nothing would be resolved. But I did not want it now.

He said, "Avon, I think I know why you don't want to talk to me. You're afraid of showing emotions. Of letting too much through. Well, I'll tell you a secret, most people are. I wouldn't want to cry in front of you either. At least you have a good excuse. You're still not quite well. Blame it all on that. But don't go and bottle it up any longer, or you'll only make it worse. Every time you've let your feelings out, you've been stronger afterwards. Haven't you noticed?"

I hadn't really, but there just might be some truth in that. Still, it went against my essential nature. Blake might say he preferred not to cry in public, but if driven to it, he could endure it far more easily than I could. On the other hand, I did not see myself as a coward either, and there was a part of me that wanted to get this over with as much as he did. I knew it wouldn't be all nice and simple and wonderful then, but perhaps it would be bearable--and it would continue to improve. I would still have nightmares, but if I did, there would be someone to help me, and maybe, just maybe, it would not be wrong to accept that help. Maybe it was time I gave myself that right to fail.

But I knew it was not going to be easy.

Part 4: Blake

Avon's body was rigid as if all his muscles had locked into position, and he wore a look on his face of a man on his way to the executioner. I knew how very hard this was for him, but I thought he was ready for it. God help me if I was wrong. I didn't dare let myself think about that.

"I started picking up the rumours early on, after we got Scorpio," he was saying. "That you were acting as a bounty hunter on Gauda Prime."

"Yet you waited a long time to come to look for me, Avon."

"Yes. Perhaps if I had come immediately, none of this would have happened."

"Why didn't you?" I asked with real interest. That was something I had always wanted to know. All I had were the theories that Vila had suggested to me while we were still searching for Avon, and I was not certain that they were right.

"We had heard rumours before, Blake. None of them proved true. We checked out so many places. Then on Terminal...." His voice went rough with remembered anger and hurt. "Servalan told me that you had died on the planet Jevron. While I would never trust her, she could have been telling the truth, which meant that the GP rumour was a trap, maybe even a trap she had baited with yet another rumour of you. I did not want to rush into anything like that again."

"Responsibilities, Avon?"

"Self-preservation."

"Of course."

"We'll get further, Blake, if you don't pretend to humour me."

"I'll try, Avon. If you will tell me the truth."

He smiled a little at that, unexpectedly. "Very well. Yes, it was self-preservation first. But there were the others to consider as well. I did not want to kill another crew member. Not after Cally...." His voice wobbled. and I reached out to him and touched his shoulder gently.

"Cally would have understood, Avon."

"Do you think that makes any difference? Did it for you when Gan died--or Jenna?" There was a savage note in his voice, and I knew that he felt he had to hurt me to keep from letting his own hurt show; and Avon had always known exactly how to hurt me the most.

"No," I said. "It never makes it any easier, Avon." He said in a softer tone, "I know it, Blake. Cally was dead. The others were not going to be dead because of me. I think that after Cally's death, I didn't let myself care for them at all any more. Not even Vila." He made a wry face. "Poor Vila. He didn't understand any of it, and he was suffering for Cally too. What a damned waste."

"He understood, Avon. More than you know."

"Yes, I realize that now. It was easier to believe that Vila was what he seemed to be, that the others were simply excess baggage that I happened to be responsible for. I can understand why Tarrant hates me. I gave him no reason to do otherwise."

"Tarrant doesn't hate you. If anything, he's envious of you. You had what he wanted. First Liberator, then Scorpio, and of course the loyalty of the others. He thought he was a leader, but they followed you. And he thought he could hold his own with anybody, but you repeatedly cut him down to size. You were what he wanted to be, though he wouldn't put it like that." I didn't want to go any further with it, that Tarrant also resented my affection for Avon, wanting some of it for himself. He had it, but he knew it was not the same, could never be the same. Avon had always been special to me, and Tarrant was smart enough to know it. He must have wondered if we would have hunted for him for six months and concentrated all our resources on his recovery, had he been the one to go the way Avon had. I couldn't give him the answer he wanted either; we probably would have done our best for him, but I wasn't certain, not one hundred percent the way I had been for Avon.

Avon considered Tarrant for a moment more, then he said, "Whatever the case, I was not prepared to lead the others into a trap again, Blake. I waited. The bounty hunter rumours did not help."

"No, I don't imagine they did." When a man has a price on his head, the last person he wants to meet is a bounty hunter, even if that bounty hunter happens to be his best friend. "I suppose you saw that as a betrayal, Avon?"

"Maybe I did," he replied slowly. "I'd finally come to terms with how I felt about you, Blake, and if you think that was easy, then you're a fool." He grinned. "You are a fool, a damned idealist, and I think your principles are a waste of energy."

"You always have, Avon. I think that a lack of commitment to a cause and amorality are even more wasteful, but I don't care about that; it's you that I want at my side. Do we say we're both bad judges of character and let it go at that?"

"Perhaps." He frowned, continued. I felt like crossing my fingers; Avon and I had never talked this frankly before, at least not without arguing, and I hoped we could get through it somehow, without doing any irreparable damage.

He said, "I did not want to find you, Blake. I believed I was well rid of you, rid of your influence, but I wasn't. I hadn't taken the Liberator and gone off to enjoy the rewards of vice--I was still chasing around the galaxy playing your rebel games. You had to be worth it, or else I was a bigger fool than I wanted to contemplate. Maybe I chose not to find you because that would prove that you had changed, that you were not worthy of whatever loyalty I had been giving you--against my better judgement. So I delayed until there were no more excuses to delay. We lost everything else. Our base on Xenon. My attempt to unite rebel leaders had fallen apart. You were all that was left. So we came to Gauda Prime."

He started to tremble again, and I saw the pain written in his eyes, so vividly it might have been lit with spotlights. He said, "Tell me your part of it now, Blake," very quickly, in a voice that was nowhere near steady.

I nodded. Maybe that way was best. At least it would give him a chance to collect his shattered nerves and find the strength to go on.

"I don't remember much about being captured, even now," I said. "Only flashes, mostly anger at them for trying to interfere with my mind again. Oddly enough, I remember more about the programming on earth now, as if this later programming released more of my conditioning. "I shuddered a little. Avon wasn't the only one having a rough time of it. I saw him realize it and felt better that he had noticed. Though he said nothing and offered me no comfort.

"But after it was over, then I remembered what I was to do. I remembered that even as you raised your gun. Vila thinks that I might have tried to get myself killed to give the rest of you a chance to get away. If you had believed in the betrayal, shooting me would not have been so hard for you, and you could have escaped alive and safe. I closed my eyes, the memory of the agony in his voice burning into my brain. "If you had been free, having you hate me would not have been too high a price to pay.

"But there was Arlen. She played her part well; she was there to make sure I went through with my programming, not that I knew that at the time; only later. Orac picked up information that proved it. Even afterwards, we thought she was simply a Federation infiltrator. But she told you that I hadn't set you up, Avon. And if I'd died, that would have made it all for nothing, because you believed her.

Avon stared at me, and I don't think he was even conscious of the fact that there were tears on his face. "I came there expecting betrayal, Blake," he said. "When I saw you, I knew that I could not endure it, but it was too late for that." He choked on a sob. "There was nothing else I could do--I had to shoot you. Then she said she was a Federation officer, that you didn't know who to trust any more--"

"I didn't," I said faintly.

"--and I knew the whole thing was wrong. I froze, Blake. I think that was the first time that I blanked out. I knew the others were being shot down, but it didn't really get though to me until it was too late, and then I knew I had done exactly what I had vowed would never happen. I'd led them to their deaths, just like Cally. And killed you. Do you know what it feels like, Blake, when there is absolutely no reason to want to live? I tried to shoot those troops; I had to shoot them, to make them shoot back at me, to make them kill me. I had nothing. It had to end, but they would not let it end. Servalan...." He spat her name. "She came. She said my name. I heard her talking, but the words meant nothing to me. And, after that, there was nothing at all for so long that it feels like I did die for a time." He shivered violently, and I did what I 'd been wanting to do all along. I grabbed him close and held onto him.

"But you didn't lead them to their deaths," I said. "You didn't kill me."

"I might as well have done. They're only alive because Servalan wanted them alive and gave the orders to stun us rather than kill us. And you're alive because by some miracle they got to you in time and saved your life."

"Then we're both lucky, Avon. We both made mistakes, but we came through them all right. Hopefully we'll learn from them."

"Your unending supply of platitudes never ceases to amaze me," he said in a fair approximation of his normal tone, then he shivered again, bent his head to rest on my shoulder, and cried. This time, I let him, I even encouraged it. I stroked his hair as I might have done a child's, and spoke softly to him. The muscles of his shoulders were rigid beneath my arm, but gradually, so slowly I thought I was imaging in it at first, he bean to relax, minutely at first, then more and more.

Finally he raised his head, almost asleep, and looked up at me. He said, "I feel like I've been given a tranquilizer." Then, in a different tone of voice, "Blake?"

"Yes, Avon?"

"I'm...sorry I shot you."

"Frankly, so am I."

His eyes widened almost comically, then he gave a faint snort of laughter.

I said, "I think it would do you good to sleep now."

"I think...you're right...."

He was half asleep already. If we'd been smart, we'd have had this talk in his quarters rather than mine, but I had thought mine better at the time because the others had developed the habit, to Avon's steadily increasing outrage, of walking into his quarters without knocking.

Well, it wouldn't hurt for Avon to sleep in my bed tonight. I would simply move into his. I lifted his feet up onto the bed and began to pull his boots off. His voice came to me sleepily, "...c'n take my own boots off, Blake."

"Of course you can," I replied, finishing the task. Pulling the blanket over him, I stood back and looked down at him. His eyelids were drooping, all but shut, but he saw me there, and he smiled. It was not one of his sarcastic smiles either, but one that made me feel like breaking down and crying. Before I could do that, I said hastily, "Good night, Avon," and let myself out. I think we had won.

#

"Let me get this straight," said Tarrant with deliberate patience. "You want me to do what?"

"I want you to try to provoke Avon," I repeated. "To try to make him mad enough to hit you."

"Oh, thanks, Blake. Now I can see my true worth."

"Tarrant, I think you're the only one on this ship who can provoke him that far."

"You must have a lot of confidence in his recovery--and in my ability to duck."

"You think he's better then?" I asked hopefully. In some ways, Tarrant knew Avon better than I did, not in the important ways, but he had been with Avon as long as I had, and he had been there near the end, when Avon was going downhill fast. There were times when I was furious at the others, even Vila, for not realizing how close Avon had been to a breakdown, but even if they had known, there was really very little they could have done.

"He acts better," Tarrant said. "He doesn't have those bad reactions now, not like he did at first, or not very often." He was right. Avon had managed to control the shaking of his hands, and the cold sweat, and even the worst of the nightmares, though I knew that bad dreams still disturbed his rest from time to time. He had had a really bad one after we had talked about Gauda Prime, but when he told me about it later, he said calmly enough that he had simply gone back to sleep. I did not think it was as simple as that, but the fact remained that he had slept again afterwards, instead of lying awake for hours. I knew that sometimes he awoke in the night and came to the flight deck, but I realized that it would take a lot of time for the dreams to go away entirely, if they ever did. But he had come through it with less damage than I had ever dared to hope.

I'd told everyone to let Avon sleep until he awoke naturally, after our session, that he was in my cabin and not to disturb him. "Your cabin?" Tarrant had asked with a hint of a sneer in his voice, but I had ignored the tone, and explained that Avon had fallen asleep there and if I were needed in my off duty time, I'd be sleeping in Avon's cabin until further notice.

Avon had slept the clock around, and when he appeared on the flight deck again, he looked much more like he had when I had first known him. He was in control of himself, full of caustic comments that no one seemed to mind and that I welcomed as a sign of further progress. Then he went to the medical unit and had a full scale disagreement with Vila that both of them enjoyed very much. And after that, except for the very rare flash of something dark and forbidding in his eyes, we were all allowed to settle back to normal. He even stopped avoiding me, knowing we had been through the worst of it already. Anything else was a bonus.

He still complained, of course, he wouldn't have been Avon without that, and I still argued with him. But there was more warmth between us than there had been before. Tarrant of course was the last holdout. Dayna had watched Avon carefully after he had returned to the flight deck, followed him to listen in on his argument with Vila, and then had embarrassed him horribly by giving him a hug and a kiss. He had complained fiercely, but Vila had told me later that he had been smiling when he returned to the medical unit shortly thereafter.

Soolin seemed content with Avon's recovery, and pleased with the idea that now we might be going back into action. She and Dayna set to work again on the weapons system, planning for the day that we ,would leave this area of uncharted space and go back to what we did best, fighting the Federation.

But Tarrant seemed uncomfortable around Avon, and the fact reminded me of a problem we had not gotten round to solving yet. Avon had not been able to do violence to Tarrant before; that psych profile had reported him unable to physically harm anyone. That could prove a most complicated problem in our line of work, and I knew that before we could go into any kind of danger, it had to be resolved. I would not put Avon at risk like that, unable to protect himself.

"But listen, Blake, he might be over that,"Vila said to me when I visited him in the medical unit. Another day or two and he would be fully recovered, but he was taking full advantage of his illness, playing it to the hilt, to Avon's obvious and frequently voiced scorn, but no one else could really blame him. Vila had been there when we needed him, and that was what had mattered.

"He might be over it?" I repeated. "Do you think so?"

"I think it went along with his thinking he'd killed you. Now that he knows better, really knows it, I think it would gradually wear off, don't you? Have Tarrant get him really mad and find out, why don't you?"

"That's a good idea, Vila."

"It is?" He brightened.

"Yes, a marvelous idea. I need an excuse to throw the two of them together anyway."

"Well, all I can say is, let me know when you do it."

"So you can be there?"

"No. So I can be as far away as possible." He grinned at me. "I'm not a well man, you know."

"If you tell me how sick you are one more time, Vila, I'm going to personally throw you out the nearest airlock."

"Oh? Are you?" he asked warily.

"Probably," I said in a good imitation of Avon's most ominous tone.

Vila pretended to shiver with fear, then burst out laughing.

I went to look for Tarrant.

When I ran him to earth, Tarrant said, "Yes, Blake, I think he's better. Or at least as well as he'll ever be. I don't know if he'll be able to hit me or not, but he might be."

"Oh, don't worry, Tarrant. You're younger than he is and quicker and all the rest, remember? I think you can duck well enough to keep your pretty face intact."

He glared at me, then he grinned. "Well, you're not telling me to do anything I won't enjoy," he said.

#

Unfortunately for Vila, the confrontation occurred on his first day back on duty. We scheduled a test run, to tryout Dayna's new weapons system on a convenient asteroid, and everyone was there. Avon was monitoring the computers, and Vila was helping Dayna with the weapon relays. Tarrant brought us around to give a clear run at the target, then he swore.

"Problems?" I asked mildly, "Yes, problems. What foal has been loose at my console? I'm getting a double re