Sands Of...
It's not my fault. Honestly. It's all Blake's fault, he knows I'm a thief, he knows what temptation does to me, and he still took me there...
So here we all are in the med-unit. Cally is fussing and hovering, Gan is hovering and fussing, Jenna is staring and trying not to giggle, Blake is... trying to act normal. Avon is so wrapped in blankets we can barely see him, and I'd like to think he's asleep... nope. One big, red-rimmed eye peeps out, burning with rage and revenge, and fixes straight on me.
"It's not my fault!" I squeak. "I didn't mean to break it!"
"Blake," Avon tries to snarl in his usual way and completely fails, "kill him. Or I will."
"You can't, Avon," Jenna's voice bubbles with the laughter that I for one hope chokes her. "You're not..."
The eye bugs out a little and turns on her.
"Calm down, Avon, you'll make yourself ill," Blake says gravely, sitting on the edge of the gurney. Being braver than the rest of us, he puts a hand out and touches one shoulder, maybe even rubs it a little... much braver than I am, yes.
"I'll make Vila regret the day he was born," Avon sits up, the blanket falling away from one little bare shoulder, and snarls at us all - or tries to, but his vocal intimidation aren't up to the usual standard It's hard to terrify anyone, even me, when you're just under three-and-a-half feet tall, and as cute as a baby... well, a baby beserker, really. A small, round-faced, big-brown-eyed, totally adorable - and totally livid - baby beserker. Poor little - I mean really really little Avon.
When he grows up, he'll kill me. Slowly and painfully.
~oOo~
It all seemed like a good idea at first, didn't it? Meeting up with one of Avalon's secret sympathisers, a self-made Alpha Elite with a private planet, more money than Space Command, and just enough conscience to bankroll a few thousand more explosions... it all seemed so easy. We got fed Alpha Elite food (though Blake wouldn't let Avon tell the rest of us what was in it), drank Alpha Elite wines (though Blake wouldn't let me borrow a few dozen bottles to remember it by), and admired his Alpha Elite home (I didn't hear Avon muttering, but from Jenna's face and Blake's frown, he wasn't being nice about the bloodworm-silk draperies, solid hurculaneum furniture and apeskin rugs. I liked them.)
Councillor Xanad, his name was, a tall, lanky Beta, and he looked like one of those talking deathweeds that nearly killed us on Delta Horribilis IV - but he was also a collector of rare art and alien antiques, and liked to show them off. He took us (well, actually Blake and Jenna and Avon, the Alphas, the rest of us trailed along at the back) all around it. Paintings and statues and giant shellacked alien animals and a Supreme Empress's ransom in antique things and objects and stuff and... more things. And a whole level devoted to what he called... uhhh... Xenophiliac Zooerastia, very interesting, so I held back, kept out of the way of more important people, and managed to examine it all carefully while they were ahead looking at other exhibits. I had to run to catch up with them, past a whole lot of stuff worth nearly as much as our Treasure Room and a lot uglier...
And that's when I saw it.
In a small alcove in the hall, amongst heaps of other worth-more-than-the-Bank-of-the-Federation trifles.
It wasn't all that big, just a little too big to palm in my hand. A stand made of what looks like bubble-thin dark glass, and inside, two glass bulbs linked with a narrow... neck, I think. The top one was filled with sand, rainbow coloured, like tiny jewels, which was slowly sifting down into the bottom.
I know, I know, I shouldn't have. We were there to make friends, make alliances, make money for the rebellion, not rip off rich people we wanted to like us. But I didn't think he'd miss one little - little - whatever-it-was. And Blake and Cally tended to get difficult if I practiced skills on anything except the rebellion - never mind that I'd still need a career afterwards - so it had been a while...
It fitted in my pocket so well, like it was meant to go there. Then they called me to catch up with them, and we left - right after Xanad gave Blake promises of funds, several bottles of the worst alien starwine I'd ever tasted, a whole frozen megadrake for Zen's larder, and two of the smaller and stranger 'Man Communing With Nature' sculptures from the Xenophiliac Zooerastia collection. And we were teleporting back to the ship, just too late for me to think I should have it back.
It's Blake's fault, he should have known better.
~oOo~
So there I was in the teleport bay, watching them all leave for the flight deck, and knowing that when Xanad missed his little glass thing, and worked out one of Blake's career criminals took it, and cut off Avalon without a credit, and let Blake know what would happen to any of us if we ever set foot on his planet again, and Blake worked out why, and who, and what...
I would die. Slowly and painfully.
Damn.
But then I looked at it again, and it was so pretty and sparkly, and worth - probably - so much, and now mine...
"Vila?"
Damn, it was Avon. I casually hid it behind me and tried for innocent again. "Just coming."
He sighed, his usual, deliberately over-theatrical sigh that is usually followed by 'Vila, you idiot!'. "You look incredibly guilty when you do that, Vila. Now what have you done?"
"Me?" I didn't have a chance to shove it in a pocket, of course. I should have remembered that Avon only ever approved of sneaky thieving that he had a hand in. "Nothing, nothing... isn't that Blake calling you?"
He looked towards the hand I was trying to nonchalantly hold behind my back, and his glare deepened. "You didn't, Vila."
"Didn't what? I didn't do -"
"You did. Vila, you idiot!"
"I didn't!"
"Blake will have your head for this. What idiocy have you committed this time?"
"He'll never miss it!" I could see that Avon believed that as much as I did, and tried for the particular whine that sometimes - sometimes - annoyed him enough to let me off. "Come on, Avon, it's just one little thing, I could have taken something really important. And I'm a thief, after all, Blake knows that, he shouldn't have made me go if he didn't want something stolen."
"Blake would hardly expect... well," he went on with a slight, nasty smile, "maybe he would, if it were useful to his great and glorious rebellion. So what is it, Vila?"
I didn't want to show him. And I wasn't sure what it was, so I couldn't tell him. "Just... it's nothing."
He put out a hand. "That nothing had better be worth the trouble."
"It isn't!" Nope, that was the wrong thing to say. "It's just a little - something, then - something he'll never miss, and even if he does, he'll never know who took it, will he? Maybe he'll think the servi-bots lost it, or moved it or - something. Come on, Avon, you aren't going to be all moral, are you?"
"Morality has nothing to do with it, Vila," he snapped. "Intelligence does however, but that doesn't exonerate the stupid, not even you. What is it?"
"It's just... Look, we can just hide it... somewhere, no need for Blake to find out, is there?" Much as I don't like Avon's temper, Blake's is much worse.
That nasty little smile got nastier. "On the contrary, I'll even let you break the news, before he breaks... you. Come on -" He put out the hand again, his smile widening as I backed away. "You may as well get it over with, it will only be worse if he finds out from the good Councillor that his thief's... well, a theif. A stupid theif. You may as well throw youself on Blake's good nature now."
"You think that'll work?" I suddenly realised I'd brought the guilty hand round from behind me, and whipped it back before he could see what I had.
Avon shrugged. "No." He waved a micking hand towards the door. "After you."
I thought of baulking, but there wasn't much point - thought of glaring at him, but he was enjoying this too much - thought of denying everything, but that wasn't going to work with the... whatever-it-was being right there in my hand - thought of teleporting back to Xanad's palace and putting it back, but that would be against every code I was ever taught, every moral value I'd ever learned, everything I'd ever believed...
And anyway, we were too far away,
I shrugged as if the thought of telling Blake didn't make the Alpha Elite wine in my blood chill, and went to pass Avon... and then I tripped. Oh, hell.
Anyone can trip, and with Avon looming over them anyone would, wouldn't they? My hand went up, and the hourglass went up with it - and up from it, and up - and - and - smashed against the doorframe. Oh, hell.
A shower of sparkly rainbow dust flew out and landed on... oh, hell.
I shut my eyes tight, waiting for the explosion. Instead, I got a long, long, ominously long silence... and then a wail. A high, furious, childish wail. I opened my eyes, and stared at the five-year-old child sitting in a pile of Avon's clothes, trying to pull the leather up over one tiny shoulder.
"What -?"
"You -" the little boy sniffs, and tries to scorch me with a horribly familiar brown-eyed glare that... sort of loses something coming from a small, round, big-eyed, rose-bud-mouthed... cute face. I can't help thinking that the nose - though as small as the rest of him - is still on the straight and all-too-sharp side... and the small round chin is sticking out a mile. "You blundering, useless, half-witted, no... witless idiot!"
"Avon, you're... you're..."
"I don't know what you've done," and the over-precise words spoken through gritted baby teeth sounded... odd, "or how you did it, but I am going to kill you, Vila, slowly and extremely painfully - just as soon as we undo what you - what you..." He stared down at his clothes and himself and his tiny clenched fists. For a hideous minute I thought there were tears in those huge brown eyes - but it turned out to be just temper. He wasn't acting childish, well no more than usual.
"Avon, you're a... a..." I couldn't get my brain to start working, let alone my voice. All I could do was stare, as if somehow, somehow, that would make him turn back to, well, him. I did try closing my eyes - opened them - no, he was still little. This was impossible, absolutely impossible, couldn't happen, couldn't even in my worst nightmares happen, was simply, completely, definitely, totally imposs-
"Shut up, and call Blake," Avon tried to snap in that high, baby-sweet-and-Alpha-acid voice.
"What?" No, I definitely didn't want to do that. "Avon, I don't think he'll be very happy -"
"Call. Blake." He fumbled amongst the leather again, and pulled out one of the Liberator handguns, which looked ridiculously big in his child-sized hands, and wavered slightly as if it was too heavy for him. I couldn't help myself, I started forward to take it before he hurt someone like himself... or me.
"Undo it, then."
"What?" I was beginning to feel sick, those stomach pains again, it had to be stress. Cally always said it was. And I didn't even know what I'd done to deserve... "But I don't know how!"
He was pointing the gun unsteadily at me, hugging it in his tiny arms, and he was going to hurt someone if I didn't do something.
"Call -"
"Vila?" And that, of course, was Blake, coming into the teleport room to find out what the delay was. "Avon, what is going..." His voice dried completely; I haven't seen such a bewildered look on anyone's face, let alone Blake's, since I was a baby thief the size Avon was now size Avon was now and managed my first lockpick for old Dirty Dev when he locked himself into the Dome distillery...
I shook my head, this was no time for memories. Blake was still staring at a miniature Avon, the miniature Avon was still trying to aim the gun at me, and I couldn't think of any way to make it all sound not worth killing me slowly and horribly for. And the sick feeling wasn't getting any better.
"Vila," Blake's voice cracked, and he tried again. "Vila, what in the name of all the galactic -?"
"I don't know! It wasn't my fault, it just broke and - and I couldn't help it, it's not as if I meant to do it! Orac can fix it, can't he? Can't he? Avon?" I looked down at him - and wished I hadn't, all the fires of Beta Hellanbrimstyne were burning in those big, brown eyes, and he was clearly picturing me in every single fire. Not something that little children normally pictured, I thought, and all the fierier for it.
"Fix... Blake, help me hold this straight so I can shoot him." Avon gasped as Blake bent and suddenly took the gun from his shaking little hands; that fires of Beta Hellanbrimstyne glare switched to him, but it didn't have the same effect. "Blake!"
"I don't know what you two have done now," Blake said with an unsteady attempt at calm, "so we'll take Avon to the medical unit and let Zen and Orac find out." With that he picked Avon up, gathering the leather jacket around the little body and ignoring the complicated, high-pitched noise of outrage from the baby mouth, glared at me to follow, swept out the door...
And ran straight into the others, Jenna, Gan and Cally, who'd come to find out what the delay was.
Oh hell... could it get any worse?
~oOo~
Yes, it could, it can and it looks like it will.
Orac is tinnily burbling about 'sands of time' and 'alien hourglass' and 'fascinating experiment' and is no help at all. Zen is as silent as only a computer who doesn't have an answer can be. Both have been ordered to analyse, examine, investigate, research, compute... and find a way to reverse or face a small child with a large laser probe.
Blake is trying to be supportive, and respectful, and act like carrying and caring for a small, tantrum-tossed Alpha bundle in blankets is just part of any leader's daily duties, nothing unusual at all, and that the hand gently rubbing a tiny, rigid back is nothing to do with either of them. Cally's trying - and failing - not to dote on how cute her very first human youngling is, and Gan is alarmingly like a very large Helotrician hen with one unruly and vicious chick. Jenna thinks it's hysterical, and Avon is nearly hysterical. I'm thinking of locking up all the smaller weapons - any those little hands can lift off the ground - somewhere with a lock that's five feet off the ground... and, if he can't hurt me any other way, whether Alpha children were taught not to bite. The rebellion's probably on hold until we can find a rebel creche... or a nanny-bot or ten.
And just who's going to tell our little Avon that there's no tiny leather outfits in the Wardrobe Room? Not me, after all it's not my fault. Honestly.
-the end-