RAISING HELL

or

“Children of Auron—SHUT UP!”

 

by Celeste Hotaling-Lyons

 

(Yet another in a series of ‘D.S.V. Universe’ stories)

 

Chapter One

 

“Oh, what a mangled mess we leave, when first we practice to conceive.”  

—Richard Milhous Shakespeare

 

 

“Enough is enough, Cally,” Avon said in silky, insulting tones; “six days in this kindergarten has to be sufficient for anyone, even someone such as yourself whose maternal instincts have gone rusty with disuse.”  He took the sting out of his words with a slight smile when she shot a dirty look at him.

 

Avon had been staring with some amusement at his right-hand guerrilla fighter as she dangled a small, pudgy child in mid-air, cooing to it.  A dozen other children clutched at her knees, begging and crying that they, too, wanted to be picked up.  The opportunity to view this rather sweet, if uncharacteristic, scene was the only good thing to come out of taking this little R&R on Kaarn, also known as “New Auron”, and he really couldn’t see it was worth the trouble.  The colony had been set up a year ago and was slowly but surely attracting other Auronae adults who had been off planet during the Laughing Plague of ’78, so it wasn’t all screaming children, but it was nearly so.  Despite that, he was comfortable where he sat, a cool drink in hand, even if his deck chair was on a porch overlooking a noisy playground.

 

“Seven days, Avon, we voted on seven days,” Cally answered him back primly, gently putting the gurgling toddler down, where his individuality disappeared among the upturned faces of his sibling group.  “Besides, the rest of us are enjoying ourselves, even if you aren’t.  Dayna and Tarrant seem to enjoy taking the larger children for nature walks; I’d never have guessed Tarrant was once an Eagle Scout....”

 

Avon leaned back, basking in the warm glow of Cally’s disapproval.  He sipped his marguerita, allowing her complaining voice to fade to a comfortable back-drop.  His gaze passed idly over the child-covered landscape, past the respectful gazes of the pre-schoolers—they’d quickly learned that Uncle Avon’s person was persona-non-grata and always kept their distance—past the small troop of second graders hanging head-down from the monkeybars, past the matched set of six toddlers playing in the sandbox.  —eh?  No, they weren’t quite all matched; one little girl was darker-haired and darker-eyed than her playmates.  Interesting. She was tiny, probably cloned, birthed and force-grown to this stage not three weeks ago, yet Avon felt he somehow knew her.  Her hair was a fuzzy butch-cut, but then all the children’s heads resembled those of marine recruits, for obvious sanitary reasons. But those large, liquid eyes of hers tugged at Avon’s memory.  It wasn’t until she’d bashed one of her playmates over the head with his own plastic shovel and knocked over his sandcastle that Avon realized who it was she reminded him of.

 

“GAAAAH!  Servalan!?” he gasped, nearly inhaling his straw and completely tipping over the deck chair.

 

The toddler who’d been bashed stopped in mid-bawl to stare at Avon’s struggles.  “Lookit!”  More than 200 pairs of round eyes turned and stared at Avon, more than 200 pairs of lips parted over pearly white milk teeth, and the innocent but annoying sound of children’s laughter resounded throughout the playground.  It was only to be expected—there were no Saturday morning cartoons on New Auron to jade the children’s senses and they still found the simpler forms of slapstick funny.

 

Cally shooed her charges away and rushed over to disentangle the angry computer tech from the deck chair webbing, stepping nimbly around the spilt marguerita.   She then dragged him into the building before he decided to erase the results of almost a year’s hard work with one or two heat-seeking missiles.

 

“Franton!” Avon yelled, brushing Cally off his arm, “Franton!  I just saw Servalan!”

 

“Servalan!?  Here??  Where?!?”  Vila looked up from his finger painting, his hands covered in fuschia up to the elbows.  He was doing a finger-painting of Zen and wanted to liven up the computer’s boring fascia with some color—a fuschia fascia, in fact.  A small child gravely wiped her green-covered hands on the back of his tunic, unnoticed by the thief.

 

“Do not be ridiculous, Avon,” Cally scoffed, “You could not have seen Servalan, now could you have?”

 

“I know Servalan when I see her and I saw her, even if she only comes up to my knee!”

 

“He is right, you know,” said Franton sheepishly from the top of the stairs.

 

Avon smiled, vindicated, and his two companions gaped at the red-haired technician.

 

“He is right?  How can he be right, Franton?  Surely you would never be stupid enough to purposely replicate that bitch, after what she did to our home world?”

 

Cally was referring to their belief that it was Servalan who had personally caused the destruction of Auron.  In fact, an Auronae pilot with a crippled ship had been rescued by the President’s ship and had accepted her hospitality.  After a lavish dinner, he’d been escorted back to his repaired cruiser and launched.  It wasn’t until he’d engaged his automatic landing program that a pre-programmed message had suddenly flashed on his computer screen—The Joke.  A killer joke, so vicious, so nefarious, so hilarious that the pilot had started to laugh uncontrollably.  After landing, the giggling telepath was carried, twitching feebly, from his cockpit.  He literally died laughing—but not before he telepathed The Joke to his rescuers.  Each of these new victims had, with their dying thoughts, broadcast The Joke to other Auronae telepaths, each of whom told The Joke and expired in kind, until only the very young and the totally humourless were left.  Servalan had cheerfully offered to ‘help’ in exchange for a personal favour:  a clone family, 6 little girls exactly like mommy.  The few Auronae left alive had barely managed to escape with little more than a genetic bank and whatever they could hand-carry onto their small fleet of ships.   Their leader, Franton, had survived the Laughing Plague because she had absolutely no sense of humour whatsoever:  no riddling ability, no pun perception, she even thought a limerick was a citrus-flavoured drink.

 

“Oh, telep on another frequency, Cally,” Franton said.  “You know how limited our gene pool is!  And there were those perfectly good cell scrapings I took from Servalan that got packed accidentally in all the rush, and anyway, physically she was a fine specimen and an interesting
genotype, and, and... very intelligent,” she concluded lamely, searching the rebels’ faces for some understanding and finding none.  “...it is the opinion of our psychologists that if we raise her properly, little Servalan Junior...”

 

“Servalan Junior?!” interrupted Vila, clapping a hand to his forehead in disbelief as he sank into a chair.  It was too bad he’d forgotten about the finger-painting he’d been doing, for a fuschia handprint now adorned his forehead.  “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the cosmos!!!”

 

“Safe?  Back in the...?  I do not understand, why does one teensy little girl make it unsafe to go back into the cosmos?”  Franton was honestly confused.

 

Vila stared at her, then shook his head sadly.  “Gee, you really do have the sense of humour of a mutoid, don’t you?”

 

“Or maybe it wasn’t a particularly amusing joke,” grated Avon.  “Enough of this drivel, Franton.  What are you going to do about the fact that there is a small tyrant, a wolf in lamb’s clothing, out in the yard, no doubt clubbing some innocent baby to insensibility and taking its candy even as we speak?!”

 

“The children are not allowed sweets,” said Franton, missing the point of yet another jibe, “and as for her being a tyrant, well, in case it had escaped your notice, all children are self-centered tyrants—and most of them OUTGROW it!”  With a pointed stare at Avon, the technician about-faced and stalked off.

 

“Whadda we gonna do, Avon?  D’you realize that when she’s thirty, we’ll be, why we’ll be...”  Vila tried to add up the years in his head, “...we’ll be OLD!  She’ll be in her prime, and we’ll be in the rebel rest home, sitting ducks.  She’ll get us and we’ll be too tired to stop her, what with our iron-poor blood and arthritis.”  His active imagination produced a horrid vision of the Gauda Prime-of-Life Rebel Rest Home—a white-haired Avon, an elderly Cally in a lime-green leisure suit, and, worst of all, himself, gnarled fingers clutching a shawl about his shoulders, being used for target practice by a lively young Servalan Junior—striking him momentarily dumb.

 

“What can we do?” said Cally with a shrug.  “We can only hope Franton is correct and it will be a case of nurture over nature.  Perhaps Servalan Junior will put her many talents to good use and help New Auron to survive to the next generation—which would be ironic, really.”  She looked down to find a tiny boy tugging winsomely at her sleeve.  “Hello, little one, and shall I pick ‘oo up?” she said in a light, musical voice, while Avon rolled his eyes in exasperation, but the boy shook his head ‘no.’  //Have to go baffoom// he teleped, dancing on one leg, then the other.  Cally sighed and led the child away.  It was her forty-third trip that day.

 

Vila looked at the too-silent computer technician speculatively.  “You didn’t answer my question, Avon—what are we going to do?”

 

“Firstly, we must make sure there aren’t an even half-dozen Supreme Commanderlettes to deal with....”  Vila paled at Avon’s words, he’d forgotten the Auronae penchant for sextuplets.  “...and then we’ll see what needs to be done.”  And he would comment no more on the subject.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Two

 

“YOU!!  Out of the pool!”  

—The Gene Police

 

Fortunately it turned out that there was only one Servalan clone—apparently, noted Avon cynically, Franton & company were merely stupid, not insane.

 

And so, that night, the two convicted felons entered the Auronae toddler crèche without having to pick a lock or finesse a single computer code.  The best burglar alarms possible were the occupants themselves, who would telep a loud cry of distress if disturbed.  Fortunately for the two reprobates, the children’s slumber had been disturbed quite a bit more than usual of late, due to an incident that had happened several nights ago.  Tarrant had gathered together a gang of children ’round a campfire and told them all some jolly old campfire stories he’d learned as an Eagle Scout.  Since then, the younger children’s sleep had been marred by dreams of a Mr. Eyeball Plucker.  Tarrant had been banned from the nursery, but it was a case of closing the stable door after the horse’s ass escaped.  Every time someone had a nightmare, he or she would telep it to everyone else, and the nursery monitors would sleepily shuffle in and quieten them all.  It had happened so often in the last two nights that the attendants’ edges were softened by lack of sleep and their reaction time was definitely down.  All to the good, thought Vila, as he tiptoed up and down rows and rows of virtually identical children.

 

Naturally, it was Avon who found Servalan Junior first—or was it the other way around?  The computer technician had a strange feeling that he was being stared at and turned slowly, scanning the cradles.  His eyes met those of the tiny Servalan from across the room.  She was up and wide awake, already a bit of a ‘night person’, and was regarding him with an intense stare.  The pudgy hands came up and gestured in a way familiar to every mother in creation—palms up, fingers clutching—and she spoke to Avon in a loud voice.  “Gimmee, gimmee!” she cried in a piercing soprano.  “Gimmeee NOOOOW!”

 

Avon smiled.  “Just like your mother,” he said.

 

* * * * * * *

 

There were plenty of rooms on the castle-sized DSV where one could hide a toddler from sight and sound, even one with the lung power of Servalan Junior.  Vila had found this particular room several months ago.  It was small but rather pleasant, with shifting shapes in pale pastel colours on the soft-lit walls, pink predominating.  Vila had assumed the room was designed for people who needed somewhere to get high, but Avon had, probably more correctly, pegged it as a meditation chamber, which Vila had stated was the “same difference.”  Avon rolled the crib they’d stolen along with the child to the center of the room and Vila followed along behind, clutching a tiny pair of fuzzy bunny slippers to his chest, complaining nervously.

 

“The more I think about this, the more I’m convinced that this was a spectacularly stupid thing to do,” said Vila, “and I may not know anything about child-rearing, Avon, but even I know we can’t leave the kid here all alone.”  He shook a bunny-faced slipper at her until she giggled and reached for it.  “That’s probably what made her turn out so badly the first time, they probably left her alone too much.”

 

“If that’s the case, you probably grew up in solitary confinement,” Avon sniped, then continued before the thief could frame a retort.  “We aren’t going to leave her alone, Vila—you just volunteered to do double-shifts.”

 

“I had already figured that one out myself!  I don’t mind, and do you know why?  It’s worth it,

just to see you take a shift, even if only once in a while—OUCH!” the astonished thief held his

injured hand and looked down at Servalan Junior, who was now teething on her crib.  “She bit me!”

 

“I don’t know why that surprises you,” Avon said with an evil smile.  “You know as well as I do that Servalan’s a man-eater.”

 

“I can’t believe you’re making jokes—we’re kidnappers, Avon!  It doesn’t matter if you don’t do it for money, it’s still kidnapping.  Cally’s gonna kill us for sure—I don’t know why we’re even bothering to hide the kid, Cally will know there’s another Auronae here!  What happens when she finds out?  How are you going to charm her into not turning the ship around and going right back to New Auron… a blow to the temple?”

 

“You let me worry about that, Vila.  I’ll handle Cally when the time comes.”  Actually, Avon hadn’t any idea at all as to what he was going to do with an irate Auronae, maternal instincts aroused, but as a proponent of the axiom, “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it”, he had a  lot of faith in his ability to come up with a solution when backed into a corner.  The tiny Servalan Junior, tired after the day’s adventures, lay down in her crib, thumb in mouth, bunny slipper clutched in her pudgy hand by her cheek, and drifted into an innocent slumber.  “Come along, Vila, she’ll be all right alone for a little, just long enough for us to take our leave of New Auron.”

 

“Uh, if you don’t mind, Avon, I think I’ll stay here....”

 

“Oh, but I do mind.  Come along, we don’t want to do or say anything suspicious.”  Avon grabbed the thief under one arm and dragged him out of the room.  Servalan Junior never noticed.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Three

 

“Whatta cute!  Little plaything!  We wanna make ’im stay up all nite!”  

—Talking Heads

 

Most of the adults of New Auron gathered together to say good-by to the Liberator’s crew.  The Auronae genuinely regretted the crew’s imminent departure, not just because the crew represented free baby-sitting service, but because it was a nice change of pace on the colony planet to have an intelligent, adult conversation about galactic politics, fashion, tele-vids—anything but the usual topics of housework and child-rearing.

 

“Here!  Have a souvenir from New Auron!”  Franton’s assistant thrust an exotic potted plant at a startled Vila, who shrank back.

 

“Uh, that’s all right, we already got one—”  replied the startled thief, who then gasped as Avon elbowed him ungently in the ribs.

 

A noisy leave-taking ensued after that:  Cally hugged Franton, then the two women kept up a barrage of tearful good-byes via alternate telepathic and verbal chatter; Tarrant saluted a small group of tiny admirers who had been impressed by his tales of valour, they returned his salute, then half of them burst into tears; Dayna graciously accepted a painting of herself as Robin Hood from her archery class; “Uncle” Vila nearly disappeared beneath a crowd of first graders determined to wrestle him to the ground.  “It’s nice to finally be in a place where one is appreciated,” he was heard to say as he went down.  Avon stood to one side; if he’d had a wrist chronometer, he would have consulted it pointedly.

 

“Good-bye!  Good-bye!” chorused virtually the entire population of New Auron as the crew of the Liberator teleported out.  An expectant, eerie silence followed, and Franton looked right and left as if to determine what was amiss.  Something felt...wrong.  Unbalanced.  Slowly, groups of children and adults broke apart and went about their business.

 

Franton turned to her assistant. “Get me a count in the nursery...,” she said uneasily, “...it’s—it’s just too quiet....”  Her assistant nodded and went off to take inventory.  It would take him several hours.

 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

 

That night...

 

That night, tucked in a portable bunk next to Servalan Junior’s crib, Vila had a dream—if “dream” was the right word to describe it.  There was a growing feeling of panic and a sense of impending doom somewhere far away, but Vila felt it was coming closer and closer, and that, as usual, it was All His Fault.  The dream was doubly odd because he didn’t feel he was alone—his shipmate’s minds mumbled sleepily around him, the murmur of dreams—except for someone who was doing a crossword puzzle.  It was then the thief realized that he and his shipmates were being entrapped in a sort of psi-net, although who or what had constructed it he could not say.  Distant minds muttered unintelligibly, punctuated by an occasional sharp, inquisitive thought, as yet unaware that they, too, were part of a larger network.  Well, thought Vila, at least this makes a change from Cally getting taken over all by herself, and he mentally ‘sat back’ to watch the fireworks as Cally’s mind reached out and touched her fellow crew members’ minds with joy and wonder, waking them up to the miracle of communal consciousness.  Uh, oh, thought Vila as he sensed the Auronae’s confusion at the extra mind in the net and reached for what she sensed was a fellow Auronae’s thoughts, only to find nothing more there than the strong desire for the taste of chocolate milk.  ...baby?  but, who...? she began, but the thought never had a chance, for at that moment the edge of a forcewave of anger, a great psychic scream, washed over the unprotected and open minds of the crew of the Liberator like the shock wave of an atomic blast.  The simple question was lost in a jumble of pure emotion—outrage, demand and ire.  Franton! thought Cally, recognizing the telepath’s style, Uh, oh....  Franton’s assistant had apparently gotten up enough courage to tell his boss that Servalan Junior was missing.

 

And so there was a great rending between universes as psi power fractured the continuum.  The jagged edges of the sundered universes ground and crushed together, energy roiled and boiled in the dark nucleus created within.

 

Good thing this is happening in a vacuum, thought Vila, or the noise of it would be deafening....

 

Shuttupvila, someone thought, but it didn’t matter who, because SOMETHING WAS HAPPENING.

 

A great, hulking shape; a behemoth slipped through the opening, a squat spaceship, heavy with armour and armaments.  It was Cally’s mind, curious to see and know, who guided them all down and into the ship, but when they caught sight of the sole occupant, she wished she hadn’t thought to look.  Even Avon, who thought he’d seen it all, gasped and recoiled at a creature none had seen the like of before—a bony ridge, like a semi-exposed backbone, hung over its misshapen nose, its swarthy face unshaven beneath; its almost triangular grey teeth clenched on, of all things, a wet stub of cigar; its eyes peered and glittered with an unsettling intelligence.

 

The alien’s muscular form was encased in leather like a Space Rat, but it was infinitely worse, for it held no human feeling of love in its heart, not even for fast machines—it merely used them, often using them right into the ground.  It also used the small, defenseless creatures of the galaxy for its own gain—or just for fun.  It was from the planet Klinz-hai, and it hunted bounty for its
living—it did not care if it was in the ‘wrong’ universe or not.  It lived to hunt and a great NEED had whistled it up.  It was coming for them.  It bristled, unsettled; it looked up from the center of the darkness of hell and steam that was its bridge, eyes roving, here, there, up—OMIGOD, OMIGOD, IT’S LOOKING AT US!  IT KNOWS WE’RE HERE!!  HAIRY ALIENS ARE AFTER US!!! AAAUGH!!!!—

 

The terror of Vila Restal’s mental shriek blew the tenuous hold of the mind-net and the many intelligences that had made it up fell, unprotected, into full and jarring wakefulness at that split second.  They did, however, catch the tail end of a wordless scream of pure id as Servalan Junior reached across time and space to cry out for the woman from whose cells she had been created.  Like called to like, and in that moment Servalan (Senior) knew exactly what had been going on behind her back and was determined to do something about it.  Her intentions were imprinted in the cerebellum of every one of the hapless creatures she had been sharing a dream with only moments before.  Right! she thought with some determination, Sector 17!  We’ll see about that!

 

Uh, oh.... thought the crew of the Liberator.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Four

 

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  

—Sir Isaac Newton, noted gravity-inventor

 

“MA-MEE!  MA-MEE!” screamed the red-faced tot hysterically, reaching for Avon.

 

The entire crew had stumbled onto the flight deck in various stages of disarray, except for Tarrant, who had been standing watch.  He picked himself up off the floor and put one hand to his forehead, wincing.

 

“Oh, great, now Servalan’s after the kid,” moaned Vila, holding the howling baby away from him.  “I never thought she’d be so, so—uh, psychopathic.”

 

“I think you mean ‘psychic’, Vila,” corrected Cally.

 

“He had it right the first time,” said Avon as he took the wailing clone baby from the thief, much to Dayna and Tarrant’s amusement.  She continued her conniption fit at top decibel, clutching Avon’s black silk sleeve in her soggy grip.

 

“What is going on?”  Tarrant, still holding his hand to his forehead as if afraid it would fall open.  “One minute, I’m here at the helm, quietly doing my crosswords, and the next minute—blooey!  And what was that—that thing?”

 

“Hairy aliens after us...Servalan after us...and I just realized, we don’t even have any diapers!  Is this gonna happen every night?” moaned Vila, covering his ears against the noise.

 

“I assure you, that was a very unusual occurrence, caused partly by Servalan Junior’s youthful inability to shield and partly by Franton’s anger and fear,” their resident alien told them.  “And, I might also add, a totally unnecessary occurrence had you left Servalan Junior where she belonged!  You have ruined my reputation on New Auron, helped Servalan pinpoint our location, and let an alien from another plane of existence into our universe!  Vila, I am really angry with you this time!!!” she finished and stared at him, waiting for his explanation.

 

“Well, uh, Cally, “ gulped the thief, his mind racing, “uh, we couldn’t just leave her there, could we?  I mean, we wouldn’t want to leave her with a bunch of strangers, she’s almost like family, and what if she came after us years from now, but if she’s here, she’ll never want to hurt good, old Uncle Vila, or even Aunt Cally, because she’ll be one of us!  And we’ll teach her right from wrong, and, uh, morals and stuff!  And what if that dream-thing had happened on New Auron, eh, Cally?  What if she’d told Servalan where New Auron was, it could have happened!  It could have!  Oh, nuts.  It wasn’t my fault, it was Avon’s fault, it was all Avon’s fault!!!”  The thief, shattered by the unholy noise and Cally’s stare, sank into one of the comfy couches on the flight deck.  His shaking hand dipped behind a pillow and came out with a bottle of Old White Stag Blended Kentucky Bourbon whiskey.

 

All eyes turned to Avon.  He was looking distastefully at Servalan Junior who, mid-wail, caught her breath in a hiccup.  This was something new and different for her and she became interested in the phenomenon.  She stopped crying and hiccuped again, dazedly, then wearily leaned her tear-streaked face into the obviously uncomfortable Avon’s neck.  Cally was unmoved.

 

“Of course it is Avon’s fault—is it not always?  Avon?”

 

Avon looked up, for once in his life nonplused, but was saved from answering by Orac.

 

*I require your attention!* piped the fussy computer, *I have been asked to alert whatever pathetic fool is stuck with watch whenever a message from the President of the Federation directly concerning this ship is broadcast to her fleet.  As you are all present and I do not wish to take up minuscule, but none-the-less valuable, space on my tariel cells with a recording of this event, I will broadcast the message directly.*

 

All eyes turned to Zen’s viewscreen as it came on line, and President Servalan, clad in a lacy negligee, a robe hastily thrown over her shoulders, came into view in mid-sentence.  Despite the fact that she wore no makeup, she still looked rather desirable; in fact, she looked rather young.  Her honeyed tones filled the flight deck.

 

“...the reward will be ten thousand credits and advancement two steps in rank.  I repeat, Blake’s terrorists have taken captive a young child whose importance to the Federation cannot be overstated.  You will cease pursuing Liberator with capture or destruction in mind and begin the pursuit and retrieval, unharmed, of this child.  Start the search in Sector 17, radiating in a search pattern from there.  In addition to the generous reward previously stated, you will also have your President’s eternal gratitude....”  she smiled a predator’s smile and signed off.

 

All eyes turned from the viewscreen, back to Avon.  He sighed, pulling himself together, and turned to face them all.

 

“This is a very dangerous child,” said Avon with all the portentous dignity he could muster.  He held the soggy child as if she were a priceless treasure.  “And now, doubly dangerous.  We must maintain some sort of control over how she is brought up.  We must protect New Auron—and protect her,”  he added virtuously.  Vila goggled at Avon, dumbstruck by his ability to lie at short notice, but Cally’s features softened almost imperceptibly.

 

“You know, this is rather like that time-paradox you always read about in sci-fi stories,” said Tarrant.  “The one where if you could go back in time and kill, oh, say, Servalan when she was an innocent baby, would you do it?  It would protect millions of innocent people from her predations, but is it right to change time, to warp it?”

 

“If you ever find yourself time-traveling, Tarrant, you leave baby Servalan alone, because I’m going to have such fun killing her as an adult,” said Dayna, taking Servalan Junior away from Avon.  The infant instantly put her thumb in her mouth and her cheek against Dayna’s silk-clad shoulder, falling asleep.

 

“Ah!  Yet isn’t this Servalan, in a sense?” began Tarrant, playing devil’s advocate, but Cally cut him off.

 

“This is not Servalan—when will you humans get that through your thick skulls?!  This is an innocent Auronae child!!!”

 

“Geez bah,” murmured the tot into Dayna’s shoulder, drooling.

 

“Shhhh, quiet, you’ll waken the innocent Auronae child,” said Avon evilly.  He was already plotting the innocent Auronae child’s disposal and was now more determined than ever to set his plan into motion as soon as possible.  When the flight deck was once again clear, he would consult with Orac for... a little job.  In the meantime.... “All right.  We must be seen elsewhere, as we are currently too close to New Auron for comfort’s sake.  Tarrant, if you would?”

 

“That’s why I get the big money,” muttered Tarrant as he manned the helm and took them as far out of the sector as possible, as quickly as possible.

 

Vila smiled and patted the tiny arm wound around the weapons expert’s neck.  He was rather pleased—they were obviously going to have to keep the baby.  Even Avon couldn’t find an excuse to get rid of her after what he’d said, and Vila thought she’d be an engaging diversion.  And now that the entire crew was aware of her presence, the thief would be off the hook for most of the annoying day-to-day upkeep a baby required.  Better still, her presence on Liberator meant that running headlong into danger would be off the crew’s list of Things To Do Today from here on in.

 

“Could be worse,” he whispered to Servalan Junior.

 

He had totally forgotten about the Klingon warrior.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Five

 

“We are poor little lambs who have lost our way, baaa, baaa, baaaaaaa!”  

—Amelia Earhart

 

It could not be truer of any other fannish literature but Blake’s 7 that it never rains but it pours.  It was but a few hours after the previously described, nerve-shattering events that another element of suspense was thrown into the mix.  Zen’s sensors had detected a tiny, motionless ship in their flight path, which Avon had instructed Tarrant to give a wide berth, when an audio message came over Zen’s panels.

 

“Hailing frequencies!  Hailing frequencies open!”   Dayna’s eyes narrowed in recognition, but she kept silent as Tarrant answered the query.

 

“This is Captain Tarrant of, uh, the battlestar Galactica.  Identify yourselves, please!”

 

“This is the planethopper Plot Device,” came the answer back, “and we, as fellow rebels, request any and all aid that you can manage...which should be pretty considerable, as I’d know that geeky-looking ship anywhere, and that’s the Liberator!”

 

“Time to go,” muttered Vila.  Avon glanced at Tarrant, who shrugged.

 

“Oh, come on, guys!” said the voice, divining their uneasiness from their silence.  “We’re rebs, honest!  You gotta help us!  We were trying to get to LansingWorld and ran out of fuel to feed the drive, and our engineering software just told us it’s time to panic!”

 

“They know of LansingWorld....” said Cally.  LansingWorld was one of the best-kept secrets in the entire rebel network, an independent world far outside of Federation influence that boasted many of the benefits of an Earth-influenced culture.  The rates for convention space and hotel rooms couldn’t be beat, either.

 

“I must agree with Cally.  We must help them,” said Dayna at this point.  “They’re kind of friends of mine.”

 

Avon’s eyebrows went up at this, but he turned to the assembled crew.  “Very well, let us lend a helping hand to these ‘kind of’ friends of Dayna’s.  Cally and Dayna—bring a couple of teleport bracelets with you.  I suggest you teleport over with guns drawn.”

 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

 

“It’s a bit of a tight fit over there,” said Vila at the teleport console; “sensors indicate very dense walls with a network of pathways running through it, like a maze!  Ready?—teleporting now.”

 

The women’s perception of reality popped and shifted (the usual sensation of a normal teleport), and when they were themselves again, they did, indeed, find themselves in a maze.  The walls of the maze were constructed of stacked boxes.  Two voices argued on the other side of the ‘wall’.

 

“I’m gonna throw your complete set of Hanna Barbera Collected  into ‘Mr. Fusion’ if you don’t listen to me!” shrieked one voice.  “Lemmee alone,” the other voice growled back, “I’m busy.  I’m doing a cross-universe story where Elroy Jetson meets Auggie Doggy—and they both have the same voice!  Isn’t that a riot?”

 

“Hilarious,” said Dayna, stepping out from behind the box.  “If this is the crap that wins the Flight of Fan-C awards at ‘Fanati-Con’ every year, I’ve got to get back into my writing!”

 

“Dayna!” chorused the two women who sat at the navigator’s and communication’s positions on the tiny bridge in astonishment.

 

“And I am Cally,” said the alien holstering her gun as Dayna had done.  “If you are Dayna’s friends, you are my friends.”

 

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far....” began Dayna, but one of the women interupted her by standing and putting out her hand, saying, “Hi!  I’m Hell’n Buttafuoco and this is my sister, Noisia!”  Cally gravely shook the hand and smiled at them both.

 

Hell’n was the larger of the two sisters; a big, beefy blonde with pale, shocking blue eyes.  Perhaps it was the contrast with the red rims (from reading contribs far into the night, thought Dayna) that made the blue so shocking.  Hell’n still had the glazed-over gaze of the true fannish editor.  The white, short sleeved shirt she wore under her casual denim duster proclaimed ‘Zine Editors Eat Their Young’ across its generous bodice.  Dayna saw she still wore the five-pointed
gold star on her lapel that Dayna had once coveted—the Adric Award for best Dr. Who fanzine.  Her father had given her a gold charm to help her get over the hurt of having lost the award to her keenest competiton.  She’d worn it on a chain around her neck since that day.

 

Dayna then regarded the younger of the two sisters, Noisia, ‘Noisy’ for short.  She, too, was just as Dayna remembered her.  Living perpetually in her sister’s shadow, she was rail-thin, a skinny wreck of a woman, still wearing that damned poncho and faded jeans she’d been wearing the last time Dayna had seen her.  Her ‘I ‘heart’ Elroy Jetson’ tee-shirt was grubby with paint spatters and ink stains.  Dayna remembered her as the one who always had to unload the boxes of fanzines from the ’hopper while Hell’n sat, guarding the luggage in the con hotel lobby, complaining of this pain or that.  Noisia stared back.  “Where’s Blake?” she asked, craning her neck to peer around her old friend.

 

“I missed you, too,” said Dayna.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Six

 

“FANDOM—the galaxy’s most sophisticated and advanced system for just hanging around.”  

—The ORBIT Con Com

 

“So that’s the story, Avon,” said the weapons expert, replacing her Liberator handgun in its slot on the flightdeck wall.  “They’re not Federation.  They were telling the truth; they ran out of fuel to feed their pathetic little ‘Mr. Fusion’ drive and they’re rebels, of a sort.  I mean, OK, they don’t lob hand grenades, but they write a few stories and sell a few zines, sneaking a few rebellious ideas into the stories.  As ‘fans’, they carry information from planet to planet, generally beneath the notice of the Federation, dispersing it throughout a network of fans, called ‘fandom’.  Mostly they take the dramatic and comedic vidicasts the Federation shovels wholesale into the brains of the average televid-viewer and rewrite them, putting new ideas into them, questioning them.  Makes people think about what they’re viewing and want a say in it.”

 

Avon’s eyes narrowed.  “You know an awful lot about these two, Dayna; how is that?  I was given to understand that Sarran was an almost uninhabited planet and that you’d been there since you were a baby.”

 

“I know them from when I was involved in fandom,” said Dayna.  “I used to put out a zine called Five Hundred Fifth Season when I was a kid.  It was a ‘zine devoted to the 100th Doctor Who.”

 

“Sounds very nice,” said Cally (everyone knew about Doctor Who in the 26th century, even aliens.)

 

“It was nice, and fun, too, for a while.  Then I had to...to give it up....”  Dayna sat down almost wearily on one of the comfy couches set to the fore of the flightdeck and passed a shaking hand over her suddenly sweaty brow.  It reminded Vila of the one-and-only Alcoholics Anonymous meeting he’d attended.  A rather interesting life history usually followed gestures of this sort.

 

“Go on,” said Avon.

 

“I—I had to give it up in the end.  When you get too involved in fandom—it changes you.  I can’t explain it, it just makes you hard and cold and cruel.  I was doing Fanati-Con that last time—my last con—I was in charge of the art show.  I found myself... blackmailing artists.”  Dayna shuddered at the memory, and began to speak very quickly, as if to get the confession over and done with.  “I told them if they didn’t do an illo for my ‘zine, I wouldn’t give them space to hang their artwork so they couldn’t make any money... then, I started the art auction a half-hour before it was supposed to start so that all my friends could get the good pieces really cheaply.  I don’t think I was quite sane at the time.  It’s the power of being a BNF, a Big Name Fan, you see, and the arrogance that comes with it.  It wasn’t until the fans all banded together and burned a hotel pillow in effigy of me that I came to my senses.”

 

“Wow.  What did you do then?” asked Vila.

 

“Why, I gafiated, of course.  Got away from it all!  I gave away all two thousand of my Doctor Who tapes and sixty-eight boxes of ‘zines and we moved to Sarran, a planet without cable.  I learned the way of the bow and the lance.  Believe me, bull’s-eyeing primitives from my T-16 back home is a heckuva lot more civilized than the subtler forms of fannish politics.  And besides...” suddenly Dayna looked angry, replacing her look of humiliation, “...I did some research.  I found out that in 700 years of Doctor Who TV shows, movies, 3-Ds, and televids; they never had a black companion!  I mean, perhaps I’m being oversensitive, but, gee—never?”

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Seven

 

“We’re tiny, we’re toony, we’re all a little loony, and in this cartoony we’re invading your TV!”  

—Babs and Buster Bunny (no relation)

 

Servalan sat in the vast white plushness of her office, unsettled, upset and frustrated, and an unsettled, upset, frustrated President of the Federation is not a pleasant thing to be around.  That was why there were none of the usual handsome young assistants flitting in and out of her office.  Servalan didn’t particularly notice; she was far too busy harassing the admiral of her third galactic fleet over the telecom.

 

“...no, I don’t know what the child is wearing... no, I can’t give you a picture, my mother has all my baby pictures and she’s been incognito on SpigadoroWorld since she had dad murder—uh, since she divorced dad, not that that’s any of your business!  How old?  Well, you know, small childish-sized.  She likes chocolate milk... no, I can’t be more helpful!  Because I’ve never seen her, that’s why!  What do you mean, of course she exists!  ...oh, forget it.  No!  Don’t forget looking for her, I expect you to look for her and find her, or you’ll find yourself admiral of the Roto-Rooter brigade on Backwoods III!  Signing off!”

 

She slammed her hand down on the cut-off button rather harder than she’d meant to, chipping a nail.  It was then that she noticed the large, fearsome-looking being looming over her desk.

 

“What are you supposed to be, a rock star?” she snapped, taking in the dirty leather and black hipboots, not to mention the formidable weaponry he carried.  As long as none of it was actually pointing at her, she would try to bluff the creature.

 

“I have given myself the name Kruggs.  I hunt bounty for my living,” began the creature in an oddly mild voice that made Servalan blink in surprise, “and it seems to me that a child could be considered a thing of value in any universe.  By some.”

 

“A child!” said Servalan.  “Yes!  Tell me more!”

 

He ignored her.  His eyes passed over the wintry office furnishings, following the black dot of a fly that had somehow, unaccountably, gotten past the pest control programming and now buzzed in hairpin turns through the office.  “Life is hard on the small things, the weak things,” the Klingon mused.  “They can only hope for the best.  Hope that they are valuable to the powerful.  To the rich.  Why, I, myself, as an infant brought 25,000 credits to my clan from the consortium that ran the gladiatorial arena.  It cost me three times that sum to buy my own freedom twenty years later.  But a child can be valuable in other ways.  To the childless... to a parent... to... one who hunts the valuable... and his clients.”  Suddenly, his hand snaked out—a blur of motion, it snatched the joy-riding insect out of the air.  Servalan gasped despite herself, then grew angry.

 

“What the hell is this supposed to be?  Zen and the Art of Intimidation?!”  Her eyes narrowed knowingly, and she smiled.  “You have her, don’t you?  You took her or bought her from those reprobates, didn’t you!  But you are in an untenable situation now, my friend.  You are trapped.  I suggest you hand the child over to me now, for then I might let you live.”

 

“25,000 credits is a good sum.  It has sentimental value to me,” said the bounty hunter.  He opened his closed fist, and the fly buzzed speedily away.  “Remember that.  25,000 credits.  Plus reasonable expenses, of course.”

 

“Right.  That’s it,” Servalan turned to her viewer and punched up her personal guard.  “I want a squad in here, pronto, there’s this idiot here who....”  She trailed off as she looked up and around the large, white, and now exceedingly empty office.  Kruggs had gone as he had come, in utter silence.  “Madame President!  Madame President!” blared the telecom.

 

“Nevermind,” she told it.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Eight

 

“Consider yerself at home!  Consider yerself one of the family!  We’ve taken to you so strong, it’s clear we’re going to get along!”

—Fagin’s gang to Oliver

 

Hell’n and Noisy were disappointed that Blake had long since departed the Liberator, as they were fans of his, as well as of such diverse fandoms as ancient Hanna Barbera cartoons, Dynasty: The Second Millenium, The SandDraggers (a show about undercover Federation agents masquerading as beach bums), and, of course, Doctor Who.  Vila was actually about to purchase one of their used Dynasty ‘zines, its cover featuring his favourite actress, Sula Chesku, but a short, sharp stare from Avon stopped him.  He did, however, purchase a ‘zine entitled Rabble Rousers; it featured the exploits of various famous rebel bands from Robin Hood’s time to modern day, and there was even a story about that famous rebel crew, ‘Blake’s 7’, in it.  Vila promised Tarrant and Dayna that they could have it later, then disappeared in search of a quiet spot to read his ‘zine.

 

Tarrant looked over the sisters’ “Mr. Fusion” drive and determined that it was not merely a lack of fuel that had caused the good ship Plot Device to come to a jarring halt, but that the drive was well and truly broken.  The crews of the Plot Device and Liberator (sans Vila) convened on the spacious flightdeck of the Liberator to discuss their next move.

 

“It’s a mess,” said the pilot, wiping his graphite-smudged fingers on the mechanic’s apron round his waist.  “It didn’t get into that condition overnight.  It wasn’t a great drive to begin with.  When was the last time you ran a systems check?”

 

“Systems check?   Were we supposed to run a systems check?  Isn’t that what the engineering software is for?” said Hell’n innocently, and her sister nodded.

 

Tarrant snorted in disgust.

 

“Is the ship solid enough to be towed to LansingWorld, Tarrant?” asked Avon.

 

“Oh, it’s plenty solid... it’s a colony-family planethopper; they were made to withstand anything, including the abject stupidity of their owners.  She’s a bit on the high-mass side for her outer dimensions, but she’ll get you anywhere and back, provided you don’t mind taking your time.  She should drag fine if we don’t go over Standard by 5.”

 

“Good.”  Avon turned to the two sisters.  “Liberator will take your vessel in tow and convey it and you to the planet LansingWorld.  Dayna, show them to a room and acquaint them with whatever amenities they require until such time as they disembark.”  He turned, dismissing them with an elegant gesture.

 

Hell’n’s response to Avon’s orders surprised the crew of the Liberator, except for Dayna, who’d been expecting something of the sort.

 

“Excuse me?” said the fannish editor, pushing her face aggressively into Avon’s.  “You’re just gonna up and leave us on LansingWorld’s doorstep?  Then a fine fare-thee-well and that’s it?  Excuse me?  Unless I’m very much mistaken, I believe Cally joined up with the Liberator crew when she was a rebel-in-distress?  And Dayna wasn’t even really a rebel, but you let her become a member of the crew?!  And Tarrant was just a cute guy looking for a place to hang his spacesuit!  How come they get to be crew and we don’t?  How come you aren’t even asking us?  And you need two more people to make up ‘7’ anyway!” she wailed, and Noisia nodded in agreement.

 

“Stop it, Hell’n, you’re embarrassing me!” Dayna said, shaking her head in disbelief.  She tried to pull the irate woman off the flightdeck, but Hell’n was too solid an object to move.

 

“Are you mad?” said Avon almost conversationally.  “Crew?  You two?  I think not.  I already have enough self-centered, childish appendages to deal with, and they, unlike yourself, have profitable talents I can exploit.”  Tarrant looked as if he wanted to protest, then a puzzled look crossed his face as he tried to divine whether it was he or Vila or both who had just been insulted.

 

The fannish editor tried another tact.  “How can you do this to us?  You’re literally turning us out into the void of the cold, cruel universe!  And I suppose it doesn’t matter to you that my health is not what it should be?”

 

“Oh, don’t start that again!  You’re perfectly fine, you idiot!” said Dayna.  Hell’n had been crying ‘sick’ since before Dayna had met her.

 

“I’ll have you know my doctor is very worried about me,” the healthy-looking blonde huffed.  “I happen to have a terrible disease called Hypochondria.  These pills were given to me by my doctor, and they’re a very powerful drug.  They’re called placebos.”  She pulled a small bottle of pink pills from her pants pocket and brandished it triumphantly.

 

“If you are unhealthy, then this is the worse possible place for you; our lives can be hard,” Cally said kindly.  She placed a hand on Hell’n’s shoulder, who shrugged it off with some irritation.

 

“You need us!  We can write sentiment-stirring prose!  We publish several of the most popular ’zines in fandom!  The only reason people know about you is because people like us spread the word!  It’s not fair!  Why don’t you want us?  Why can’t we be part of it all!?” the irate woman bellowed at Avon.

 

“Ladies—if I might use that term loosely—ladies, know your place.  We are not an interstellar hand-holding society.  We do not need a cheer-leading section.  We do not need a twosome of sorority girls to write good PR for us.  You are a pair of capable—well, nearly capable—adult human beings who will just have to make your own way in the universe, such as it is.  You will be fine, and if you are not, it is simply none of our business.”

 

“You bastard!” cried Hell’n.  “See if I ever write another story about you ever, ever again!”  She turned and stalked off the flight deck.

 

“And I’ll never draw you again, see if I do!” said her sister, following behind her.  Dayna anxiously brought up the rear, shrugging helplessly at her shipmates before she went.

 

“Little do they know of the kindness you have done them,” said Cally to the brooding computer tech.

 

“Kindness!  I assure you, no particular ‘kindness’ was meant, unless it was for myself.  They are as useless a duo as I can imagine, and would probably have gotten us killed within a fortnight!  I assume you’ll be stealing enough from the strongroom behind my back to finance a new drive for them?”

 

“You assume correctly.”

 

“Nothing fancy, Cally, do you hear me?  If it’s too complicated, they’ll only break it.”

 

Cally smiled and left the flight deck.

 

Avon took his place at his station, then glanced sharply over at Tarrant, who had been uncharacteristically silent.

 

“You’ve been uncharacteristically silent, Tarrant.  Take that ship in tow and plot a course for LansingWorld.  We’ll get rid of the excess baggage and pick up supplies in one planet-fall.”

 

“Of necessity, the Plot Device is already in our tractor beam.  I didn’t want it drifting into the Liberator.  Course plotted and set.  If you want my opinion, and I know you don’t, they’re as useless as Vila is 98% of the time.  You’re doing the right thing.”

 

“Your approval makes it all worthwhile.  Mind we don’t shake that ship of theirs apart.  We’d have a devil of a time getting rid of them then.”

 

“LansingWorld it is, at a gentle Standard by four,” said Tarrant.  “And not a moment too soon...” he added, muttering under his breath.

 

Not a moment too soon, indeed, for the crew of the Liberator was running out of clean dishtowels and had quickly discovered an urgent need for disposable diapers as well as for the baby-sized clothing the Liberator’s fabricators refused to manufacture.  Besides, LansingWorld, with its malls, cinemas, bars, and restaurants, would be an enjoyable diversion for the entire crew as well as a good place to find the needed items and dispose of unwanted house guests...three unwanted house guests, in Avon’s opinion.

 

* * * * * * *

 

“Of course I’m coming along!” said Vila to Cally.  “For once in our misbegotten careers, going down to a planet won’t be fraught with danger!  Should be rather pleasant.”

 

“And you, as well, Avon?” asked Cally, surprised.  She shifted Servalan Junior to her other arm and hefted a black leather haversack full of bottles, hard pretzels, a fresh makeshift dishtowel/diaper, and other baby-oriented items over her shoulder, ready to teleport down.

 

“Certainly,” Avon said, the picture of innocence, “and why not?”  Cally immediately handed the heavy haversack to him, and he accepted it with grace.  After all, it matched his outfit.

 

“Feeling domestic, are you, Avon?” said Vila, teasing his favourite target.  He threw an arm around Cally’s shoulders, encircling both her and the child.  “Why, we’re the very picture of a proud little family.  Mister-and-Missus with baby, and the pathetic spinster uncle tagging along behind... that’s you, Avon, in case you didn’t get it.  It’s too bad we couldn’t find a pram in the ship’s stores.  I don’t think they had kids on SpaceWorld; must of grown ’em from a seed like the Auronae, only even quicker.”

 

Avon ignored him.  “We’ll rent a city-flitter in the New Lansing Capitol spaceport after teleporting down, and drive into Holiday City.  It’s a crowded world, and probably not a good idea to be seen teleporting back and forth with our purchases.”

 

Tarrant manned the teleport, willing to put off his turn for R&R if it meant teleporting down with Dayna later.  The sisters asked to be put down in the middle of Holiday City, pointedly ignoring Avon as they did so.  They’d been heading for a convention, Fanati-Con 40, to be held in the city’s largest hotel, and wanted to make arrangements for the transfer of goods from the Plot Device.  They went first; Avon, Cally and Vila soon followed.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Nine

 

“I’m a little zygote, round and placid!  Here’s my mitochondria, here’s my deoxyribonucleic acid!”  

—from Barney the Dinosaur’s Least-Loved Bedtime Songs

 

“I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with the letter ‘B’!” cried Vila, and Servalan Junior laughed and waved her hands.  They sat in the back seat of the rented city-flitter, peering out the window at the neon lights of crowded Callavechi Drive, Holiday City’s main street.  “...don’t worry, Avon, it isn’t ‘Blake’.”

 

“I am going to be sick,” said Avon from his place in the front passenger seat.  “The child cannot even speak, what makes you think she can spell?”

 

“I’m just having a game, Avon, didn’t they let you have a game when you were a tot?  Oh, sorry, I’d forgotten, you never were a tot, like the SpaceWorlders.  The ‘B’ stands for Boot’s Chemists, one of the better drugstore chains in the galaxy.  Let’s stop and get some disposable didies, and I’ll pick you up something for your sick stomach, shall I?”

 

Cally, in the driver’s seat for once, pulled the flitter into the store’s parking lot.  “Shall we?” she echoed, loosing her seatbelt.

 

Avon, who had been pouting a moment before, suddenly smiled when he spied, with his little eye, something beginning with the letter ‘D’ directly across Callavechi Drive.  It was a Denny’s Ice Cream Emporium.  In fact, it was the very Denny’s at which Avon had contrived a meeting with a potential solution to his ‘little’ problem.  And to think, he’d been worried about how he was going to ditch his crewmates quickly enough to be on time.  “Well.  I’ve had enough of this Hallmark card sentiment for one day.  Cally, Vila—I suppose I can trust you to avoid getting into trouble for the next few hours without me?

 

“Oh, I would never think of getting into trouble without you, Avon,” said the Auronae warrior with a completely straight face.

 

After a quick double-take, Avon assured his two fellow crewmembers that, should they need him, he could be reached via the teleport bracelet at the Denny’s across the road.  His love of fine ice cream well-known, neither Vila nor Cally were suspicious when he took his leave of them.

 

“Cally, you and the little tax deduction stay here—I’ll be just a tick.  Then we can go to the We ‘B’ Toys Company and pick up some stuffed animals!” enthused Vila.

 

“...for you or for the baby?” thought Cally as she watched him disappear into the glass-fronted store, a jaunty bounce to his step.  She was impressed with the thief’s unexpected child-rearing abilities.  He seemed such a child himself, yet despite his complaints he had, in fact, made himself the baby’s main caretaker.  It was going to break his heart when she eventually made her peace with the irate Franton and they had to return the child to New Auron.  But best let Franton calm down a bit before then.  Perhaps after a time, Vila would tire of his new-found interest as he seemed to do with all his hobbies except safe-cracking and drinking.  She spun her seat around to regard little Servalan Junior, who teethed on the tiny teleport bracelet encircling her chubby wrist.

 

“And who have we here?” began Cally in a voice two octaves higher than her usual speaking voice, “...is it a pretty girl?  Shall Aunty Cally tell the pretty girl a story?  Yessums, she shall!  Once upon a millennium, there was a mean old god named ‘Thaarn’ and he was such a wicked, mean old god that the other gods were ever so cross with him....”

 

Servalan Junior gummed her teleport bracelet and stared at Cally with round eyes, fascinated.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Vila wandered up and down the countless aisles of the store, humming a tune to himself.  It had been such a long time since he’d done anything this normal that he was actually having fun, filling a wire basket with useless items to irk his shipmates:  wrinkle cream for Avon, a perm-relaxer for Tarrant, a ‘thigh-master’ for Dayna.  His other arm clutched a family-sized box of Huggles brand Super-Drinker Disposable Didies.

 

What he did not realize was that he was being watched closely.

 

He was contemplating whether or not to buy a pair of teflon-coated tongs for Cally (she didn’t have an outdoor grill, but she might get one, one day) when he heard the noise a professional thief-cum-rebel fears most—the sound of a laserpistol being switched on and warmed up....

click!...hummmmmmm....

 

* * * * * * *

 

Avon regarded the couple sitting across the round formica table from him, harbouring only the slightest doubt that perhaps he was not doing the Right Thing.  The doubt died a horrible death in the empty wasteland that was Avon’s conscience, and he flashed one of his rare encouraging smiles at the dubious duo.  They smiled back at him uncertainly—a lanky, blue-eyed man with wild hair and a sad expression and a petite brunette with a sprinkling of freckles over her sun-burnt nose—then shared a nervous look between them.  (Hmmmm... he really had to do some work on that smile of his; fewer and fewer people were being taken in by it.)  The two actually seemed normal enough, but according to the information Avon had obtained from Orac, they were the founders of the Games Of The Deity movement, also known as the G.O.D.  Ed Smythe-Wraggs, an ex-Federation officer, and Hi Wraggs, an ex-rebel who had run with Avalon, plus about 2,000 other lunatic members of the movement were planning an epic retreat from the Milky Way galaxy to join their Lord And Fellow Playmate in the Greater Magellanic Cloud.  They were potential adoptive parents for little Servalan Junior.

 

“Please, tell me about yourselves,” began Avon, “...for instance, when are you leaving this galaxy and what accommodations have you made to do so?”  He dug into his Double-Chocolate Crunch ice cream sundae, indicating that the Wraggs were free to begin speaking.

 

“As you know, Mr. Avon, we’re from the Arid Zone, Dome A on the planet Earth,” began Hi, putting his arm around his wife who delicately sipped a vanilla shake.  “I was working for the rebellion, but I mustn’t have been very good at it, because I was always finding myself getting grabbed up in one of them periodic sweeps the Federation is always making in the domes.  So there I’d be, carted off to the local holding area, due for yet another brain-wash.  That was where I met the prettiest little desert blossom that ever worked a mind-sifter, my Ed here.”  His moon-calf gaze fell longingly on his spouse.

 

“It’s short for ‘Eduweena’,” she explained to Avon.

 

“It was love at first sight,” Hi continued fondly, “I proposed that first time I saw her.  I also proposed the third and fourth times I saw her, because the mind-sifter kinda mind-wiped me out a couple of times.”

 

Ed picked up their tale.  “I got Hi out of the Rebellion and into a good job at Astro Suppressants, Ltd.  They’re the folks who make Aerosol Quaaludes for use in the Delta domes air-conditioning systems.’

 

“A fine company,” said Avon sarcastically.

 

“Oh, yes,” agreed Hi.  “‘Tones you down, doesn’t tire you out’ was our motto.  But, you see, for a man like me, a job is pretty much the same as being put through a mind-wipe... the only difference is the paycheck at the end of the week.  I found myself idly fingering household cleansers, wondering if you put them all together, could they be used as an explosive?”

 

“I thought that what we needed was to be a threesome,” said Ed.  “A child would have given Hi a sense of responsibility... someone to s-s-stay on the straight and n-n-n-narrow for....”  Red-faced, she began to sob into her milkshake.

 

“But her womb was a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase,” intoned Hi solemnly.  “And no one would allow a known rebel to adopt a baby, even if the other parent was a Federation officer.

 

Avon stared at the two.  Well, he supposed he should have expected something like this.  He should have known there would be tears and recriminations to deal with somewhere along the line.  He just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.

 

“The Greater Magellanic Cloud?” he prompted  (I mean, that was the point, wasn’t it? he thought to himself.)

 

“Games Of The Deity!” cried Hi joyously. 

 

“Amen!” seconded Ed.

 

“Let us tell you about it, friend,” they said in unison.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Without making any sudden moves, a terrified Vila Restal turned his head slowly to regard his captor.  The hair on the back of his neck prickling and a sickly smile plastered on his face, he found himself staring down the barrel of one of the biggest laser handpistols it had ever been his misfortune to be on the wrong side of.  The pistol was clasped double-handed, in the macho-bullshit stance seen in every action movie since the genre was invented, but the face behind the wicked-looking gun, its eye fixed on Vila with a terrifying gaze, was not that of a hardened law officer.  It was a kid.  A doofy looking kid, with braces on his gritted teeth, wearing a pale purple smock with the word “Boots” embroidered over the nametag on his pocket.  The name on the tag was “Avery Dennison.”  Vila was somewhat surprised to note that the eye fixed on him was the kid’s only eye—the other was covered by a black Travis-like eyepatch.  It lent an otherwise foolish-looking, acne-pocked juvenile a dangerous air, if the gun didn’t do that already.

 

“Freeze!” shouted the kid.

 

“I didn’t move!  Did I move?  Did you see me move?!” Vila shouted back.  There was no way he could reach his teleport bracelet with one arm around the bulky box of diapers, the wire basket heavy on his other outstretched arm.

 

“Don’t you move now, y’hear,” repeated the kid unnecessarily.  “I been watching you since you came in here.  The others think I’m crazy, but you’re Vila ‘The Toilet-Snake’ Restal, ain’t you?”

 

Vila’s violent recoil confirmed the stockboy/cashier-jockey’s suspicions, though to the casual on-looker it would have been difficult to tell if the Delta’s reaction was to his being ID’d, to the statement “The others think I’m crazy”, or to being pegged as ‘The Toilet-Snake.’

 

“Shhhh!  Shhhh!” hissed the thief, his eyes darting back and forth in panic to see who might have heard.  “Do you mind???  D’you know how long it took me to ditch that alias?  Jeez, you hide one lousy diamond necklace down a lavatory and you’re cursed for life.  Where did you hear that name anyway, uh,” he squinted to read the kid’s pocket, “...uh, Avery, old son?”

 

What Vila did not know was that his captor had been a card-carrying member of the Interstellar Laserrifle Association since he was a nine-year-old child, seven years ago.  The very day he’d joined up, he’d accidently shot his left eye out with his Red Ripley ‘No Bugs’ BB gun while shooting at birds out back behind his parents’ trailer park.  His remaining eye was easily sharp enough to see the similarities between the slightly balding but still youthful thief and his very first Wanted poster.  Every spare inch of the Boot’s employee lounge had been covered in I.L.A. Wanted posters by the would-be security guard.

 

“Never you mind that, dude!  I want you to walk, real quiet-like, to the cheap party toy section in Aisle 23.  There’s a polypropylene jump-rope I want to inter-duce your wrists and ankles to....”

 

* * * * * * *

 

“I had a dream,” said Hi with a building fervor to the perplexed computer tech.  “I was in a vast, radiant place.  Many souls crowded ’round me, shuffling aimlessly.  A man came up to me, a tall man with kindly eyes.  I could barely see Him for the pure light that emanated from His face and hands.  He had something to say to me, something important.  He was my Lord, and He wanted to speak to me!  His right hand reached out towards my face...suddenly, he struck me lightly upon the shoulder.  ‘Tag!  You’re it!’ He cried, and turned and ran away.  The multitudes around me milled about a moment, then were seized with a purpose—they, too, turned and ran from me!  I was ‘It’!  At that moment I woke up.  I knew then I’d been given a mission to search for My Lord And Playmate.”

 

Ed finished her vanilla shake, sucking it dry, and took up the story.  “Well, naturally at first I thought it was a case of one too many mind-wipes.  But upon further investigation, we found that many have had similar dreams.  Some have dreamt of an all-powerful god who plays chess with them.  Others have dreamt of games of Twister and Battleship.  And so we founded the G.O.D.  Using the communications network at work and Hi’s underground rebel ties, we pulled together a goodly number of like-minded Chosen Gamesmen to play on the Great Playing Field.  We will miss Arid Zone A, but we know the Federation will not let us play, so one of our multitude, a Federation scientist of great repute, has stolen an experimental colonial ship, and that battlestar and any ship we could lay our hands to will be heading out of this galaxy to the galaxy known as the Greater Megallanic Cloud.”

 

“And when I find Him,” said Hi, a holy light suffusing his horsy features, “when I find My Lord And Playmate, I will go up to Him, I will lay my hand upon His raiments, and I will shout, shout so that the angels on high may hear that joyous noise, shout to shake the rafters of heaven, shout to give hope to those in the deepest, darkest depths of hell, I will shout, ‘TAG!  YOU’RE IT!!!!!’”

 

“But why the Greater Megallanic Cloud?” asked Avon.

 

The Wraggs looked at one another, then shrugged at Avon.

 

“It’s in the exact opposite direction from the Andromedans,” they said, wiggling their fingers at him in an approximation of those multi-tentacled inter-galactic invaders.

 

Avon was beginning to wonder if they were as dumb as he thought.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Vila was doing what Vila did best—talking fast to save his life.  “Listen, Avery, you don’t really want to arrest me, do you?  It’s not like anyone can up and take me into custody for just doing a nice day’s shopping.  I mean, Avery, I didn’t do anything, I didn’t even try to buy nine items in an eight-items-only line, now did I, Avery, old chap...?  This is a Free World, remember, Avery????”

 

The kid’s good eye went blank with shock.  Apparently the thought that LansingWorld held Free World status had simply never occurred to him before.  “Sheeeeeee-it,” he swore softly to himself in disbelief.  “Seven years I been starin’ at Wanted posters, checkin’ credit cards, peekin’ round corners at suspicious types, memorizin’ statistics, weight, height, eye-colour... and not once did I ever think about what I’d do with one of you old sons o’ Satan once I’d nabbed you....”

 

“Oh, well that’s all right then,” said Vila, visibly relaxing, smiling at the kid.  “It’s okay, Avery, my boy, we all make mistakes.  I won’t even complain to the manager.”

 

“Freeze it, dude, you don’t get off that easy!” snapped the determined cashier, “And anyway, why the heck do you keep callin’ me ‘Avery’?”

 

“That’s the name on your nametag,” Vila gestured at the cashier’s chest with the arm holding the now extremely heavy wire basket.

 

“Whu...?  Dang, I took my roommate’s shirt this morning... and that means that slob must be wearin’ mine!”  He brought his gun arm down to get a better look at his pocket.

 

Vila took that opportunity to swing the heavy basket up into the kid’s face, the thigh-master catching him in his one good eye.  Then, still clutching the huge box of Huggles brand Super-Drinker Disposable Didies like a lifepreserver on the Titanic, he wheeled about and ran like hell up the aisle, making a hair-pin turn into the Hair & Skin Care section, the cursing stockboy stumbling close behind.

 

* * * * * * *

 

“And then the gods Shaadra and Billaar told the Thaarn and his followers to mind their manners, yes they did!  But since they could not and would not play nicely, they were asked to leave Auron, and the people did rejoice!” Cally took Servalan Junior’s hands and gently clapped them together as the little girl gurgled with delight.  When Cally let go, however, she immediately stuck her fat little hand in her mouth.

 

“Oh, poor sweetie, are your gums bothering you?” the Auronae warrior poked about in a box of pretzels and pulled out a nice unbroken one for the baby to suck on.

 

“That’s why we were so excited to hear about your baby, Mr. Avon....”

 

“Eh?” Cally looked up and around in confusion.  “What?  Did you say something, little one?”

 

Servalan Junior had stopped teething on her chubby paw, and had returned to the small teleport bracelet she’d been fitted with—the plastic was nice and cool, with the nicest bumps on it.  In her chewing, she had pushed the ‘receive’ button and was tuning in to what was happening at the Denny’s Ice Cream Emporium across the way.

 

“I’m afraid the deciding factor in your case will be the fact that you are leaving this galaxy.  Can you be more specific about when this ship you spoke of, the Ludo, will be picking you and the child up for your one-way trip to the Greater Magellanic Cloud?” spoke Avon’s unmistakable dulcet tones.

 

Cally was no fool and she’d been a student of the School of Avon for more than three years at this point.  She didn’t question—she automatically understood and believed.

 

“You shjo bie chjolais!”  She cursed him in Auronese, then pushed the ‘send’ button on her bracelet and shouted the curse again.  “Avon, you shjo bie chjolais!”

 

“...uh, oh...Cally, was that you?  Cally—you know, you  really ought not to be eavesdropping in this scurrilous manner....”

 

She put her head to the steering wheel and moaned pitiously.

 

Behind her, the Boot’s Chemist wide glass window lit up in bursts of laser fire, like a Fourth-of-July fireworks display, but she didn’t notice.  Now she was simply going to have to go across the way and kill Avon.  There was nothing else for it.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Bottles of ‘Care-all, the Hair Care-Colour Experience’ exploded around the terrified thief as his pursuer took semi-blind potshots at him and missed.  A woman in pink hair curlers and false eyelashes shrieked upon seeing the laser handgun and tried to escape by throwing herself bodily
into a high-stacked pyramid of ‘Sexcitement!’ (parfum pour the discriminating Socialator).  Glass bottles flew everywhere, rolling underfoot.  The heavy scent of cheap perfume rose up, choking everyone within breathing distance.

 

“Help!  Napalm!  Pylene 50!  He’s using chemical warfare on us!” bellowed the stockboy, retching and gagging as he slid to the ground in a pool of ‘Never Tears’ baby shampoo.  His gun arm wavered uncertainly and he aimed one last shot at the departing thief’s back.  A lady, all in white (not that she was wearing white; she was actually coated with a layer of perfumed dusting powder from a shelf full of blasted after-bath products), fixed her attention upon the one person who had, in her opinion, caused the problem.  “You little creep,” she spat, “I’m allergic to talcum powder... achoo!!!”  Taking her totebag by the handle, she swung it with all her might at the back of the stockboy’s head.  Her bag found its target with a heavy THUNK just as he squeezed off his last shot.

 

The blast totally missed Vila but hit the front window, which blew out into the parking lot in a spectacular display of needle-sharp, rainbow shards.

 

* * * * * * *

 

“That shjo bie chjolais!” the distracted Cally muttered angrily to herself.  Servalan Junior blinked up at her, on the verge of tears.  The telepath absently patted the little girl on the head, sending a wave of emotional reassurance to her, then re-buckled her safety belt and gunned the motor of the flitter, preparing to drive across Callevicchi Avenue to the Denny’s in order to kill Avon.  The front window of the Boot’s Chemists took that moment to blow up in a spectacular display of needle-sharp, rainbow shards; and seconds later a terrified Vila Restal jumped out clutching a box to his chest, running much faster than a surprised Cally would have given him credit for.  Unfortunately, he was running in the opposite direction of Cally and the city-flitter.

 

“Well, Servalan Junior,” said the resigned telepath, “looks like we are going to have to save

Uncle Vila’s bum yet again... then we kill Uncle Avon.”  She took off in pursuit, honking the horn.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Ten

 

“You let me down, now my heart is broken; Goin’ back to town, to my home, Hoboken...”

“The Jersey Blues Bounce”—Lin Minmai

 

Tarrant regarded Avon with some bemusement.  It was odd—Avon stood calmly enough behind the teleport control panel, triangulating his landing party’s position down on the planet.  But Tarrant thought the computer tech seemed to be... pacing, somehow.  Tarrant had teleported Avon back to the ship mere moments ago, and had been completely mystified when Avon had ordered him away from the console, insisting that he, himself, would do the honours for Cally, Vila, and the baby.  So Avon fussed at the teleport panel, avoiding the curious pilot’s eyes and the question in them.

 

From Avon’s point of view, the situation was grim, but not unsalvageable.  Always one for taking the Auronae bull by the horns (especially when running away was unfeasible), Avon wanted to be there when Cally appeared on the teleport disk, to take advantage of the slight disorientation she’d be experiencing and get the first word in.  He would deal with it.  He knew he would.  He hoped he could.  Good thing Cally wasn’t wearing a gun, though....

 

Dayna sauntered into the room, a small pocketbook looped over her shoulder.  “Back already?” she said to Avon, surprised.  “That took, what, twenty minutes?  Where’s Cally and the baby?”  Vila’s absence did not concern her; she assumed he’d found a bar with a friendly hostess and would not return for hours.  Avon ignored her.

 

Vila was the first to appear on the teleport disk.

 

“T-t-t-they tried to kill us!” blurted a panting, shaking Vila, causing Dayna and Tarrant to raise their eyebrows and trade a look of surprise.  The little thief clutched a dented box of diapers to his belly with white-knuckled hands, fingers digging into the cardboard.  His staring eyes roved the teleport chamber in paranoid terror, suddenly fixing upon a spot between the couch cushions behind the console.  Charging blindly towards that spot, he dropped the box and trod over it in his haste, threw himself down upon the couch, and dug frantically between the cushions.  Coming up with a slim, clear flask, he downed half the contents in a gulp, then sighed in relief.  “I can face almost anything with a half-liter of Old White Stag Blended Kentucky Burbon Whiskey inside me,” he announced to the room at large in explanation.

 

Tarrant snorted in disbelief.  “I just saw all of you off not half an hour ago.  I fail to understand how you could get into that much trouble in such a short time!”

 

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” clucked a maternal Dayna in agreement, her arms crossed in front of her in what Avon thought was a remarkably smug attitude.  “Where, oh, where did Tarrant and I go wrong?”

 

“You realize, of course, we’ve lost the deposit on that city flitter.  I’ve learned never to go back for a deposit when the vehicle has been blown to smithereens,” said Vila to no one in particular.

 

At that moment, Cally, every curl radiating anger, appeared on the teleport disk.  Servalan Junior wriggled in her arms, squalling at the top of her lungs.  Before Avon could open his mouth, she sighted him and bellowed over the toddler’s screams, “I’m taking the baby and going home to Franton!”

 

“What?!” cried Vila, Tarrant, and Dayna in unison.  “What happened?” continued Dayna in soft, distressed tones.

 

“That man, that shjo bie chjolais!  He was attempting to sell, to sell this child to Shaadra knows who!!!”  Her voice rang out with righteous indignation and a shaking fore-finger pointed at the dark computer expert, who glowered silently.  Even Tarrant looked shocked, and he’d thought he was as cynical about Avon as anyone could possibly be.

 

“Oh, Avon would never do that—tell her, Avon, you’d never do that, would you?” prompted the thief, voice shaking, but Avon did not try to defend himself.  His defense came from a totally unexpected quarter.

 

*That is not correct!* piped the Orac from the corner.  Everybody jumped a foot and the baby screamed in fright.  Orac’s fussy tones easily cut through her high-decibel output.

 

*Kerr Avon’s motivation was not money.  He instructed me to find suitable parents among groups of people leaving the Federation sphere of influence.  I contacted the computer nexus servicing the Games Of The Deity foundation and discovered their plans for an exodus of this galaxy; ultimate goal, the Greater Magellanic Cloud.  An interview with the founders of that movement was not difficult to arrange.*

 

A triumphant Vila turned to his crewmates.  “There!  You see?  Avon just wanted to help, Cally!  Can you imagine how safe she’d be if she left this galaxy?  No Federation, no Andromedan menaces—blissful emptiness and safety for the rest of her life!”

 

“And if I believe that, there is some land on Obsidian you will happily sell to me, no extra charge for molten lava.”  The irate Auronae turned to Avon and her slim form seemed to swell with rage.  “If I were you, I would never, ever in my life turn my back to me again—for fear of getting a knife in it!  I’m taking Servalan Junior and going home, home to New Auron, do you hear?  How I could ever have been so stupid as to trust you...”  and on and on in this vein with few variations on the theme. 

 

Through it all, Avon just stared back dourly at Cally.  Adept at cutting verbal attacks and dry sarcasm, when it came to fiery outbursts of emotion (from people he couldn’t very well shoot) he was actually quite helpless—and besides, he was slowly but surely becoming chagrined, not to mention confused, at his own behavior.  Servalan Junior’s loud and continual protests provided a suitable background.  Vila grimly took another swig from the bottle while Dayna and Tarrant looked on in astonishment.

 

During Cally’s heated diatribe, the teleport communicator chirped. Tarrant automatically (yet never taking his fascinated attention from Cally) responded to it.  A cheery “We’re ready!” alerted him to the fact that the Buttafuoco sisters wanted to come back up, and without a second thought, he worked the teleport.  The girls teleported up just in time to hear Cally yell, “This, this is more than I can handle, Avon—do you hear me, Avon?  I have more than I can handle!  I CANNOT TAKE ANY MORE!”  The livid telepath turned and thrust the screaming child into Vila’s arms.  She stalked out.

 

A frightened Vila clutched the child to him like a rag doll as she screamed into this chest, then suddenly he blinked and gasped.  “Well, that was a remarkable perfor—” began Avon urbanely, attempting to mend his walls, but Vila, who seemingly went from mild to wild in the blink of an eye, turned to Avon and said through gritted teeth, “Shut up, shut UP!  You just have to ruin everything, don’t you!!!”

 

Then the thief turned and stalked away as the Auronae telepath had before him, except he took Servalan Junior with him.  Everyone who’d been left behind in the teleport chamber heard the child’s screams diminish, then disappear as she and Vila got on an elevator and the doors shut behind them.  A stunned momentary silence fell on the group.

 

“I must admit, I wouldn’t have thought he’d have it in him,” said Tarrant admiringly.  Dayna nodded in response to Tarrant’s comment as she watched Avon’s face.  Privately, she considered that no one did guilt prettier than Avon.

 

“Wow, we’re just Mr. Popular today,” said Hell’n to the silent computer tech, her sister snorting in agreement.  Avon came to life.

 

“What is this, Grand Central-bloody-StationWorld???!  Your ship is being repaired; I strongly suggest you take your few belongings and leave—while you still can.”  Hell’n looked ready to respond to the threat, but her sister scuttled out and, lacking suitable backup, she followed, her nose in the air.

 

Avon shot a glance at Tarrant and Dayna as if daring them to speak; then he, too, exited with some dignity, his back a straight line of offense.

 

“...so,” said Dayna to Tarrant, flirtily swinging her pocketbook at him, “do you think we can take our shore leave now?  Or what?” 

 

Tarrant shrugged.  “Actually, I’d really like to know who was trying to kill Vila and blew up the city flitter before I go down there!”

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Eleven

 

“Come to me, my melancholy baby.  Or else I shall be melancholy, too.”  

—Humbert Humbert

 

The Buttafuocos had made quite a mess of the cabin they’d been allotted in the short time they’d inhabited it.  Empty bags that had once held junk food littered the bunk beds, clothes were flung over chairs, half-full glasses made sticky rings on the formica work-area.  Noisia sat Indian-style on the floor, pawing through drawing materials and stacking hastily sketched illustrations of the crew together.  Her tee-shirt proclaimed, “So many Dealers’ Rooms, so little money.”  Her sister sat on the top bunk, sipping a caffeine-laced, bubbly drink and swinging her feet.  Under her denim duster, she wore a tee-shirt with the words “Never Give A Mundane An Even Break” on it.

 

“Just take what you want and leave the rest, Noisy,” Hell’n said between sips, “Let them clean it up.”  She was still upset about not being asked to join the Blake’s 7 gang and had, in fact, expanded her anger to include the rest of the crew.  After all, they hadn’t stuck up for her to Avon, had they?

 

“I think I have it all.  This’ll make a great story for the Rabble Rouser.  ‘The Avon & Vila Show:  A True Tale of the Liberator’, by Noisia Buttafuoco.  I’ll have to make it a heck of a lot more exiting and fun, though,” Noisia rolled the illustrations up and inserted them into a tube for easy storage.

 

“You always do, Noisy, no one can augment reality like you can... hey!  Didya get an illo of the baby?”

 

“No.  Why?”

 

“Because I can do a story for the Rebel/Rouser to go with it!  ‘Illegitimate Love Among The Ruins of Society”—she can be Cally and Vila’s baby!  That’ll teach them to screw with me!”

 

“Cool idea.  Better make it Cally and Avon, though.  More angsty dialogue.  Unless it’s a comedy.”

 

“If it’s a comedy, I’ll call it ‘The Loaded Diaper’.”

 

The sisters peeked out their door to see who was about, then tip-toed into the cabin opposite their own.  They’d seen Vila put Servalan Junior in there about an hour ago.  The clone baby looked up at them solemnly.

 

“Hey—she’s kinda adorable, isn’t she?” Hell’n whispered to her sister, who looked at her as though she’d gone insane.  Hell’n had never before shown any interest in anyone unable to hold his head up long enough to stare at a videoscreen in her entire life.  This was a new side to her sister, and an interesting one, mused Noisia.  She looked at the baby, trying to see what Hell’n saw, and the baby suddenly smiled and giggled.  Noisia felt something tug inside her heart and she, too, began to fall in love.

 

“Let’s take ‘er!” Hell’n blurted out, surprising herself.

 

“Take her?  Take her?” her sister repeated, as if trying to get used to the outlandish idea.

 

“Yeah!  It’ll be great!  She can be a second-generation fan.  She can help us put the ’zines together; we need another collator.  Besides how the heck else are we gonna get a kid?”

 

“Hell’n, you’re the one who told me all about how-we-get-kids, back when I was eight years old, remember?”

 

“Face it, Noisy, that way isn’t for us.  What with the male shortage in media fandom, we’ll never find a decent guy.  Nine-tenths of our male counterparts in fandom are too geeky even for us, and the other tenth was long since taken by the girls who didn’t spend their time putting out ‘zines and putting on cons.  Neither of us will touch a mundane for fear of contamination, so mixed marriages are out.”

 

“That is true,” mused Noisia, who reached down to touch Servalan Junior’s tiny hand.  Servalan Junior wrapped her fingers around the proffered finger, causing the femme-fan to swoon at her.  “Look!  How tiny and perfect those fingers are!  She’s an artist, I can tell!  You’re right, Hell, let’s take her!  You heard Cally, she said she had more than she could handle.”

 

And the dazed duo rolled the crib into their room, filled it up with their belongings, then rolled it quickly, giggling as they went, to the teleport.  Servalan Junior was clasped firmly in the arms of Hell’n Buttafuoco and Noisia pushed the crib.

 

“This could be dicey,” said the older sister, trying to figure out the teleport console.  Imposing levers and blinking lights seemed to stare up at her defiantly.

 

“Bye-bye!!!” the baby suddenly piped up, pointing at a clear perspex box sitting on a table next to the teleport bay area.

 

“I know what this do-jigger is!” said Noisia.  “This is that super computer!  Hey, can you hear me, computer?”

 

*Yes, I can hear you, and what of it?* the feisty computer sassed back.

 

“As nasty a little bugger as they say,” Hell’n commented sotto voce, then she directed a question to Orac in a loud, authorative manner.  “Computer, we want to leave.  Can you tell us how to work the teleporter?”

 

*Yes.  I can.*

 

They waited some moments, but no instructions were forthcoming.

 

“Computer!  I want you to give me directions on how to teleport out of here!”

 

*That was not your question!  You asked if I could tell you how to work the teleport—I can tell you.  I simply will not do it.*

 

The sisters stared at the snippy plastic box, at a loss.  Servalan Junior turned in Hell’n’s arms to stare at Orac with them.  “Bye-bye!” she repeated, with some force.

 

Whirrrrr... click!  *It will be my pleasure to operate the teleport for you!  And did you know there are some diapers in a box on that couch over there?* Orac burbled, as if surprised at itself.

 

“Service with a smile, I like it,” commented Noisia, as Servalan Junior clapped her hands with glee.  Apparently she liked it, too.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Vila Restal swung along casually on his way to the flight deck, whistling to himself.  For some reason, he felt better than he had for days, as if a weight had dropped from his shoulders... r from his mind.  Cally was leaving and taking the baby with her, and he felt terrible about it, yet he felt almost light-headed with relief.  It did not make sense, but there you were.  Perhaps I’m even shallower than I thought, mused the little thief to himself as he entered the bridge area.

 

Everyone was there.  Cally was ignoring Avon, who was ignoring her right back, Dayna was flipping through some blue prints, Tarrant was plotting a round-about way to get back to New Auron... something was missing.

 

“Vila!  Where is Servalan Junior?” asked Cally.

 

“Oh!  Servalan Junior!  I dunno.  I left her in her crib in your cabin, didn’t you see her?”  Vila had a wonderful knack of anticipating when new diapers would soon be needed and always seemed to leave her in someone else’s care just before it happened.

 

“Well, yes, I changed her and tucked her in a few hours ago.  But I checked on her about a half hour ago and saw her crib was gone.  I assumed you took her.”

 

“Nope.  Sorry.  Can’t you telepath her up?”

 

Cally got that misty, staring-off-into-the-distance look she always got when sending out mental waves, then shook her head.  “Sometimes I cannot sense her when she is asleep.  Avon?  Have you seen Servalan Junior?”  Four sets of accusatory eyes focused on the computer fraud.

 

“I’ve not gone near her!  This is nothing to do with me!”

 

“Do not overreact, Avon, I am simply asking you if you have seen Servalan Junior.”

 

“And I am simply telling you I’ve not seen her.  I want nothing, nothing to do with her, ever again!” Avon was adamant.

 

“And Tarrant and I have been together, here on the flight deck, for more than a couple of hours, and we haven’t seen her, either,” said Dayna.  They all looked at one another in growing horror.

 

“We’ll ask Orac where she’s got to... Avon!  Where’s Orac?” demanded Vila, unusually clear-headed for once.

 

“Next to the teleport bay, where I left it—I hope,” answered Avon, and the entire crew—four filled with concern for the baby, one with concern for the super-computer—ran to the teleport chamber.

 

Ensor’s Folly flashed and whirred on its table next to the teleport bay, its key in place.  Avon slowed his hurry and smiled to see it, effectively blocking the door, and his fellow crew members pushed past him to get to the irascible computer.

 

“Orac!  Orac!  Where is Servalan Junior?” demanded the concerned Auronae telepath.

 

*Excellent!* cried the perspex box, *A direct question!  How long I have waited for a direct question, free of ambiguity and fuzzy logic.  Bravo!*

 

“How happy we are to please you,” said Vila sarcastically.  “So answer the direct question now, willya?”

 

*Servalan Junior is currently in the care of the sisters Buttafuoco.  She and they teleported down approximately one solar hour ago.  I told them to take her box of diapers, but they did not listen to me.  None of you ever listen to me.*

 

“Orac!!  How could you have done that!?” Dayna gasped.

 

*Easily.  I can fine-tune my telemetry to the same frequencies upon which the teleport operates.  Have I not teleported you humans up and down, back and forth, from planet to ship to space station, as if I were a common moon shuttle operator, 184 times since you first discovered I possessed this talent?*

 

“NO, you stupid machine, you bird cage, you rodent trap!!  Why did you do it?!  Is that direct enough for you?!  Why, why, why did you do it?!!!”  The Delta thief pounded on the table the super computer sat upon.

 

*You will stop that instantly!* Orac snapped.  *I did it because....*  For a moment, the whirring got a bit higher pitched, more insistent.  *I did it because... she wanted me to do it.*  It switched itself off.

 

“Orac!  Orac!” Avon pushed its key, but the computer did not come back on line.

 

Tarrant had gone over to the teleport console while the others were busy arguing with the computer.  “No matter.  Their coordinates are still here.  Should be quite simple to find them.  Don’t worry, Cally, we will find them and get her back for you.”

 

“Why, those little bitches!”  Dayna commanded their attention instantly as it was uncommon for the elegant weapons expert to resort to profanity.  She sounded almost amused.  “Look at what they’ve written on the teleport wall!”

 

There it was, in a bright shade of red lipstick that Dayna recognized as her own.  They’d probably taken it from the pocketbook she’d left on on the couch.  A bright red “F” and a plus sign, then the outline of some sort of bird, then a minus sign and a “D”, and a great, big “U”....

 

“Duck jokes!!! I hate duck jokes!!!”  They all jumped, then looked at Avon who continued his tirade.  “Stupid, dim-witted, repetitive, ultimately unfunny duck jokes!!!” and he stomped out, fuming.

 

“Duck—what?  What’s he so angry about?” Dayna was honestly confused.

 

Tarrant looked grim.  “I don’t know, but the last time I saw him this upset, I’d hung his favourite leather jacket on a wire coathanger.”

 

“Everyone is acting nutsy!  It’s like I don’t know what’s going to happen next!  I mean, think about it.  Cally going ballistic and leaving us, Avon going ballistic about birds, and why would the Buttafuocos take Servalan Junior?  It’s going to be real easy for us to get her back!  They can’t mean to sell her to Servalan, we’re in the middle of nowhere and they haven’t got the guts or the brains anyway.  Our ship is bigger and faster, they can’t outrun us.  We have sensors, weapons, Orac...so why’d they do it?  Are they just bizarre beyond bizarre?  Now, that I’d believe!”  Vila ran his fingers through his thinning hair in exasperation.

 

Cally tapped a finger on her chin.  “Calm down, Vila.  Perhaps I can cast a light on the sisters’ behavior.  Vila, why did you and Avon take Servalan Junior in the first place?”

 

“I-I don’t really remember.  It seemed like the thing to do, I guess.”

 

“Hmmm.  I am working on a theory.  There is a psi-talent, vanishingly rare among Auronae and humans alike.  You refer to this talent as ‘charisma’; we refer to such people who possess it as ‘Influencers’.  Those who possess the talent generally become great leaders—or great con artists.  I think little Servalan Junior is one such Influencer.  It would certainly explain the rage I felt before—the angrier she got, the angrier I got, and vice versa!  I had to dump her in poor Vila’s arms; it was more than I could handle!”

 

“I remember!  And then Vila lit into Avon directly!” Tarrant laughed.  “I knew you couldn’t have done it on your own!”  The little thief shot the pilot a dirty look.

 

“That would explain Avon’s behavior, wouldn’t you say, Cally?” Vila pleaded with her.

 

“Perhaps... but I usually suspect Avon until he proves it to me,” she mused in martyred tones; however, her eyes smiled at him.

 

“But Servalan Junior’s down on the planet and Avon’s still acting wonky,” said Dayna.

 

Cally pulled a face.  “This is a talent I suspect little Servalan Junior shares with her clone-mother—and as we have seen in the past, Avon has never been particularly sensible where Servalan is concerned.”

 

Vila smirked.  “If you mean she plays him like a banjo, yeah, we noticed.”

 

“Servalan and Avon have always been on the same wavelength; he is very sensitive to her.  I communicated my anger with Avon to Servalan Junior and I suspect she is still upset with him, thus unbalancing Avon.”

 

“And all we need is an unbalanced Avon,” purred Tarrant.  “Enough of this!  It’s time we retrieved her from the kidnappers—at least, from her most current set of kidnappers!”  The rebel pilot struck a gallant pose, only to be cuffed playfully on the shoulder by Dayna.

 

“Remember—no shooting the Buttafuocos,” she admonished him sweetly.  “I get to do that.  They’re my friends, after all.”

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Twelve

 

“The trouble with inferiority complexes is that the right people seldom have them.” 

—the author of ‘Raising Hell’

 

“If one more person yells at me, I think I’m gonna to pull out their tongue right out of their head and tie it in a knot,” said Jay Owen mildly in his trademark raspy voice.  He wore a red tee shirt with a bull’s-eye painted in the middle (as was traditional to Security for some long-forgotten reason), a Buckaroo Banzai headband and a 3-D button with “Voice of Doom” printed on it.  The words hologrammed out at the reader in an eye-catching red and yellow.

 

He had his hands even fuller than usual, which was saying a lot.  When he’d been enticed into taking the role of Head of Security for Fanati-Con 40 with a free membership, he’d thought he’d gotten the best of the bargain, as he loved doing Security.  He was always being asked to do Security—he had a talent for handling large egos tactfully and was a big enough physical presence to lean, if he had to, on any fan with an attitude problem.  But he’d also never abused his power by treating the average attendee like cattle.  He had a good rep and it paid off in free conventions.  Unfortunately things were getting a mite scary at this con.  Rumours were rampant that the Internal Revenue Association (the IRS had dropped the somewhat hypocritical “S” for “Service” from their moniker years ago) was planning on busting this largest and most famous of cons.  Though LansingWorld was far, far outside the Federation’s influence, the Revenuers did not worry about petty things like galactic treaties and declared boundaries.  They wanted their slice of the pie and they were bound to get it one way or another.  The 8,000+ Fanati-Con attendees were restive and snappish; they were pushing Jay Owen’s diplomatic poise to its limits.  He longed for a backrub, especially one from a pretty femme-fan who would murmur, “There, there!  It’s not your fault!” to him whilst she massaged his shoulders.

 

“If you’re not feeling up to it, Jay, I’ll be happy to take over for you.  Would you like a cup of tea for that ever-so-ghastly sore throat?” said his second-in-command, ‘Buddy-Buddy’, in sunny, Donna-Reed tones.  She was short and chubby and might actually have been a cute little muffin of a woman if her lips weren’t pursed in perpetual disapproval.  ‘Buddy-Buddy’ was a nick-name; her real name was shrouded in mystery for she’d never discuss it.  Long ago, someone had unaffectionately called her ‘Buddy-Buddy’ as an observance of her amazing brown-nosing abilities and she’d overheard, falling upon the name with joy.  A nick-name, and everyone knew her by it!  Her first step towards BNFhood!  Under her Security badge—‘BUDDY-BUDDY, SECURITY CHIEF, SECOND IN COMMAND’ emblazoned upon it in day-glow—her tee shirt proclaimed “I’m not stupid, I’m not expendable, and I’m not gofering”.

 

Jay turned to stare at her.  “Thank you for your heartfelt concern, but, as you well know, this is the way I sound normally.”

 

“Just trying to be helpful.”  She fluttered her short eyelashes at him.  “Remember, if you need to have a lie down for a while, I can take over for you at any time.”

 

She’d been told that if Jay couldn’t make the con, she’d get to be Security Chief, and was now proving to be his own personal albatross.  It depressed him that anyone with gumption enough to help organize a con or put out a ‘zine could be a BNF, regardless of whether they were a creep or not.  Half his morning had been spent soothing feathers she’d ruffled when she’d started throwing her weight around.  Suddenly he craned his neck, staring over her right shoulder at the knot of fans milling in front of the elevators just up the corridor.  “Hey! Is that the Con Chair I see?” he said.

 

Buddy-Buddy’s nose swung around as she searched for that person of importance.  “Con Chair?  Con Chair?  Where?!  I need to talk with her.  See you later,” she muttered dismissively in his general direction, then trotted off to the elevators.

 

“‘Toons...gets ’em every time’,” movie-quoted a grinning Jay Owen, escaping into the Art Show.

 

As Buddy-Buddy searched for the elusive Convention Chairperson, she walked past the knot of fans milling about in front of the elevators.  Someone was getting an award for Best Hall Costume.

 

“Destiny” Fontana, dressed in a delicate and revealing elf-warrior costume, looked up, way up, at the tall, dark and gruesome creature who stood before her.  He peered down at her gravely through his fantastical, bulbuous makeup, silent.  Extending a blue ribbon for “Best Alien Costume” in one hand and a red ribbon for “Best Of Show” in the other;  she spoke, her voice shaking a bit.  “It is m-my honour as Head of the LansingWorld Costuming Guild to award you with these, uh, awards for your wonderful alien soldier costume.  We don’t usually give the same person two awards, but you are just so much better than any one else, well, you deserve them.  Wow.  Like, wow, you really look authentic... whatever the hell you are.  That’s some detail there—I mean, you even smell like an alien warrior....”  She trailed off, embarrassed, then thrust the ribbons at him.  He nodded and accepted them graciously.  The knot of local costumers surrounding him applauded as he hooked his prizes onto his sleeve.  He bowed at her, then spoke.

 

“I seek...bthe Buttafuocos.”  His voice was oddly quiet; you had to strain to hear it.

 

A frisson went up Destiny’s spine, not caused by a skimpy costume in a drafty hallway, and she blurted out, “B-b-buttafuocos?  Oh, I know them.  They’re dealers.  Look in the Dealers’ Rooms!”

 

He bowed again at her and disappeared into the crowds, which is a neat trick when you top seven feet tall.

 

“Whew,” said Destiny, theatrically wiping imaginary sweat from her brow, “that was one scary-looking dude.  But it’s wonderful how he stays in character, innit?”

 

“Yeah,” agreed one of the other costumers, “but, you know, close up, it was a lot easier to see the joins in his facial appliance....”  They walked away, discussing the benefits of various plastic-based skin concealers as they went.

 

A few yards away in the main Dealers’ Room, Hell’n and Noisia uncrated several stacks of brand-new Rabble Rousers #129, as well as its X-rated equivalent, Rebel/Rousers #129.5, arranging them in neat piles on their table.  What looked like a large stack of ‘zines with feet underneath staggered up to them, and Joan “Pookie” Face, their sometimes-roomie at cons, dumped a large pile of used ‘zines alongside the table with a crash.

 

“Look out!” Pookie gasped, a bit late, waving at the resulting cloud of dust.  She was cleaning out her stash of old Doctor Who ‘zines to make room for a new fandom she was becoming involved with—The SandDraggers.  The sisters had agreed to sell the ‘zines for ten percent of the take.

 

“Man, oh, man!” said Pookie, “from here on in, I only buy ‘zines on disk.  I just don’t have the room for real, traditional paper ‘zines anymore.”

 

“Give it up, Pooks, you’ll never buy disk ‘zines.  Part of the ‘zine experience is holding that paper in your hands, holed up in a bathroom at 4 AM at a con, and you can’t put it down ‘cause it’s so great.  Try doing that with a disk-viewer.”  Hell’n poked through Pookie’s ‘zines, checking out the titles.

 

Pookie shook her head.  “Romantic image, kiddo, but I’m too old for that.  I pass out—and in a bed, not on the floor—at about 11:30 these days.  Hold everything!  What’s that?”

 

A tiny face peered up at her from behind the table.  “Gabba, Gabba, Gabba,” said Servalan Junior, joyfully ripping up a one of Pookie’s ‘zines.

 

“Hey!  My ‘zines!  Make her stop that!”

 

Hell’n squinted at the irate Pookie, taking in her ‘BNFs Eat Their Young’ tee shirt.  “Excuse me?  Don’t you think that that tee shirt is in rather bad taste in front of our child?” she asked archly.

 

‘Our child?’ mouthed Pookie in awe, staring at Servalan Junior, then she said, “Oh, god, this is so cool.  It’s, like, next generation or something!  Which of you gets a card on Mother’s Day?”

 

“I do,” said the sisters in unison.  “She does... No, I do... No, she does....” followed, also in unison.  Hell’n reached over and clapped a hand over her sister’s mouth.  “I’m the mommy,” said the zaftig fan, “and the kid’s name is Hell’n Junior.  ‘Hell’ for short.  Right, little Hell Junior?”

 

The baby pulled off her Yogi-the-Bear sneaker, culled from a protesting Noisia Buttafuoco’s prize Hanna Barbera collection, and stuffed the toe into her mouth, mumbling around it.  Her tee shirt, somewhat enigmatically, said, “Who, me?  Apocryphal?”

 

There was a crash from somewhere across the room and all three fans jumped, then turned to look.

 

A gigantic, leather-clad whatsis stood on top of a dealer’s table far, far across the spacious Dealers’ Room, arms akimbo.  The dealer who owned the table buzzed around below, protesting the use of his property in such a fashion, but the enormous whatsis took not a bit of notice.  Instead it bellowed out for all to hear:

 

“I seek... the ones called... BUTTAFUOCO...”

 

The room echoed and reverbed with its voice.

 

“Why, here they are!” the ever-helpful Pookie raised a hand and her girlish contralto rang out clearly.  “Over here!  See?”  she smiled and waved, pointing at the sisters.

 

“Uh, oh....”

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

“I’m not so worried about the bullet with my name on it—just the thousands out there marked ‘occupant’.”

Vila Restal

 

The ancillary Dealers’ Room, one flight down from the Main Dealers’ Room, was crowded and noisy, but not with honest fannish commerce.

 

“We don’t make any mon-eeeeee!” shrieked a fan as she hit the floor hard.  Her tee-shirt said, “Incorrigible Punster—Do Not Incorrige.”

 

“Nonsense!  If you weren’t making any money, you wouldn’t be doing all this hard work!” pointed out a cheerfully smiling Internal Revenue Association agent.  He tagged the fan, clipping
a shiny sensor onto her ear, then pulled out the tranquilizer dart that he’d expertly shot into her gluteus maximus moments ago.

 

The room swarmed with busy Revenuers pursuing escaping fans, impounding tables full of ‘zines, seizing cashboxes, occasionally sipping the blood of the fallen using the needle apparatus embedded in their forearms.

 

“I love this job!” cried the happy Revenuer.  He, like the rest of his merry band, was a mutoid, but they were mutoids of a special kind.  Neither man nor woman was their master; they had all been created self-starters and programmed with a love of the pursuit of money—the pursuit of other people’s money, that is.  It was a love that bordered on mania.  For instance, this particular squad had been searching for the whereabouts of the fabled LansingWorld for almost eight years.

 

The Revenuer reloaded his tranq-gun and took a bearing on yet another fan trying to escape.  The fan would have stood a better chance of escape were he not carrying a large canvas bag full of ‘zines and fannish collectibles.  His tee shirt said, “They say the wages of sin are death, but after they take out taxes, all that’s left is a tired feeling.”

 

“Blasphemy!” gasped the Revenuer, and he took aim with considerable self-righteousness and delight.

 

The fan saw him, paled, dropped his canvas bag and disappeared through an exit.  Taped to the door was a hand-lettered sign “Main Dealers Room—Up Stairs”.

 

“Onward and upward!  Agents, ho!!” cried the mutoid Revenuer.  Their work finished in the small Dealers’ Room, they pounded en masse towards the stairs and a greater glory than any of them had ever known.

 

* * * * * * *

 

There was a crash from the Main Dealers’ Room, and Jay caught the arm of a fleeing fan as she ran in terror.  Her tee shirt said “Don’t Blame Me For This Space-Time Continuum, I’m Just Visiting.”

 

“What’s going on?” he asked her, and she gasped, “There’s a big, mean, leather-clad dude in there asking for Hell’n and Noisia Buttafuoco—and he’s real, real insistent about it!”

 

“Omigod!” said the battle-weary con security chief.  “It can’t really be the Internal Revenue Association—can it?!”

 

With a squeal, the femme-fan wrenched her arm from his grasp and ran, stopping only to pick up a few flyers from a table on her way to the elevator.

 

“If I were security chief of the con,” began Buddy-Buddy, but Jay cut her off—“If you were security chief, you’d be hiding out back in a dust bin about now... oh, well, life was fun while it lasted.”

 

And Jay Owen straightened his red tee shirt, hiked up his Buckaroo Banzai headband, and marched through the doors, right up to the... seven-foot... mean-looking... costumed... whatever the hell it was.  On the bright side, it didn’t look like a Revenuer, unless they’d started creating genetically manipulated agents suited to the task.  Not necessarily impossible.

 

“Hey, I’m sorry, man,” said Jay regretfully, “Your costume’s great and you obviously put some time and thought into it—brownie points for thoroughness—but you can’t come in here acting like a nut.  We have a peacebonding weapons policy.  I’m gonna have to take your con badge.”

 

“Badge?” said the Klingon softly, “I don’t need no stinking badge....” and he pulled one of the massive, oddly real-looking guns from its holster, slowly pointing it straight at the bull’s-eye printed in the middle of the Security Chief’s tee shirt....

 

“That better not be a Super-Soaker; if I get wet, I’m gonna be plenty mad,” said the determined Security Chief just before a lance of purple blaster fire streaked from the barrel and hit him full in the chest, throwing him backwards into a stand selling costume capes and tee shirts.  A burnt smell filled the air.

 

The frazzled homme-fan pushed several heavy wool cloaks off his face and shook his head to clear the stars from his vision, dimly noting that the alien warrior had turned disinterestedly and was walking away.  He looked down at his chest and realized that his favourite button, a titanium-alloy button with “Voice of Doom” printed on it in stomach-turning 3-D, had been destroyed.  Almost half of it was burnt to a crisp.  “Hey!  You!” he croaked after the departing Klingon.  “Get back here!  You owe me five credits!  These holograms ain’t cheap, y’know!”

 

Befuddled, he did not fully appreciate his good fortune.  The high-powered laser blast had ricocheted off the titanium-alloy badge, saving his life and utterly destroying yet another target entirely.  That other target was Buddy-Buddy, who had been hovering nearby, hoping for a chance to watch Jay get his ass kicked.  It would be three weeks before anyone noticed she was gone.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

“Oh, fer Jezebel’s sake!  It’s jest a couple ’a  Injins!  Cookie, smoke us some kippers, we’ll be back fer breakfast!”

General Custer’s toady at Little Big Horn

 

Kruggs worked his way across the room to the place the Buttafuocos stood.  Not a difficult task, really, as everyone in his path seemed to melt away as he came towards them.  When a table got in his way, he simply turned it over and continued on.  He could see his quarry—the two loathsome-human females stood in the attitudes of a pair of lapinoids staring down a battletruck on a dirt road on Praxis.  His ultimate prey, the child, was not immediately viewable, but if he had to squeeze her whereabouts out of the pathetic humans before him, all the better.

 

He could not have been a dozen paces from his victims when the doors behind them suddenly blew off their hinges, and a horde of black-clad soldiers exploded through the smoke pouring out of the stairwell and into the Main Dealers’ Room.

 

“Nobody move—Internal Revenue Association!  This is an audit!” shouted one Revenuer, snapping one cuff of a pair of handcuffs on the wrist of the nearest fan, who happened to be Noisia.  Noisia’s knees immediately gave way and the mutoid found himself attached to the equivalent of a sack of oatmeal.  Hell’n grabbed for her sister and found herself in the other cuff.

 

“It is my opinion,” said the soft-spoken Klingon warrior, “that much trouble would be avoided... were you to show good sense and hand those two over to my custody.  Now.”  Kruggs’ genial smile was enough to terrify anyone—anyone but a mutoid from the Internal Revenue Association.

 

The mutoid’s lip curled.  “When I want your opinion, I’ll read it in your entrails,” he barked, aiming his gun at Kruggs’ mid-section.

 

What happened next happened very, very quickly.  Yet to those involved, the world seemed to move in slow-motion.  This is a phenomenon frequently reported by people who survive a car-crash, a train-wreck or, more aptly, a con-com meeting the night before a convention.  Knives connected with arteries, various coloured spouts of body fluid arced gracefully through the air, laser blasts caromed off walls, and light fixtures exploded and spat sparks; it was a ghastly ballet of limbs flying off in various directions punctuated by a symphony of screams.  And when it was over, the Klingon bountyhunter stood in the middle of what he’d created, and saw that it was good.

 

Kruggs looked down and toed the nearest mutoid Revenuer with his pointed boot.  Being dead, it did nothing more than grin horribly up at him.  “Not much blood to these toy soldiers,” the Klingon warrior intoned, kicking his unworthy enemy out of his way.  There was no one to hear him, because all the Revenuers were dead and all the fen had flown the coop.

 

Kruggs’ nose, broken flat in many fights, but still as sharply-sensed as a hell-hound’s, lifted and

sniffed deep.  The scent was heady and redolent of loaded diaper and baby powder.  He followed it.

 

* * * * * * *

 

The four rebels decided to leave the jittery Avon on the ship—true, he probably could have led them right to the clone baby, but the trouble, they considered, would not be worth it.  Dayna decided to take Tarrant into Fanati-Con 40 with her—privately, she considered that dangling the terminally cute pilot in front of femme-fans while pumping them for information about the sisters’ whereabouts would be a good bet.  Cally and Vila would find the Plot Device in the parking lot, break in, and disable it.

 

And so, the alien guerrilla fighter and the Delta thief wandered through the sunny parking lot outside the New Lansing Hilton and Conference Center in Holiday City, reading name plates on planethoppers.  The mechanic who had installed the Buttafuocos’ new space drive had told them she’d delivered their ship there, but it had never occured to them that a parking lot could be so big.  They split up, hoping to find the Plot Device more quickly that way, keeping in touch by means of communicators built into their teleport bracelets.

 

“The Four C’s...Emmylou II...The Phantom...FIAWOL...The SpaceBiscuit...Daddy’s Little Girl...Fifth Season...The Powerplay—I can’t believe how much one planethopper looks exactly like another!  You’d think they’d park them alphabetically, or something...”

 

“VILA!”

 

“What is it, Cally?  D’you see them?”

 

“Uh—no, Vila, I do not.  I thought I did.  Vila, I think splitting up was a bad idea.  You wait there and I will triangulate on your position using my teleport bracelet.”

 

“Whatever you say, Cally,” responded the mystified thief.

 

“Vila, keep talking to me, will you?”

 

She hated to lie to him, but felt it was necessary just for the moment.  The dead mutoid she’d just tripped over had given her quite a start. She didn’t want the little thief panicking, at least until she rejoined him.

 

“Cally, this is useless... my feet are killing me.  I wanna go in the hotel bar and have a drink, which is probably what Tarrant and Dayna are doing.  Oh!  hey—I think I see the Plot Device!...  GAAAAAH!”

 

“What is it, Vila?!  Is it the sisters?”

 

“OH.  MY.  GOD.” was all he could manage.

 

“Oh, dear.  Hold on....  I will be there momentarily....”

 

He couldn’t believe it was existed.  He’d had nightmares before, about The Man With No Face, about running for safety as if through molasses, about any one of his many trials.  All had faded in the morning light.  Vila had only had that brief dream-scape glimpse of the creature, hidden in shadow and steam, hunkered down on the bridge of its ship... and had quickly put it out of his mind.  All he could think was that the creature was far worse when viewed in bright sunlight, standing up.  It looked REAL.

 

The bounty hunter loomed seven feet tall from the bottom of his pointy, dirt-encrusted boots to the top of his knobby head; he was almost that wide across his shoulders.  A glittering sash hung across his chest from left to right; crisscrossing it right to left was a chain of hand grenades, like plump, brown pineapples.  They swung with every breath the creature took.  Enormous laserpistols were strapped, holstered for a quick draw, to either leg.  Bizarrely, ribbons, red and blue, fluttered from his sleeve, proclaiming “Best Alien Costume” and “Best of Show”.  He stood as large as death and as solid as lead, he was as hairy as Vila’s Uncle Zardoz Restal, the hairiest man in the London Delta Dome.  He held a gun as big as the Ritz on the backs of the two departing Buttafuoco sisters, who were rapidly disappearing in the distance, having left their open planethopper, twelve boxes of ‘zines, and baby Servalan Junior behind them.  It struck him as odd that they seemed to be handcuffed together.

 

Vila fainted.

 

Kruggs ignored him and scooped up the child, and she laughed gleefully at the funny, funny man who was picking her up.

 

“Give me that baby, you warthog from hell!” spat Cally, coming out from behind a hover-bus.  She neither walked nor ran, but marched towards the Klingon resolutely, stepping over the supine thief without a glance.  She looked like the Irresistible Force approaching the Immovable Object, she looked indomitable, invincible—actually, she looked thin and fragile next to Kruggs’ bulk.  He stared her as if she was insane, and perhaps she was.  He was so surprised at her nerve that he did not protest when she took Servalan Junior from his arms, then turned and ran.  The bountyhunter sighed and pulled up his laserrifle, taking careful aim, when—bonk!—an extra-special Cally Special, the black and white striped bombs favored by the bloodthirstier members of the Liberator crew, caromed off his cranium, thrown by the terrified Vila Restal.  The bomb had been specially filled with sleep gas; it fizzled and spat its cargo over the parking lot as it flew through the air.

 

Unfortunately, Cally was finding it difficult to run with the heavy toddler and fit a baby-sized teleport bracelet on her wrist at the same time.  She caught a whiff of the edge of the gas cloud, slowed and yawned, then folded, protecting the baby’s head as she crumbled to the tarmac.  Vila caught the merest whiff, and his legs, too, became jello.  The Klingon was apparently totally unaffected by the sleep gas, emerging from the purplish mist like a demon through hellsteam.  He stepped up to the sleeping Auronae, then turned her over with a pointed boot-toe.  He bent to re-claim his prize, prying the baby from Cally’s unresisting arms and swinging her up into the air.

 

Servalan Junior giggled at being swung about so boisterously.  Kruggs tucked her under one arm, where she teethed on her teleport bracelet.  In this way, the Klingon warrior was able to reach for the laserguns holstered on each leg. 

 

“One apiece for each of us,” Vila thought blearily, then passed out again. 

 

Servalan Junior pointed at him and piped, “Drunk!”, then went back to teething—this time on the loop sticking out of one of the hand grenades that decorated the Klingon’s battle-jacket. 

 

Kruggs leveled his guns, aimed down the sights... but stopped when he felt a warm wetness coursing down one leg.  He couldn’t help it—he had to look.  In all the insanity, no one had changed Servalan Junior’s diaper since that morning, and her Super-Drinker Huggle-brand Disposable Didy had given up the ghost.  In other words, she was peeing down his leg.  “Damn,” he cursed in Klingonese, finding it difficult to pull his enormous head forward enough to stare down at his leg.  The tiny girl peered up at him brightly and presented him with a small, brass ring.  A brass... ring?  It looked oddly familiar, but Kruggs couldn’t quite place where he’d seen it before.

 

“Ooooo!” said Servalan Junior, and her eyes got round as she felt the tug of the teleport effect inside her.  “Bye-bye!” she waved to the Klingon warrior, as she and her two would-be saviors disappeared in a flash. 

 

The Klingon bountyhunter disappeared in a somewhat larger flash moments later when the hand grenade Servalan Junior had pulled the brass ring out of blew itself, the Plot Device, and Kruggs to smithereens.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”

Voltaire

 

The people on the Liberator’s viewscreen were in very good spirits.  They played games of cards, boardgames; a few were engaged in a rousing game of “Twister”.  A healthy chorus of “Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through The Goal Posts Of Life” rang out over the Ludo’s PA system.  “Amen and ‘Bingo’!” cried one worshiper, genuflecting, and the Bingo caller/priestess blessed him enthusiastically.  These joyous activities were duplicated on every one of the fifty-odd ships that made up the G.O.D. flotilla.

 

“Those Ludites really know how to throw a party,” said Vila to his shipmates, whom he obviously felt did not.

 

“O, brother and sister Pieces on the Gameboard of Life!” cried Hi Wraggs, his arm around his wife.  “Join us in the Games Of The Deity.  Come, roll the dice!  You will be made welcome at the next level!”

 

“Bet you fellows drink a lot,” commented Vila enviously.

 

“The Lord, our Playmate, would not wish us to cloud our thinking in that way!”

 

“What!  You lot are DRY?” gasped Vila.  He found it hard to believe that a ship full of good ol’ boys could be tee-totalers.

 

“Not even a soma lite,” confirmed Ed.

 

Vila slumped in his seat, disillusioned.

 

“I am sorry you cannot be mother and father to Servalan Junior,” said a sympathetic Cally to the Wraggs.  “It is necessary that she live among her own people.  Besides, her psi-ability to influence the behaviors of those around her can be dangerous to the unwary.  And there has been a lot of illogical behavior around here that we have had to put down to the baby’s psychic suggestions.”  Transferring Servalan Junior to her other hip, she stared pointedly at Avon, then smiled at him.  Avon responded with his patented “blank” look, whereby the viewer of same could invest him with whatever emotion they desired.  Cally apparently took it as assent and contrition.  Vila hated to admit that Avon had somehow pulled it off again, but he supposed he was just as glad.  A Liberator without its token alien was a Liberator not worth thinking about.

 

With one last sorrowful wave goodbye, the Wragg’s “Tag” fleet, headed by the good ship Ludo, left for the Greater Magellanic Cloud.

 

“Well, that’s that...,” began Tarrant, setting the navicomp for New Auron, but a chirrup from the ship’s communicator stopped him.  The highly recognizable Buttafuoco sisters appeared on the viewscreen, but the flight deck behind them seemed oddly dark and forbidding.

 

“Where are you two?” asked Dayna.

 

“Is this the coolest or what?” burbled Noisia.

 

“This is that big, hairy whatsis’ ship!” Hell’n interrupted her sister.  “All we had to do was to put our case before the LansingWorld probate court!  We said, ‘hey, guys, either you give us the thing-that-blew-up-the-Plot-Device’s ship, or you gotta make us permanent citizens, ’cause we got no place else to go and no way to get there.’  And—zammo!—they had us and our luggage in orbit so quick, our heads were spinning!”

 

“Well, it’s an unquestionably dangerous-looking ship.  Are you going to be able to handle it?” a dubious Dayna asked uncertainly.

 

“Sure!” crowed the smaller sister confidently.  “Dayna!  It has actual weapons and stuff!  We could blow things up on planets from up here, if we could figure out which button does that!  And there’s handguns, and body armour, and loads of wall space for our ‘zines!”

 

“Of course, the ship smells a bit—but we can live with it.  It’s no worse than Noisy’s socks,” sniffed Hell’n.

 

“Izzat so???  Well, things are gonna be a bit different on this ship, girlie.  I find one more of your frozen pizza boxes on the bridge, I’m gonna....”

 

Dayna reached over and killed the sound.

 

“They’re an obnoxious pair,” commented Tarrant.

 

“Be fair,” Dayna defended her erstwhile buddies, “they’ve been living cheek-by-jowl in a planethopper all their lives.  That sort of constant irritation has got to shape your personality after a while.”

 

“Y’know, that’s very true...”  Vila contemplated the horrors of living in a ship a mere one-one hundredth the vastness of the castle-sized D.S.V. with someone who drove you nuts.  “...it would be like living in a jail cell.  Make you balmy after a bit!  I’d rather die than live in a lousy little planethopper—probably jump out an airlock.”

 

“Assuming, of course, someone didn’t push you out first,” sniped Avon.  “Let’s get out of here before Vila starts singing ‘I’ve Gotta Be Free’—and especially before those two start experimenting with the weapons console.  Tarrant?”

 

“Amen and ‘Bingo’ to that,” agreed the pilot.  He still wore the tee shirt Dayna had forced on him at Fanati-Con 40 (he had flat-out refused to wear the propeller beanie.)  It said “I’m not a mercenary—killing is more of a hobby with me.”  Dayna’s tee said, simply, “When in doubt, use more thermite.”  Though they’d never admit it, both were rather fond of their purchases.

 

They took off for New Auron at a less-than-leisurely Standard by Seven.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Chapter 16

 

“‘No act falls fruitless; none can tell how vast its powers may be; nor what results, enfolded, dwell within it silently....’”  

 Blake, quoting Bulwer-Lytton

 

“Yeah, right... and didja ever hear the one about the blind bat and the supreme commander from Nantucket 4?...”  

Vila’s response to Blake’s quotation

 

 

The following is excerpted from the Diary Tapes of Vila Restal, submitted to Megadweeb Publications of Ursa Minor by the famous rebel thief as part of the log of his adventures with the notorious rebel band known as ‘Blake’s 7’.  The memoir was re-written by a ghostwriter but retained much of its accuracy as the truth was scandalous (saleable) enough, became a best-seller and provided a living for Vila and his dissipated descendants for quite some time:

 

“Testing, testing; one, two, three... computer, are you on?  Wait a sec, let me get my drink....

 

“All right....I, Vila Restal, had a wonderful dream last night—no, not the one where Sula Chesku is spraying whipped cream on—no, not that one.  It felt more like that time we were caught in a psi-net with little Servalan Junior.  But it seemed real enough.  Let me tell you about it.

 

“I flotated, as light as air, towards Things To Come.  First, I found myself in a place where Servalan was up to her armpits in dirty dishes and mounds of unwashed laundry.  She was all in white, as usual, but there were baby urps and stains all over her dress.  Six red-faced, screaming toddlers reached up to her, and she was trying desperately to open up a box of Huggle-brand Disposable Didies.  She broke one of her long, red nails on the seal—SNAP!  Ouch!—and the babies just screamed louder and louder!

 

“Then, I went to another dream place.  Those two awful Buttafuoco sisters were there; they sat behind a table heaped high with ‘zines.  Lines of people waited to buy, waving credits at them!  The most popular ‘zines of all were about the crew of the Liberator...and the most popular of those were the ones about me!  So they sold out all their ‘zines and the crowd went away, disappointed.  There those two were, counting great wads of money up, cackling over it—then the Internal Revenue showed up!  It was great!

 

“Still I dreamed on, further into the future.  This was cloudy, ‘cos it was years and years away , but it was also the most real.  I went to a place, a magic place, where the little creatures of the galaxy were safe and could grow straight and strong.  And somehow, though they knew I was a thief, it wasn’t held against me.  Was this just wishful thinking, was I just fleeing reality, like I know I’m prone to?  I dunno, maybe even Blake’s bunch could go straight someday if the Federation would only leave them alone.  But there was no Federation there.  It was a world not too far away... a better, brighter world... filled with hope and safety... bright, happy faces....

 

“But I’ll tell ya, it sure as hell wasn’t New Auron.  They really kicked our butts when we brought Servalan Junior back.

 

“Maybe it was VilaWorld.  Well... there you are.”

 

The End