Avon - A Terrible Aspect

by Paul Darrow

  Never close, the two young men eyed each other warily. Del asserted that he was satisfied that justice had been done in the matter of the murder of his adoptive father and expressed little concern for Anna. “I know she will be well looked after by Vasht,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Vasht is a member of the High Council. I am of her family. We are related through my father who died on Miranda.”

  There was an arrogance about Del that Avon found distasteful. It would come as no surprise to him to learn of his defection. He considered the man an opportunist. He would seek promotion and authority from anyone prepared to offer it. He was easy prey for sycophants, be they Federation or other. By failing to utilize his talents and for abandoning him on Nereid, the Empire would lose an eager Pandarus.

  What neither of them knew was that Anna was being schooled by Vasht at the instigation of Axel Reiss. The innocent, unaffected girl would become a woman of devious and vengeful substance.

  Sabbath took a personal interest in Avon. He taught forcefully and his pupil absorbed every hard lesson.

  The Coordinator acquired a grudging respect for the growing man. In a report to Reiss, he described Avon as follows; “He is not tall. He is dark and melancholy. Although unable to compete physically with all his contemporaries, when ’outgunned’ as it were, he backs off. Then, choosing his own time and battleground, when his adversary has been weakened, he strikes and invariably wins. When he loses, he revises his tactics, resolved never to lose again. He is a dangerous opponent. As amoral as a razor blade. He reminds me of you. He fights dirty!”

  With the eruption of the revolutionary wars, that’s exactly what Avon wanted to do—fight.

  For all its conquests, the Federation had not subdued man’s implacable enemy—time. This hung heavily on Avon, but his request for combat was denied.

  As a sop to his injured pride and ambition, Anna was delivered to him at the Iron School. A grown woman, she was sleek and sophisticated and aloof. Only in their private moments together did her animal instincts, her voluptuous sexual appetite, manifest themselves.

  Sabbath was amused, but approved of her ability to seduce Avon, to distract and manipulate him.

  Not that he was easily distracted from a new infatuation—computers.

  One sultry night, the two men were discussing the complex subject when Sabbath, under instructions from Reiss, chose to broach another. “Why do you not revert to your real identity?” The Coordinator asked casually.

  Avon was immediately alert.

  Sabbath smiled like a contented cat. “The Federation does not survive by ignoring its enemies.”

  There was a silence. Only the hushed whirring of delicate machinery distracted from it.

  Avon’s face was expressionless, his eyes hooded menacingly.

  “We know that Rogue Avon ran from the wars for Uranus and found sanctuary on Phax. That’s not all he found, of course. He found your mother, Rowena.” Sabbath’s smile seemed fixed in place, like the rictus of a cadaver. “You may not know,” he continued, “that he was killed here, on Earth. For all his qualities, he was not for us. And those who are not for us, are against us and must be eliminated. Your schooling will ensure that you understand that.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Surely, you already know!”

  Avon smiled.

  “The Federation does not visit the sins of the fathers on their sons,” Sabbath said. “The Empire values you and the service you can give it. In return, you will be well treated.”

  “Until my usefulness is at an end.”

  Sabbath pulled a face. “That applies to all of us.”

  “So, I am to be allowed to assume my own name without fear of retribution?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s say that the families prefer it that way. Your father was misguided. If you want to change the system, it is better to make the attempt from within.”

  “What about honour and conscience?” Avon asked.

  “I doubt that you are familiar with either of them,” Sabbath said, not unkindly.

  Avon laughed.

  “The Federation offers to create order out of chaos. I’m sure you approve of that. It also offers you in particular a way of life of your own choosing. Within reason, that is. After all, if I am not mistaken, you are for yourself. What do you care about the rabble?”

  “You seem to have summed me up rather well.”

  “I’ve gotten to know you.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Sabbath made another face. “You are to be integrated into one of the families. That is a great privilege. I envy you.”

  “But?”

  Sabbath grinned. “But! First, you have to prove something to us. The Iron Guard is preparing for an assault on Nereid, Neptune’s satellite. There’s a particularly nasty group of revolutionaries there. We would like you to join the expedition.”

  Avon thought for a moment, but his black eyes never strayed from their scrutiny of the Coordinator. “Very well,” he said finally.

  “You’ve made a wise choice,” Sabbath said.

  “I was unaware that I had one!”

  “We leave tomorrow. Make the most of the night. It will be necessary to return Anna Grant to Lupus.”

  Avon nodded assent, excused himself and returned to his quarters. Anna was waiting for him. He told her of his conversation with the Coordinator. From this time on, she always referred to him as “Avon.” The meaning of his first name, she claimed, depressed her.

  That night, they lay together as if the day that was surely to follow would never come. As if they were suspended in time and space. Frequently, Anna moaned that she loved him. Avon, who did not know the meaning of the word, could not bring himself to say it.

  When the day did come, he left her when she was still asleep. Any reluctance was tempered with an instinct for self-preservation.

  He took leave of Amiyak. His “Brother” wished him luck.

  Avon said, “I’ll make my own luck.”

  Amiyak frowned and placed an arm on his shoulder. “Then, may your God go with you.”

  “God has nothing to do with it!”

  2

  The terrible noise shattered her sleep and fragmented her dreams. Anna threw back the covers, sprang from her bed and, only then realizing that Avon had gone, rushed to a window.

  Naked in the cold dawn, she watched as a score of heliplanes hovered over the school and its environs like a horde of locusts. One by one, they turned away and, their many-colored navigation lights flashing a farewell, flew off into the distance in search of the mother Starship that would carry them to Nereid.

  The silence once they were gone was oppressive.

  Unannounced, Sabbath came into the room. Anna turned to face him. Untroubled by modesty, she easily withstood his hungry gaze. “What do you want?” she asked, then smiled when she considered that the question might be superfluous.

  Sabbath said, “Avon has gone.”

  “I have eyes. I can see that!” she snapped, aware that her influence with Vasht and Axel Reiss placed the Coordinator as an inferior.

  “You are to return to Lupus,” he said.

  Anna sighed, crossed to her bed and lay on it. She did not bother to cover her nakedness. She stretched voluptuously.

  “I have been ordered to accompany Avon to Nereid,” Sabbath went on, trying to control his desire and to ignore her abandonment.

  “Why do you feel you have to tell me this?”

  “Reiss wants to know if you have anything to report?”

  She propped herself up on one elbow and stroked her breast with her free hand. “I’ll tell him anything he needs to know myself.”

  Sabbath took a step forward. Anna’s eyes hardened like gunmetal. “Touch me and you’re dead!” she said viciously. “By Avon’s hand or by that of Axel Reiss.”

  The Coordinator hesitated. “What if Avon should not return from Nereid?”

&nbs
p; “Then you had better not return yourself.”

  “What if he discovers what really happened to his mother?”

  Anna smiled. A smile on the face of a tigress. “He and I have shared this bed. I have the heart of the man. He would pluck out yours!”

  Sabbath tried to ingratiate himself. “I can see that I have underestimated you,” he said.

  Anna did not reply. She turned away from him as if bored with their conversation.

  The Coordinator, overcoming the anger he felt at the dismissal she implied, left her.

  Having made sure that he had gone, Anna turned her face to the wall. There were acid tears in her eyes.

  Sabbath would have been unimpressed. As it was, he concentrated on the matter in hand. He had to keep Avon alive and reckoned that might not be an easy task when fighting a war through the endless night of Nereid.

  The satellite was unwelcoming. Its landscape was untamed. Its mountains huddled over great chasms. Its vegetation of thick and thorny scrub held the promise of death. The waters of its rivers and lakes was acid. Its atmosphere was barely breathable. It was an awful place. Because its mother planet, Neptune, blotted out the Sun, there was no day.

  The Federation plan, such as it was, required two detachments of Iron Guards. One would press towards the center of the satellite from its North, the other, obliquely, from the South. The dissidents would be crushed between the two wings. This was easier planned than executed.

  It soon became apparent that the scheme was unworkable. The terrain was impossible. The rebels appeared, struck hard, then disappeared like wraiths. One of their tactics was quite deadly as far as the intruders were concerned. A sniper would fire a projectile from a narrow tube, no thicker than a stem of bamboo. Provided the tube followed any evasive movement the target might make, the projectile, powered by gas and guided by a simple, narrow laser beam, would alter course accordingly. On impact, it would blow its target to pieces. Avon’s troop lost two officers to this weapon within hours of their arrival.

  “This is a waste of time and good men,” Sabbath said when he and Avon met in the satellite’s Federation base. “Who wants a Godforsaken place like this anyway?”

  Avon smiled. “Clearly, somebody does.”

  “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

  “We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

  Sabbath spat on the ground. “There is no tomorrow here.”

  While the Coordinator and the rest, apart from a warning guard, slept, Avon wandered the compound. He sniffed the acrid air, shivered in the cold, but remained alert, all his senses honed to perfection by his many years of Federation tutelage in the art of war.

  A Nereidian captive had been assigned to him as a servant. A slight man, in every sense of the word, he was called Paroch.

  In the dead of what passed for a Nereidian night, he approached his new master. His voice was thin and reedy, his tone subservient, but there was a hint of steel in his suppliant eyes. “You are called Kerguelen?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Avon said, concealing his surprise that the slave knew his proper name. Avon was ever adept at controlling and hiding his feelings.

  “I am in contact with your enemies,” Paroch said.

  Avon looked at him sharply. The man had just signed his death warrant.

  “I would bring you to them,” the servant muttered. “I have been instructed to do so. One of our leaders claims he knows you.”

  “So, you are one of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is the leader’s name?”

  “Starets.”

  Avon shook his head.

  “I have an image of him,” Paroch said while producing a photograph and passing it over.

  After studying it for a moment, Avon handed it back. “When?” he asked.

  “When what?”

  “When shall I see this man?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow never comes.”

  “Within another Earth day,” Paroch said testily.

  Avon nodded his assent. “Very well.”

  “You do not sleep?” Paroch enquired.

  “I have a suspicion that those of us who indulge in the luxury of sleep here on Nereid may never wake.”

  Paroch smiled toothlessly. “You are very wise.”

  “I am careful.”

  “The Federation cannot conquer here,” the slave said passionately.

  “You’re right. I think it may change its mind and decide to abort the mission.”

  Paroch giggled.

  Avon dismissed him. When he had been obeyed, he lay back on his couch, his arms cradling his head.

  Although it was a recognition of long ago, he had immediately remembered the face of the man in the photograph.

  The assignation that Paroch had arranged would be with the Prospector.

  3

  They came to a deep cave. Hidden from the air, it was protected from detection devices by the non-reflective granite of the mountain that contained it.

  Stalactites dripped chill water on its spongy floor. Its atmosphere was fetid.

  Nonetheless, it housed and provided sanctuary for enemies of the Federation. There were very few in this band, Avon noted.

  Ill-clad, dirty and dishevelled, they exuded an air of hopeless defiance. The defiance of men with their backs to the wall and with nowhere else to go, prepared to fight to the last drop of blood because they had no alternative.

  Starets, the Prospector, walked out of the murky cavern depths and stood before him. He still resembled an ancient prophet.

  “So!” Starets said, his voice thin and quavering. “You are the child.”

  “Now I am a man.”

  Starets looked at the gun hanging from Avon’s belt and smiled. “And you have put away childish things?”

  Avon smiled too and the old man was convinced of his identity. It was a smile the Prospector, or anyone else, was unlikely to forget.

  They sat together on wooden logs and one of Starets’ followers brought them food and drink.

  “Quite like old times,” the ancient said. “Do you remember the sanctuary on Phax?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is good that you remember. That is all there is. Memory.”

  Avon was silent.

  “Your mother is dead.” It was not a question.

  “How do you know?”

  The old man stroked his beard. “There was some fighting on Saturn. The Iron Guards from the military college suppressed the dissidents. News travels fast in revolutionary circles.”

  “Her killers were executed,” Avon said.

  Starets raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  Avon’s eyes narrowed. “That is what I was told.”

  “You were misinformed.”

  There was a dread silence between them.

  “Enlighten me,” Avon said finally.

  “Subsidiaries were responsible for her death,” the Prospector said quietly. “Subsidiaries controlled by Earthmen.”

  Avon appeared to be calm. “Their names?” he asked politely.

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Axel Reiss and his creature, the Saturn Coordinator.”

  “Sabbath!”

  “Yes.”

  Avon stood and slowly paced the floor of the cave.

  “Why don’t you fight with us?” Starets asked. “Others have been persuaded.”

  Avon stopped pacing, looked at him and smiled coldly. “You and your kind don’t stand a chance.”

  The Prospector was unmoved. “You contradict yourself. Here on Nereid, we will win.”

  “You’re very welcome to this satellite. But try and move away from it and the Federation will annihilate you.”

  Starets frowned. “I could have you killed.”

  “Will you?”

  The old man shook his head wearily. “I think you will do greater service to our cause by returning to your Federation masters. You wi
ll be a cancerous tumor in its political brain. One of many, I hope.”

  “I’ve heard something like that before.”

  Starets sighed. “Destruction such as you have seen and will continue to see is the prerogative of the human race. It is almost a vocation. In the end, the race will destroy itself. You are a symptom of its disease.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  Both men laughed.

  “The Federation will continue to fight,” the old man said, “but, as you say, they will eventually concede Nereid to us. You only have to look around you to know it will be a hollow victory. In a hundred years from now, what will it matter?”

  Avon smiled.

  The Prospector’s eyes bore into him. “Of course, we all have to die.”

  “Yes. But how, when and by whose hand is of some importance.”

  “Is it?” the old man said drily.

  Avon changed tack. “How could you be sure that I would believe what you have told me of the circumstances of my mother’s death?”

  Starets seemed irritated by the question. Like a man discomfited by an inquisitive child. “Believe or not believe, it’s up to you.” His mouth curled in a sinister smile. “The name Axel Reiss in connection with the affair should serve to convince you.”

  Avon nodded. “Reiss flits in and out of my life like a malevolent spirit. He has orphaned me. He must have had a good reason. Sooner or later, I’ll kill him. Or die in the attempt.”

  “Why?”

  “I gave my word.”

  The Prospector seemed approving, but he said, “Most men’s ‘words’ are worthless.”

  “I am not most men.”

  The ancient rose to his feet. “You have illustrated that by coming here. Do you give credence to prophecy, astrology?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps it’s just as well. I don’t see a particularly happy future for you.”

  “Then, why tell me and spoil my hopes?” Avon asked.

  “What does it matter?”

  “What do you see for yourself?”

  The old man did not answer. Instead, he plucked two gold coins from the sleeve of his coat. “I think you should have these. Before the inflation of the last decade, they were worth a considerable amount in Federation credits. Although I would estimate that you are lacking in sentiment, take them anyway. They were given to me by a woman called Mara.”