by Tony Attwood
‘I’ve seen worse bargains,’ Vila told her. But before Servalan could reply the mutoid reappeared, with Avon and Korell under guard.
To Avon, Servalan was all smiles and apologies. She was sorry she had had to shepherd them away for a few minutes... She hoped that they had been comfortable. Korell kept a straight face. There was no telling if she had ever met Servalan before, or even knew the full extent of her reputation. Avon smiled and waited for Servalan to finish her fun. She came to the point. ‘So Blake is dead, and you have decided to give in.’
‘Blake has nothing to do with it, Servalan.’ He paused and lifted his right hand in characteristic gesture – fingers spaced, forefinger slightly raised. He spoke more slowly. ‘I have nowhere left to run.’
‘And what do you expect me to do with you? Shall we share an empire? Shall we be lovers? Shall I have you killed where you stand?’ She spread her hands wide, enjoying the moment.
‘Oh, you will treat me carefully, Servalan. You need something that I have got.’
‘And what, may I ask, is that?’
‘Information and knowledge.’
‘Dangerous things to trade, Avon. Most people get killed for even thinking of the possibility of selling.’ She lingered over the word "possibility", allowing it to rise and fall in its own time, a moment of music in the bleakness of her message.
‘Most people don’t trade the type of information that I have.’
‘So tell me.’ Again there was that expansive gesture. Again the smile was on her face. Servalan was enjoying this. Even if Avon wasn’t grovelling at her feet he was asking for something, and he had never done that before.
‘I worked the Liberator, I worked Scorpio...’
‘Fascinating, Avon, but spare me the life history. I’m sure it’s all in the files.’
‘All right, Servalan, but without the details I’m not sure you’ll get the point. Orac...’
Servalan grinned and turned away, but the grin was one of pure malice. She planned a diversion. ‘Ah yes, Orac. Vila was telling me all about Orac - and Caro. Weren’t you Vila?’
Before Vila could answer Avon stepped in. ‘You can ask a monkey how to create a clone machine if you like, Servalan, but if you really want to know about Orac you have got only one person left to ask, because all the others are dead. In fact you might say there is starting to be a shortage of computer knowledge in the Federation.’
Avon too had stopped playing. His voice was hard, his fist clenched. He was ready to have his offer taken seriously. For the first time since Orac had suggested surrender, Vila began to see that it could be a viable stand to take. And he realised that Avon would have worked that out too. It gave him a bad sensation in his stomach. He knew that he was useful to Avon as a thief, as a diversion, as an opener of cupboards. But if Avon really was doing a deal with Servalan his usefulness would continue only as long as it took to conclude the contract. Servalan didn’t need thieves. She worked on a grander scale with troops, battleships, mass murder and planetary destruction. Vila looked again at Korell but she continued with her kind smile, giving nothing away.
Servalan, meanwhile, seemed mildly amused. ‘All dead?’ she asked innocently. ‘And who are these "all" that could rival the great Avon in computer matters?’
‘Ensor, whom you arranged to kill, and Muller his student, who was killed by his own invention. That just leaves me, Servalan, unless you have someone else up your sleeve.’
Servalan’s mood changed yet again. ‘I can think of only one name true, but she seems to be temporarily unavailable. You know – I do believe you are fishing, Avon. What could it be that you are after? This gets more interesting by the minute. And Vila tells me you have built a replacement Orac – is that right? You offer yourself and this new machine to trade for your lives? How gallant of you to include Vila in the deal – and this charming young lady...’
‘Korell.’
‘Ah yes, Korell. And what does Korell do? You are part of the deal?’
‘I do believe I am. I make predictions. I’m a social technologist.’
‘How fascinating.’ Again that favourite word of sarcasm. Again the false musical flavour. ‘We normally use computers for that sort of thing.’ She turned back to Avon. ‘You and I have been enemies too long. Give me Orac and Caro now and I might just leave you on this miserable planet.’
‘Orac is very individualist and might not always go along with your requirements. The deal is that I persuade Orac to work for you, and we take Caro. Or you can just take Orac, find it won’t do your bidding and then start rebuilding it. And you can rebuild the teleport system too since the last one we had crashed when Scorpio landed.’ Avon paused and looked Servalan straight in the eyes. ‘I’m not planning to use the machine to rival your bid for total power.’
For a moment a shadow of doubt passed through Servalan’s mind. The possibility was tempting: Avon could just be offering a deal. But her decision was delayed by the entry of Telon, reporting a completed search. Servalan demanded details.
‘On one ship two androids were working under remote guidance, building a number of changes into the central drive mechanism,’ the captain answered.
‘Where was the control coming from?’
‘It is hard to say, Madam, but it appears to be from within here.’
Servalan looked curiously at Avon, expecting an explanation. Avon glanced across at Caro.
‘Just putting in teleport capacity, and defence mechanisms?’ asked Servalan.
‘Something like that.’
‘Well Avon, I think we might have a deal.’
Having spent so long cooped up in it on his own, Vila found it hard to like the freighter. Even if they did escape the clutches of Servalan he could not imagine growing fond of the unnamed ship. There were two small personnel cabins, a captain’s room, one relaxation chamber, the central control suite with its three working positions, and the giant hold below which was separated from the front of the ship by the fusion propulsion system.
It was, of course, in the control room that most of the work was now taking place. Avon and Korell worked with Caro and the androids, modifying the ship to get it through space at over ten thousand times the speed of light. Orac remained silent, working on problems that none knew and indeed none suspected.
Vila’s final job before Servalan’s arrival had been to locate, transport and store on board all the basic materials to hand for the building of the shields and teleport. There would be plenty of time to assemble them once they were in space. And now he had nothing to do but watch and worry. He took up a regular position in the navigator’s chair. Ahead were four main monitors showing the situation round the ship. The seat moved left and right along rails and tilted back, allowing Vila to put his feet up on the inoperative control panels. Either side of him the two androids stood at rest, patiently watching and waiting.
With one and a half days to go before the deadline Vila left the ship, without a word to anyone. If his departure was noticed it was not commented upon. His return two hours later carrying three boxes raised no greater interest. He resumed his position in front of the monitors, and dozed off to sleep.
He was awoken by the voice of Servalan. The Commissioner had apparently come aboard to witness the last moments of Avon’s work. ‘One problem,’ Avon was saying. ‘There’s nothing coming through onto the backup systems. Which means the ship will probably fly – but one system failure and the whole lot blows. I have to go and get some more parts from the flyers...’
‘Vila can go...’
‘And get the wrong parts, get drunk, get lost.’
‘Thank you for your confidence Avon,’ said Vila, resenting the insult and trying to shake off the hangover he’d gained as a result of just one of his activities during the two hour journey.
‘Very well, Avon, but everyone and everything else stays here except one of my mutoids.’
Avon shrugged, and let it happen. Once they had departed Korell made a few minor adjust
ments to the equipment in the ship whilst Servalan paced up and down, and her captain stayed well out of the way. Every five minutes the mutoid reported in. Only when the signals stopped and the mutoid missed first one and then a second call-in did the pattern change. Servalan recognised a problem and, as always, turned both on her inferiors and her prisoners. She shouted questions at Avon over the communicator, she bawled at her mutoid – but the silence remained. She threatened Vila and hit Korell about the face, but all to no avail. Vila and Korell had no idea what Avon was up to. As Vila pointed out he could be dead, the mutoid could have gone berserk, a wall might have fallen in...
What was quickly recognised was that even if Servalan did not have a fast new anonymous space ship she did have Orac and Caro, which seemed to make up for the disappointment of losing Avon. Her captain was anxious to go into the base and find Avon, bringing back to his new mistress the glorious prize of the most wanted man in the Galaxy. But Servalan knew both her captain and Avon too well to allow that to happen. If she lost Telon she’d have to rely entirely on the mutoids for the return journey, which was fine except that she was running out of expendable beings.
She took thirty minutes to make her final move, having returned to her own ship with the remaining mutoids, her captain and the two androids, leaving Korell and Vila on the freighter. She thought briefly of killing both where they stood; but recognised that they could act as bait to tempt Avon out, assuming he were not dead. And if he were not dead she wanted him to finish the work on the freighter.
But Avon’s return did not come until five hours after Servalan’s ship had taken off and gone into close orbit. He had heard Vila calling him constantly, pleading, bleating, almost crying to see the man who had earlier that year sought to kill him. Korell, on the other hand, did not say a word. She realised with Avon that the transmissions from the freighter to the mutoid’s transceive disk would be monitored by Servalan. But Vila’s broadcasts gave Avon an extra chance to put the full extent of his plan into operation.
Avon had waited patiently at the edge of the dome for night to fall and for Vila to give up calling. He then made his way back into the freighter where, as expected, he found Korell fully alert on the control deck trying to decipher the work he had been undertaking on the drive system. She responded at once to his finger held to his lips, and watched him curiously as he twice checked the entire room for anything that could be transmitting back to Servalan.
‘There’s about half a day’s work left to get this ship into a condition where it can outrun Servalan,’ Avon announced as soon as he was convinced they were not being overheard. ‘In a couple of hours get Vila up and get him to start crying into the transceive again just as before.’
Korell offered little more than a single word of acknowledgement. She asked no questions and retained her smile. Her blue eyes remained cool, her manner calm. She went back to the computer charts of the third quadrant that seemed to hold a special fascination for her.
Vila did not take the developments so calmly. ‘She’s got Orac, you know,’ he announced walking into the control room. ‘And the key. And Caro.’
‘And she is in stationary orbit waiting to see if you carry on broadcasting on the mutoid channel. If you don’t she is liable to come back down and find out why. If you do she is liable to find herself so sickened by the amount of puerile rubbish that comes from what you laughingly call a brain that she’ll depart as fast as possible for the far side of the Galaxy.’ Avon pointed to the transceive and turned back to the drive control computer.
‘But what about Orac?’ demanded Vila unmoving.
‘Orac,’ explained Avon patiently, ‘is now in the hands of Servalan, and is henceforth a luxury we shall have to learn to do without. Besides, there are more important things in the Galaxy than the toys of Ensor.’
‘And the toy was beginning to act strangely,’ said Korell. ‘The surrender proposal never really made sense.’
‘Maybe Orac was just getting old,’ suggested Vila wistfully. ‘Or maybe it just wanted to be left alone. Telling us to surrender was just an easy way of getting Avon off its back.’
‘Maybe Avon sees MIND at work yet again,’ said Korell.
Avon put down his probe with a heavy sigh and stood up from the crouched position in which he was forced to work. He looked at both Vila and Korell, but had no need to speak. Vila saw the look and turned to the transceive. As Avon had feared the end result went far over the top, but he gambled that Servalan would by now have a mutoid listening on her behalf, and they, having no emotions themselves, were poor judges of the legitimacy of other people’s feelings.
4
‘Does this freighter have a name?’ asked Vila idly, as he watched the monitors in front of his position.
Avon looked up from the charts he was studying. ‘I imagine it must have. Why, do you wish to have a naming ceremony?’
‘No, it’s just that we are being hailed by a non-Federation cruiser, and before I answer I’d like to know who I should say we are...’
‘We are the space freighter Revenge.’
‘Revenge. Against whom?’
‘Against Servalan. Against the President. Against Travis. Against the whole Federation. Against Blake. Final, ultimate revenge, that will never be forgotten.’
Vila stared at Avon in total disbelief. ‘Against Blake?’ he said. ‘Revenge against Blake?’
Korell took time to shower, sleep and generally relax before setting into motion the next development of the situation on board the freighter. At some stage, she knew, she was going to have to try to talk with Avon again. In the prison she had had it all too easy. Avon had seemed convinced that something outside his knowledge was influencing events, and he was prepared to wait to find out what it was. He was also intelligent enough to know that escapes made in the face of ignorance stood less than a tenth of the chance of success of escapes effected on the basis of knowledge. Now things had changed. Avon felt he knew more about what was going on. Clearly he believed, despite Orac’s protestations, that machine-induced neural deviance existed in some form or other, and it was that belief that was driving him.
But what else did he know and, more importantly, what did he think he knew? Korell herself did, of course, know much more about Avon than possibly any other person in the Galaxy. (Or, she told herself wryly, she thought she did.) But Avon’s overriding ability not to communicate, and worse still his ability to communicate irrelevant and misleading bits of information, was something she had not fully bargained for when she had first adopted the role of Avon’s jailer. What in the Universe could possess someone as firmly based in his own personal reality as Avon to start believing in a vague half-legend like MIND?
She put on the flaming scarlet uniform of some unidentified non-Federation planet and buttoned it up to the neck. Her white boots came up to her calves. Dressed, she marched back into the control room.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, taking her seat.
Vila looked up. He had become so used to Avon taking off across the galaxy without a word of explanation, that he was mildly surprised that anyone should even bother to ask.
Avon did not look up. Unlike Korell he had not taken time off to rest, but had instead dedicated himself to continuing the work with Revenge’s navigational computers studying charts, asking occasional questions, and watching intently as data was presented onto the monitor in front of the captain’s position which he had taken as his own.
Finding herself ignored Korell repeated the question.
‘Don’t you know?’ came the sarcastic reply. ‘I thought data prediction was your speciality.’
Korell smiled a smile that would have had Vila grovelling at her feet if there had been room enough in between her chair and the control panels.
‘Then let’s say,’ she replied, ‘that I am just testing out a theory.’
Avon stood up and stretched his back. He had found himself a plain all black outfit which (as with Korell’s clothes) contained
no frills, nothing to reveal to an outsider who or what he was – in marked contrast to Servalan. There was dirt on one sleeve gathered during part of his work inside a microscopic cubby-hole where the quark links on the computer systems controlling the Revenge were situated. He hadn’t bothered to change since.
‘You tell me your theory and I’ll give you marks out of ten for guesswork.’
‘Not for guesswork, Avon. Remember I knew Anna’s apartment number.’
‘One success does not make you a genius at prediction, nor does it make you a welcome guest on this ship.’
‘I may not be welcome Avon, but I am essential, as you will see.’
‘Why don’t you prove it to me?’
‘We’re going to Skat.’
‘Very good,’ admitted Avon. ‘And will you tell your audience how you worked that out?’
‘Or even better,’ suggested Vila, ‘tell me where and what Skat is.’
Korell turned to Vila to answer his question first. ‘Skat is a low-gravity isolated planet circling the star of the same name in the fifth sector, rich in sygnum. This ship is lacking in two things: shielding against plasma bolts and teleport. When we can be hit at any time by any moderately well-armed Federation ship, teleport would seem a luxurious extravagance.’
‘But Orac told us that we needed to go to Ferron in the third sector.’
‘Which is exactly where Servalan would expect us to go. So instead of going to Ferron and using your talents to steal the sygnum we go to Skat.’
The thought struck Vila that the change of plan could just mean he would avoid risking his neck in another madcap theft on behalf of Avon. ‘I presume that Skat contains the stuff we need in abundance – I mean we’re not going to walk into several thousands of the President’s troops or anything like that?’
A broad grin crossed Avon’s face, and he moved across and put his arm around Vila’s shoulders. ‘Vila, I promise you that on Skat there are no guards and sygnum is lying about on the ground free for anyone to take.’