Chapter Text
Vila was happy.
He was floating in a sea of stars. The wide expanse of the universe curled around him, enfolding him, loving him. He felt protected. He felt safe.
“Vila.”
The voice glided into his mind. Far away on the other side of the stars, someone was calling his name. All he had to do was open his eyes. Such effort. Where he was, it was dark and peaceful.
“Vila, wake up.”
Vila, do this. Vila, do that. It had been that way all his life. His parents, the Federation, Blake – the people changed, but the words never did. Vila, you’re lazy. Vila, you’re a fool. There are a quarter of a million volts running through that convertor. No, he thought to himself, that wasn’t right. Those words had come from… ah, yes, Avon.
Avon, sitting on the other side of the table, scowling. Avon, winning as usual at their game. Avon, in funereal black, black eyes, black around the eyes, a great big black blot on Vila’s happy landscape.
“Your move,” Vila muttered. “It’s always your move.”
Avon’s arm swept the pieces from the board. They fell like teardrops and vanished into starlight.
“Listen to me!” he insisted. “She is coming.”
“So what?”
“She wants Orac. Give it to her.”
Vila screwed up his nose. “I don’t have Orac.”
“I do,” Avon said. “Vila, pay attention.” A black look from a looming black mass. “Your life depends on it. State your terms. For once in your life, be brave.”
Vila blinked. Harsh white light was bleeding onto the flight deck. Drops forming into puddles into clouds that ate into his surroundings until all was bleached from view. A glowing corona engulfed Avon and consumed him, blinding in its intensity. Vila tried to shield his eyes, except his hand would not move and the sun burned him. A shadow moved before the light and he could see again.
“Vila,” the shadow said.
The shape above him drew nearer. Vila’s vision cleared and the features came into view. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and dangerous as a pit viper. He smiled into the face of death.
“You’re beautiful, you are,” he murmured happily.
The woman retreated. “He’s babbling,” she said. “I told you to reverse the drugs!”
“We have, Commissioner,” came a man’s voice. “It may take time to take effect. His condition—”
“Does not concern me! Get on with it.”
“Commissioner Sleer, I really must protest.”
“Must you? That would be unwise.” She wafted back into Vila’s line of view, a vision in feathers and coal-black jewels. “Can you hear me, Vila?”
Safe and warm, he felt no urge to answer. The woman was speaking again, barking her orders. Warmth ran up one arm and pervaded his body. His mind cleared and the world raced back into sharp focus. Above him was a too-bright circular light. Restraints held down his arms and upper body, and a stiff collar held his neck in place so that all he could move was his head. Further than that, he was numb.
The woman slid back before his eyes. “Vila?”
“You,” he said, wondering. “Why, it’s our old mate, Serv—”
“Commissioner Sleer,” she interrupted him. “Do you know where you are? Do you remember what happened?”
He sought his memories. “I was on the flight deck,” he said with difficulty. “Avon. There was a game.” He looked up into her lovely eyes. She had plundered the blue skies of earth to plaster across her eyelids, and licked the blood of her victims for her lips, he thought. “He said you were coming.”
“Avon is dead.”
Something inside him lurched. “But I was just speaking to him.”
“Vila,” she said calmly, “Avon died an hour ago. I was there, I saw him die. We could not save him.”
“No.” He didn’t believe her, couldn’t believe her. Avon had been there, he had seen him, spoken to him, felt the usual lash of his tongue. “Where’s everyone else? What have you done to them? What have you done to me?!”
“They are dead, Vila. You walked into a Federation trap here on Gauda Prime. You, Avon, Blake, and the rest of your crew. You were shot in the back. Your spine is shattered.”
Her voice was silky smooth, like the caress of a lover. Gentle, pitying even, with words that cut him to the depths of his soul. Ice water flooded his veins. Fear curdled in his stomach. He wanted to be sick.
“How… bad?” he whimpered.
“You are paralysed from the waist down.”
Frantically, Vila tried to kick, bend a knee, wiggle his toes, anything to disprove what she was saying. Nothing. The sheet that covered him never even twitched. Sheer terror erupted from him in a howl that he thought would never end. Then someone was holding his face in their hands and forcing him to open his eyes. Through tears, he saw her, Servalan or Sleer or whatever she was calling herself these days. She had got what she had always wanted. Blake was dead, Avon was dead, and he would be next.
“I don’t want to die,” he sobbed.
“Vila, listen to me,” she urged. “The surgeons tell me they can operate. They say you will walk again. But they don’t have much time.”
“Please,” he begged.
“All you have to do is tell me where to find Orac.”
She wants Orac, spoke the voice of his dreams. Your life depends on it.
“You’d do that, for me?” he asked.
She swept away his tears with her thumb. “Of course. I have no quarrel with you. Tell me what I want to know, and you will be healed. Then, I think, a low security prison world for you. I can’t officially sanction your release, but someone as resourceful as you should be able to escape without too much difficulty.”
“Yes, I’m sure I would,” Vila mused.
“Good. Where is Orac?”
State your terms, whispered Avon on his dreams. Be brave.
“You can have him, nasty box of tricks that he is. I’ve never liked him,” said Vila with effort. “Trouble is, Sleer, I don’t believe you. How about you sort me out first, and then I take you to Orac?”
Her expression turned to stone. “This is not a negotiation.”
“I think it is. I’ve got what you want. See, it’s all come flooding back to me now. I’m the last person alive who knows where Orac is. Avon hid him in a place you’ll never find him.”
“You underestimate our technicians. Orac will be found.”
“Maybe so. But you’ll be a little old lady before then. If you live that long.” He nervously licked his lips. This was one hell of a gamble. You’d better be right, Avon, he thought to himself.
“I need more than your word,” said she. “A location.”
Vila thought fast. This mad idea that had somehow popped into his head would eventually require him to come up with Orac. How was he going to do that when he hadn’t a clue what Avon had done with him? “Okay,” he said. “He’s buried under a big tree.”
“Describe it.”
“Big. With leaves. In the forest.”
“Take us to it.”
Vila glanced down. “I can’t right now.”
“Then we’ll carry you.”
He grunted. “I might not be a doctor, but the one thing I know about spinal injuries is that you don’t move people who’ve got them. You certainly don’t go hiking through a forest. One false move, and I’m a goner. You’ll never get Orac then.”
She turned to the medical technicians. “Is this true?” She sighed with annoyance when she was met with tacit agreement. “Very well. Get on with the operation. How long before he is able to walk?”
“Twelve hours,” came the reply.
“Make it ten.” She returned to Vila’s side and roughly stroked his cheek. “If you’re lying to me, Vila, I’ll see you die like Avon did, choking on his own blood. Do you understand me?”
He swallowed hard. “I won’t let you down, Sleer. I’ve got too much to lose.”
She left, the waft of perfume the only lingering trace of her presence, reminding him of his bargain.
He lay rigid as the surgeons moved around him, adjusting robotics and computers in readiness for the procedure. Anything might happen in the next few hours. He might not wake up. The operation might go wrong. Or he might wake up and the operation was successful and Servalan expected him to make good on his promise. I don’t have Orac, he heard himself saying, and in his dreams Avon had said, I do. But Avon was dead and couldn’t help him. Servalan was going to kill him when he couldn’t produce Orac. As Cally was fond of saying, he would die alone, not necessarily silent if the Federation had anything to do with it.
Round and round his thoughts scurried like hyperactive mice until blessed relief came as sleep was forced upon him. I don’t have Orac, he fretted to the universe as he floated again on the sea of stars, and the answer came, you will, Vila, you will.