Ambiguities

by FreedomChick12

Travis, Blake, shackles and flowers.

And the gates of the Chapel were shut,
And 'thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be...

William Blake

#
#

Grimy iron pinioned Blake's wrists just above his curls, which were shaggy from neglect. He'd forgotten the fever-heat in his contorted shoulders. With glazed eyes and a faraway face, he stared at an oily puddle, cheek heavy against his arm.

To tell the truth, he wasn't yet free from the spell of his psycho-manipulation nightmares and that mind-control beam which Jenna had briefed him about. He himself remembered nothing of mining asteroids, summits, Le Grande, Ven Glynd. Since waking to find Travis in a mummy costume and Jenna tugging at him amid eddying laser whines, he'd been stumbling around like a trooper under mild stun.

Once again he had escaped the ship to brood. Damn bad habit – look where it got him. But, as after the killing of Gan, Liberator had threatened to stifle him. The crowded flight deck was like a brainbutcher's capsule where probes were hooked under the skin of his temples. Avon was maddening. Jenna was as bad because she didn't deserve his surliness. So he'd done what any spooked rebel does – run blindly.

Following the ritual, he'd zeroed the teleport controls, even though his dear devil Avon stood a fair chance of persuading the crew away this time. 'There's no hurry,' Blake had once told him earnestly, after listening in amused delight to the man's ambitions. Searching those marvelous, impudent eyes, the only things that acknowledged Blake's nearness as the technician sat in profile and with crossed arms. Meanwhile Blake had mulled over the many reasons why there was no hurry for Avon to grab his ship and pack him off to become an Earthbound politician. Seductive schemer – Blake wouldn't blame the crew too much if they were swayed. If they left orbit.

The dungeon's door creaked, letting in shafts of green sun from the jungle. Blake squinted away the glare, a stench of rank vegetation thick in his throat. When the sun was at meridian, the perfume of the fleshy flowers was heavy enough to gag on.

His jailor kicked a bucket over for a stool, and massaged his eye, in a dejected mood. 'I've isolated the cause of the time distort failure,' he said, perhaps from an officer's habit of reporting continually to someone. Then he muttered a Gamma curse. Blake concluded he couldn't fix the fault.

Apparently Travis had purloined a civilian cruiser on Atlay. Both tracking Docholli, his flight pattern was similar to Liberator's. Still, Blake saw a weird but pregnant fate in the fact that Travis happened to be stranded with a malfunction on Ajjul, the world where Blake had dived for cover. If he believed in such things, he'd think they magnetized each other.

Yawning, Sven Travis stuck his lanky legs out. He scratched his stubble and said, 'There's nothing to be eaten on this putrid pile of leaves. My ship's previous owner must have been a decadent Alpha nob – the dispenser's stuffed with caviar and truffles. As inedible as the jungle fruit.' For the first time he glanced at his mute companion. 'You haven't asked me whether your Liberator's still in orbit. Don't you care? Or don't you doubt your comrades? I'd be holding you hostage for the ship, if Shivan hadn't noticed your people's loyalty is waning fast. Loosen your tongue, you know, and I give you some caviar.'

Blake just watched him, with motely cryptic eyes and a tendril of greasy ringlets hanging down his forehead.

Travis grunted and stared instead out the grating. 'I'll terminate you before I leave planet,' he said, merely as a piece of information. 'Space knows when that will be. Like to know why I've waited? You hate captivity more than you hate the Federation. Same thing, you'd say if the cat hadn't got your tongue. Don't you dissidents swear to suicide in captivity? It would amuse me to drive you to suicide. Only way I see, though, is beating your brains against the stone. Messy, and difficult. Anytime you feel like offing yourself, give me a nod. I've got a lethal pill you can swallow.'

He eased off a boot, wriggled his toes and chatted on. 'Suicide fits your profile, you're the moody kind. I know you better than you know yourself, Blake. Literally. Those years in your twenties that are still suppressed under memory treatment – I could tell you every detail. Where you travelled. Your actions. Who you were in love with.' Travis looked sly.

Was I? thought Blake, remotely. What was her name?

'Aren't you curious? Your happiest years nullified. Feel like a mutoid, do you? You've no future, Blake, and little past. That means you only have here and now. With me. So—' the velvet voice changed to a soldier's bark - 'why don't you talk to me, Roj?'

Blake said, 'Because you talk to yourself so well.'

The officer's mouth twisted. 'Suitable. I'm mad, if you ask Space Command's puppeteers. I've been officially informed I'm as psychotic as you are. For two years I hunt a sociopath, only to find I am one.'

'I wouldn't trust their assessment. The Federation is founded upon psychosis, therefore to be condemned as deranged is often a compliment.'

'Comforting, coming from you.' Travis shot him a wily glance. 'Don't play up to me. Your hands are blue, did you know? Inhibited blood flow.'

'Maybe if they go gangrenous you'll stop visiting me.'

'Once upon a time I was dead keen to haul you to justice.'

'So what happened?'

'I discovered there's no justice to haul you to. Not in the Federation.'

'Then we think alike.'

'Hah.' Travis laughed, an uninhibited yelp, then relapsed into his sullenness.

Incorrigibly curious, even when these looked like his last hours, Blake asked, 'That trial of yours. It was a sham, but how much of one? What really happened on Serkasta?'

'Same as on Auros. Same as on any problematic world far enough from home for a disinformation campaign. Word filtered down from the highest echelons not to differentiate between civilians and armed insurgents. Unofficial instructions were not to stop shooting until the planet was too demoralized to so much as spit at a trooper in the street. Patrols were thinly stretched. We had to rely on terror tactics to keep control. Functional terrorism, Blake, to contain your nihilistic kind. Ultimately, I was on trial for the expedience of Servalan's predecessor.'

'And that explains your famous record of ruthlessness that even the Administration squirms at?'

'Believe me, do you?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Trouble is, you do believe me. You witnessed massacres winked at by the Administration on Earth. Well, Space Command puts Earth Security in the shade. Servalan has the frontiers to rule, where everything is twice as ugly. The purpose of most war crime court-martials is to scapegoat an officer who followed unofficial orders — thereby placating the civilian Administration. Space Command must nominally follow Earth's ethical guidelines. Until we can dump the politicos for martial law.'

'So you see yourself as a martyr for the glorious cause of securing Space Command's hidden ascendancy?'

Travis scowled, between bitterness and mockery. 'And what would a political deviant have advised me to do, then?'

'Simple. Defect. Denounce the military oligarchy, spill their secrets. The resistance would have granted you amnesty. Then the outer worlds would have evidence that Space Command sanctions civilian massacre and terrorism. You, Travis,' he smiled in true, feckless humour, 'could have been invaluable to me. To the rebellion.'

This dissident's jesting made Travis uneasy. Usually, when Blake laughed, he was delighting in the powerful looking silly. Like on Sinofar's world, where they had dueled to a death which had been postponed. The duel would end here. Differently. 'Insidious worker, aren't you, Blake?' he said, baring his teeth like a warning dog. 'I know rebels. Their way is to undermine, to plant doubt, to play devil's advocate.'

'But I'm the one in irons. How can I threaten your political virtue?'

'Then shut up. You don't get your free speech around here.'

Slumping another way to ease his neck muscles, Blake pondered Travis. As a mass-murderer in the flesh, he horrified Blake — theoretically. Stripping himself of theory, however, the man seemed devoted officer material, nothing more heinous than that. He believed in order, and killed to maintain it. Blake believed in reform, and killed to promote it. Faith blinded each to their own methods, but did he look as cruel to Travis as Travis looked to him? Perhaps Travis was just another soldier, a tool whose crime was obedience. In the circumstances, an unforgivable crime. But that time Blake had taunted, 'You don't matter enough to kill,' he had meant — you tool. You fool. He suspected Travis was more naive than most, to have been used so efficiently.

And abused. Since he'd been victimized by the high echelons all his career, there must be some contrary spirit in him. Space Command rarely threw out barbaric officers — only individualistic ones. That sulkiness and defensive arrogance of his, Blake recognized at once as the classic syndrome of a promoted low-grade. Gammas and dissidents were underdogs both. And Blake was naturally inclined to like Federation rejects and kickers against authority. For years he'd despised Travis for an elitist military clone. Now he saw the man as a bit too simple, a bit too crazy. Disturbed mostly because he was as confused as hell.

So he watched the ex-Space Commander with an ambivalent smile.

Pulling out a hip-flask, Travis took a swig. 'Like a mouthful, prisoner?'

'Wouldn't mind,' was the neutral answer.

Travis swung himself up and wafted it under Blake's nose. The rebel looked not at the vetizade but at his smooth face. Contrasted with the patch, his single eye seemed peculiarly luminous. Difficult to tell its colour. Grey-blue, Blake had thought, but at times, catching the light, it glinted tawny gold.

That silken voice made the nape of Blake's neck prickle. 'Ironic, Blake. You're the only one to agree my trial was a set-up. Every alert officer knows it, of course, but no one has guts enough to call it unfair.'

'Solidarity is mouthed about as a big thing in the service. "We look after our own," is virtually a slogan. It's a lie. Your army colleagues will always stab you in the back. An inevitable result of the philosophy. You're clever enough to see that.'

Travis grunted. 'Clever, am I? What happened to your fanatical hatred of me, rebel?'

'My fanatical hatred, as you put it, is for the dictatorship.' He paused. 'Tell me, who is yours for, Travis? Roj Blake? Or for every power that's exploited you since you were a Gamma slum kid?'

'Don't try your seditionist wiles on me. Instead, how about you apologise for my eye and arm?'

Jaw hardening, Blake looked away. 'You murdered twenty of my Freedom Party friends.'

The ex-officer said nothing.

Soon, Blake laughed tiredly at himself. 'Maybe your superiors murdered twenty of my Freedom Party friends. I just don't understand how you could go along with the order.'

'Because they were inhuman trash,' said Travis shortly. He paced with his long soldier's stride, and sipped again from the flask. 'If it were now, possibly I wouldn't go along with the order. Only because my superiors aren't worth risking my neck for.' He halted with his back to Blake. 'Do you know what I announced at my trial? That the Federation is run by hypocrites and supported by fools. I spat that in Seymour's wooden face.'

'No dissident could have phrased it better. I'd like to have been there.'

Travis grinned. 'But you were, Blake. Your raid killed quite a few people in that courtroom whom I wasn't sorry to see dead. Ironic,' he said again. 'Isn't it?'

'No.'

With a noisy yawn, Travis came and tipped up his flask roughly between Blake's teeth. The rebel gulped down a dram of vetizade, glad of the corrosive fuel. 'Like that Gamma rotgut, do you, Alpha?'

'I'm no Alpha.' The alcohol left Blake's voice husky. 'I disowned my grade ten years ago, and my grade disowned me. You should have stayed a Gamma, Travis.'

'Oh I did, at heart. The officers' mess never forgave me for it.'

Amused, Blake suggested — more slyly than seriously —'Why don't you rebel, Sven?'

'Why? Because your dependable flaw is mine too. I'm foolishly loyal. You're an engineer – know much about time distort drives? My training only covered military standard engines.'

'A fair bit. Jenna's been teaching me ship maintenance.'

'Do you know why I've hunted you so long?'

Blake watched his ungainly black patch, eyes crinkling in a curious smile. 'You rather puzzle me, I admit.'

Because he was bone weary, the officer permitted himself one more swig of alcohol. 'You could have been everything I resented – a privileged Alpha civilian with a cushy home job. The kind my soldiers and me wallowed in swamp and void and lasers to protect. Instead, you run amok and fight the Alphas who trampled on my family, the top brass who sent my soldiers to the swamps on idiotic missions, the system that required me to desert my class and fight up the rank strata like a dog in a pack in order not to be despised, to win a modicum of respect. There am I, trapped in a system the Alphas devised, determined to beat them at their own dirty game. You simply slip out of the rat race sideways. And beat me, ruin my chances of one day laughing down at the high-tier bastards who made me sweat blood every day of my climb. I hated you because of the injustice. You're not going to lick the nobs before I get my opportunity to, Blake.'

Travis left, shutting out the reek of hot jungle.

#

'Feeding time,' barked Travis, and pounded a metal bucket with his metal arm, unnaturally fast. 'Still alive, my enemy?'

Possibly, thought Blake, thankful to escape from his demon-ridden doze. He wasn't so thankful for the other demon rioting through half his muscles, however. Like sugar to medicine, was swearing to movement – it helped him through the nasty necessity.

'Wouldn't have thought you had such a filthy mouth,' observed Travis.

'You bring out my dark side.'

'If you said please, I might release you. Amateur fighters are no threat.'

'Funny how an amateur flogged you on Sinofar's world.'

'On the other hand, you're such a charming sight in chains. Try some caviar.' Travis stuck a spoon between his teeth.

Gingerly, Blake mouthed the stuff. 'Ghastly,' he said.

'My opinion exactly. Prefer this, don't you?'

The hip flask replaced the spoon. Damn right, Blake thought, savouring the burning in his throat. This time, Travis permitted him enough to slightly spin his brains. That was nice too. Set those nightmare-devils scampering. Lately, his conditioning had been plaguing him something awful. Which was strange, since Blake believed he'd circumvented all the behavioural strictures, plus pieces of the memory erase.

'Glorious morning,' said Travis. 'Not such a bad planet, Ajjul.'

'I can see.' Blake peered out the rusty grate, which gave him a square foot's picture of the opulent native plants. Ivy-like tendrils had crawled in to crisscross the dank paving. If they were anything like the flora on Saurian Major, they might strangle him one of these nights. Make a quick end of it.

'I'll show you.' With his usual impulsive quickness, Travis disappeared outside. He returned trailing ropes of thick stems, bristling with flowers. These, for amusement, he plucked neatly, sorting them into soldierly rows at his feet. He'd left the door ajar, and sun blazed across a rainbow of ornately-shaped petals.

Whistling a barracks' ballad, Travis threaded the alien orchids through the chains securing Blake's handcuffs and anklecuffs. As a finishing touch he chose three gold and red beauties to weave into his prisoner's mess of black curls. 'Now you'll leave a pretty corpse,' he said.

The fellow's decidedly mad, thought Blake.

Admiring his handiwork, Travis laughed, the way a dog yelps. 'Well, you berserkers believe in tearing down the domes to let the trees invade.'

'Domes facilitate drugs and surveillance. Anyway, they're unnatural.'

'Don't tell me about unnatural. You're more unnatural than I reckon you know.' Travis smirked at him for a length of time. 'Aren't you going to ask me what I mean?'

'If it's unpleasant, I'm sure you'll tell me.'

'You must be a hard one, Blake. Eh? Been in the rebellion all your adult life, and totally dedicated to your cause. That it?'

'Harder than I enjoy being.'

'Got a bedmate among that crew of yours?'

'That's your business, is it?' Blake inquired politely.

'You're my business, Roj Blake. Every last sordid bit of you. What's more, you're my possession. In a day or two you'll be pushing up the daisies or, rather, the orchids. Until then, nobody other than me exists for you. One never has such authority over another as over the person one will shortly kill. An interrogator told me that. Scurvy breed, interrogators. Therapists too - another scurvy breed. I was sentenced to re-training therapy, Blake, you know. You're not the only one they've played mind-games with.'

'My sympathies.'

'Stick your sympathies.' Thin-skinned as he always had been, the ex-officer snarled three inches from Blake's face. The snarl ended in an animal-like snatch of the jaws, which almost bit the other's lip for him.

Blake twitched aside, oddly affronted. 'Leave me alone.'

'Fastidious, aren't we? Once you would have liked a kiss. But on that subject your opinion has been changed. Like one or two of mine.'

Blake repeated himself from a year ago. 'You talk a good flight, Travis.'

'And always the truth. Whereas you can't recognise truth, after the stories they spun you for memories.'

'Actually, I'm overcoming that.'

'Boastful words, Roj. How about actions? For example, have you got into that Delta's pants yet? Or has that snooty Alpha dragged you down to his level? He likes it any way it comes, does that one. I've read his file.'

Blake spat — an unthinking reaction.

Just as automatic, Travis cuffed him. A dislodged ruby orchid bounced to the ground.

Walking away, Travis fell into at-ease position, back to Blake. 'Jagdishwar St Clair,' he announced. 'Jag for short. Ring any bells? He was your last, Blake. Ready for a potted romance? Jag St Clair was an outer world trader. Under that cover, he liaised for your Freedom Party. One time when he came to Earth, you met him Outside. Pretty soon he was liaising with you. You and he were as thick as thieves for two years — when you fiddled things so as to be on the same planet. I've seen a photo. Black as space and a grin, is all I remember. Reckless chap, though. Shot down over Graislemere, only weeks before my squad and I took you.'

Jag St Clair, thought Blake dully. He didn't believe in any such person. Avon, yes — that wasn't news to him. Unfortunate, the manner in which he'd found out about Avon. On planet-leave once, he'd had an early alert from Jenna on the ship, and had gone to the inn room whose number Avon had left with him for emergencies. A stranger had answered the door. Blake had been apologising when, over the man's shoulder, he'd caught the ambiguous eyes of Avon. While they'd walked on to collect Gan, Avon, in the unwholesome silence, had grown angrier and angrier. Yet for dear life Blake couldn't string two sensible words together, either relevant or irrelevant. The next day Avon had picked one of his most bitter fights with Blake. Yes, his furious, infuriating Avon was bisexual.

Not so himself. Granted, he'd been celibate since leaving Earth. But he certainly appreciated women. In the past, there had been —

'Then, when they rebuilt your mind,' resumed Travis, 'they replaced Jag St Clair with an equally romantic interlude on Exbar. Yes, you visited Exbar as a boy; yes, you were fond of your cousin. They embroidered prettily upon those facts — as, of course, you recall.'

Brain protesting against the information, Blake growled, 'I saw Inga recently. As you recall.'

'Very courteous you were too. Not conspicuously passionate, though — I thought you could have acted your role with a bit more heart. But your way, you avoided puzzling her. The puppeteers told you Exbar had been abandoned so you wouldn't send her puzzling billets-doux.' Travis surveyed him like a zoological specimen. 'I suppose this is an error of the genes too. You're a deviant every way a human being can deviate, Blake. Politically, sexually. I trust I've shocked you. The psycho-manipulators hauled your morals into shape. Now you're programmed to scandalize yourself. Is your programming functioning, my model citizen?'

'You're one of them, Travis, Their stories, your stories. Why should one be different from another?'

'For the record, I've never lied. Since I was six, that is. I give you my word as an officer that you wouldn't know a cunt from the gullet of an Eridani Warp Wolf. But I'm your executioner, and perhaps you're reluctant to trust me. I can prove your perversity, Roj.'

'Thank you, no.'

'Never say no with a gun in your gut, prisoner. Spoils the effect.'

Indeed, Travis's firing finger prodded his belly button. Blake stared into that amber leopard's eye as his belt was jerked loose and his trousers unfastened.

'Don't look so baleful — clashes with the flowers. Travis grinned with his narrow red mouth, and his bionic fingers grabbed their quarry. 'Better beg for your pride and joy, Blake.'

'Under the circumstances I doubt it's either.'

'I can squeeze this to a pulp. The hand you shot away cracks metal now. Or I can jerk you off. Metaphorically. Or even literally. Tell me which option you prefer, and we'll see whether you're queer or not.'

'I'm glad you're no deviant, Space Commander.'

'Hah! Appealing to my military discipline, are you? A third of my soldiers were queer. In the field you don't worry which gender's assigned to the bunk they sneak into. Back home they get arrested for it, but that's home's affair, isn't it? I'll tell you about a field fling of mine. A twenty-year man who wouldn't know freedom if he fell over it. Decent trooper. Shot whom he was told to shoot, whether he liked the job or not. Guarded whose court martial he was told to guard. You wouldn't understand that kind of honour, Blake.'

'I just believe there's another kind.'

'Bombing society apart, while my troopers get mangled to secure a bit of order so the civilized worlds might stay civilized?'

'Would you accept me saying I can respect your patriotism?'

'I'm no patriot, not any more. For the first time I've nothing to believe in.'

'Won't executing me be a patriotic act?'

'Queer, hell.' remarked Travis. 'You're the rummest fellow I ever met.' Mood swinging, his artificial hand tugged. 'Where's your enthusiasm, rebel? This is the last lay you'll get.'

'I'm afraid I hadn't noticed it was a lay.'

'So I see. Jag St Clair launched his ship the William Blake six years ago on its final flight. Know your facts and figures like a bloody brother, I do. See, Jag was a William Blake fiend before he became a Roj Blake fiend.'

Blake interrupted. `And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, and binding with briars my joys and desires. Last lines from The Garden of Love.'

'You remember the poetry, but not the love. After six years, you're nutty for a bit of manflesh. Only trouble is, your mind rejects the fact. What happens if you fight through those briars they bound about your consciousness, Roj?'

'I get scratched. Nightmares come after every anti-Federation act. Then I know the brainbutchers are haunting me for the transgression.'

'Well, I mean to give you another nightmare or two.' Sven Travis kissed him.

The thin hot lips, the teeth, were horrible. Yet Blake's urge to spit that snakey tongue from his mouth was the very thing that prevented him doing so. Damned if he'd be programmed like a mutoid. If his abhorrence was artificial, then all the suns could collapse before he'd give in to it. The brainbutchers wouldn't win, not while he possessed a rag of dignity. Frankly, he'd rather kiss a war criminal.

Travis paused to enjoy his evident conflict, and to unhook the giant iron key from his belt. He meted out a few feet of slack on the chain that ringed Blake's handcuffs. The ancient locks squealed. 'Sound like molested cats,' said Travis.

'Any cats on this planet?'

'Passing the buck, Blake?' Travis shoved him to his knees. Which was disgracefully easy since Blake's musculature wasn't in working order. In fact he was every bit as stiff as the locks, and wouldn't have minded squealing too. Tripped by the ankle restraints, he bumped against Travis's hip as he went down. Flowers tumbled everywhere.

'To pursue our experiment' said Travis, 'you're going to suck me. Might cheer me up a bit. You never know. At any rate, it will help relieve the monotony until I get that time distort fixed. Be something to remember you by — the second time Roj Blake was on his knees to me.'

'The damn first,' objected Blake.

'Ah, a clone of yours once groveled before me.'

'Then he was no clone of mine.'

'True enough — he was only a biological copy. It was nice, all the same. Keep in mind that if you bite, I'll execute you by inches, starting with the inches St Clair prized most.'

'I wouldn't bite such an amiable rapist.'

Travis unbuttoned his stolen civilian clothes.

'Mind you, I've forgotten everything,' said Blake, puzzled about how to do this thing anyway.

'As you've gathered, I'm not fussy. I'm simply a dismissed soldier with nowhere to go and I'd like to come one more time.'

Avon would make reference to my bleeding heart around about now, thought Blake. Because if I still despised Travis I'd chew him and be damned — by inches. As it was, Blake inclined towards doing the job. Except how in a black hole had he ever taken this up as a hobby? From stringy Travis hung a stringy measure of wrinkled human meat, and the sight did nothing for Blake's appetite. Hell, he was no cannibal. His jaws clamped to exclude that intruder.

Around about now, what in fact was Avon doing? If he knew Blake was being requested to suck cock at gunpoint, would he order the truant ship around and rescue him, true to tradition, at the eleventh hour?

More significantly, if he knew that the true Roj Blake had once sucked cock for joy and desire — as the poem went — would the knowledge have made a difference? Even a slight difference? Again Blake saw dark, daring Avon appear over that stranger's shoulder, and was damn sure his tongue-tied trouble hadn't simply arisen from being confronted with homosexuality. What did he care for any Jag St Clair, a mere name? No, he was undergoing this because of the intuition that he would have asked Kerr Avon to that garden of the poem if the precincts weren't forbidden. Blake was never so outraged, nor his throat so sour with regret. He jammed Travis into that throat.

His brain reeled, but the iron heavy about his wrists kept his panic reaction mental. There was no running from the clammy weight slipping thickly in his mouth. And that was the method of defeating conditioning — refuse to be scared off. Trespass anyway and damn the torpedoes. If it wasn't difficult in this situation, Blake would have grinned evilly at the brainbutcher whose face he pictured to sustain his rage. He remembered hour-long screams in that capsule with the irregularly pulsating light. That was where his friendship with Avon was lost — picked to pieces in that annihilating light, six years ago. Sometimes he could murder the entire Federation.

Travis held his neck fast, dodging agile-hipped to catch against the roof of Blake's mouth. That initial crawling horror was going — victim of the rage. Nasty as the act still was, Blake stopped minding much when he wrenched his attention to the other man. He liked the symptoms of the senses' excitement in Travis — his short gasps, his jerks, his rising dreadful tension. That was the good aspect, and Blake didn't begrudge him five minutes of sexual drunkenness.

A muttered kind of howl, and Travis's lean body jack-knifed. From the alien object blocking Blake's throat oozed a foul thin paste. Abruptly, Blake was fighting like a devil trapped in heaven, his imagination conjuring the filthiest liquids he least wanted to swallow. Thrice-used engine fuel, for example. Piss of warg strangler. Travis retired from harm's way, leaving Blake to choke in disgust and despair. They always kicked you when you were almost up.

Blake thought, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. Not poetry, but prayer, one he employed at need. When the chant was true and that usurping brainbutcher was only a phantom again, he looked up.

His captor sat hunched on the upturned bucket, at an angle to Blake. For three minutes he twined a long stalk about and between his bionic fingers. Flexing the fingers, he snapped it decisively. He came over to Blake, who staggered to his feet.

'I pay my debts.' Travis nodded, just like he was negotiating card winnings with a comrade. 'I won't suck you, though. You might throw a fit.'

'Don't take my fits personally.'

'You won't want me kissing you, will you?'

'I wish someone would. May as well be you.'

Blake watched the downturned, rather handsome yellow eye as their mouths explored enemy mouths. Forthright, Travis's black-gloved hand sunk again below his belt. Although Blake stiffened with misgivings, so did the whimsical devil down there, with neither rhyme nor reason. Desperation, Blake supposed. The prospect of death – or of growing old in a dungeon with a mad soldier. Because some while ago he'd left off expecting Travis to kill him.

'The bionics have their advantages.' The mad soldier grinned.

'I only hope you've a safety catch on that finger.'

'Don't think of men. To be on the safe side, don't think of anything whatsoever.'

'Easy,' answered Blake. He fed the chain through the ring of his right handcuff, until he was able to hug Travis's whipcord of a waist one-armed. The other was pulled short to the wall.

If Sven Travis was to be, subjectively speaking, his only lover in past or future, Blake wasn't about to refuse. Puppeteers made terrible romance writers – he hadn't liked the cold fish he'd thought himself to be when Exbar was the only escapade he had to his name. Which was why he'd laughed when Avon accused him of not understanding about Anna. Even if he were to rot into a handcuffed skeleton on Ajjul he wouldn't go as a good little homophobe. He'd go loyal to the things Jag St Clair, whoever he was, had battled for. Besides, what greater joke on the Federation than to pervert his morals with the Space Commander ordered to arrest him? Blake wanted to hate hate and only hate. He was glad to stop hating Travis.

That smooth black hair had fallen in a wild forelock over Travis's eye. Shame about the other eye.

As for the metal arm, Travis seemed to have made a fine art of utilizing its speed and dexterity. Well, the services were lonely for a maverick, and you spent your field years either bored or frightened. But Blake wasn't supposed to be thinking.

Their kiss gained conviction. Travis's tongue fought for his throat, under the emotional pressure which he'd flirted with revealing all morning. Blake could see in his face – but seeing anything required too much concentration. The only sense left him was the skin over which Travis played light friction with his eerie black fingers. The brainwashing didn't stand a chance. This was genuine, this was the truth – beautiful, and his at last.

#

Rocking on his lanky legs, Travis was telling Blake a planet-spanning saga of a joke about a naive trooper, several bizarre fictive aliens, and a gorgonlicker. As yet Blake hadn't worked out what a gorgonlicker might be. That, he supposed, was the punchline.

The punchline never came. Hinges giving a shrill, short warning, the iron door smashed into Travis's shoulders. The amber eye went hollow and dark, and he pitched to the stone.

In darted Avon, gun training on Blake's inert ex-jailer.

'Avon.' Blake laughed under the change of his circumstances. 'Back from Space City already?'

'Space City isn't exactly my style. When the teleport controls are zeroed, Blake, retrieval operations tend to be delayed.' Only then did he leave his paranoid covering of Travis to inspect Blake.

Ah, thought Blake awkwardly. He'd given up the attempt to pull his trousers higher than his knees, since he was a degree too tightly trussed and Travis had chosen to grin instead of help.

Avon's ivory cheeks turned a less warm shade of pale. Not deathly — more like murderous. He swallowed, avoiding Blake's face, then his gun glided with cruel purpose to the concussed man. Travis was face down, but twisted at the hips. That was where the gun stopped.

'No, Avon.'

'He —'

'No. It didn't quite qualify as rape.'

Jolted for the second time, Avon kept his eyes even further from Blake's face. Slowly he holstered his gun.

'Avon, there's a key at his waist, please.'

Bruised and flecked with rust, Blake's wrists were freed. He massaged rebellious biceps, watching Avon kneel quietly to spring open his ankle fetters. 'Damn good to see you,' Blake said.

Avon rose and thumbed his bracelet, gaze wandering again to Travis. 'Liberator. I have him. Stand by.'

'Give me five minutes, Avon.' Blood danced in Blake's head after he bent to restore his decency. 'I'd like to walk to the mess, not reel.'

'The medical unit,' Avon corrected blandly. 'Liberator, we'll teleport in five minutes.' He clicked off the communicator. 'Are you harmed?' he asked, formal of manner.

'Well, I think my legs have been attached upside down. I'm wondering whether that door has given Travis brain damage.'

'I didn't know I was to treat him gently.' Nevertheless, Avon checked Travis, probing in his hair. 'Still solid. No blood. No contusion.'

'Good. It hit his shoulders, mostly.'

'He always gave me the impression of being insane anyway.'

'Certainly he's eccentric.' Blake smiled. 'How about some help here?'

Mistrustful dark eyes glanced up from the sprawled figure.

A twinge passed through Blake. Have I made him look like that at me? he thought. He lifted a hand. 'I need the services of your shoulder.'

Avon submitted to support him as he exercised or, more honestly, shuffled about the dungeon. 'He forgot to feed me,' Blake excused his state.

'Muscle degeneration,' diagnosed Avon.

'Ta very much.'

Avon tossed him that old look of needling humour.

'And the others,' Blake asked, 'Space City wasn't their style either?'

'Not yet. But, Blake, I hope you've learned this time.'

'Learned? Enormously.'

'If you believe you need to disappear from the ship periodically, then that is, as you observed the last time, nothing to do with me. Seeing how disastrous your retreats are, though, you might be wiser to find an alternative to — thinking, as you phrased it last time. Possibly even — discussion. Your followers, for example, are wondering why you never mentioned that your conditioning still troubles you. They witnessed your brainwashing nightmares, Blake.'

'You mean I'm acting like a moody and unmanageable old rebel.'

'Your phrase, Blake.'

'I burrowed down here because they seized control of my mind as easy as a Space Rat stealing a joy ride.' Ruefully, Blake shook his head. 'As a matter of fact, I'd like to take you up on the offer of a discussion. You personally, Avon, I mean. I've something rather urgent to discuss. To the end of pulling myself together. Not a pretty job, but if you're willing.' His steps slowed. 'Down here, I thought I'd left it too late.'

'I'll listen. After the medical unit, Blake. You do look somewhat battered.' Avon gestured to his neck — which got lacerated when he was captured, Blake remembered. The indicating gesture fell just short of a caress. Blake realised that kind of thing was familiar. More than once, Avon had approached him in a way Blake thought only right for a woman, then had disguised his slip with aggression.

Now, that told Blake everything. Almost, he told Avon everything, there and then. Along the lines of, Kerr Avon, I'm gay and you're amazing. But he elected for a modicum of subtlety. These past two years, after all, he'd been pretending the only thing not straight about him was the hair. And Avon's eyes — the tropical sun picking out their brownness and the delicate forest of brown lashes — were yet again puzzling over Travis.

Blake looked towards Travis too. He'd nearly fixed his time distort malfunction. As for his other malfunctions, possibly, like Blake's, they weren't so bad as when he came to Ajjul. Things would be different. Star One — well, working out the mess of his relations with Avon came first. Once his heart was in some kind of order, Blake was sure he'd be better equipped to analyse what he hoped to achieve at Star One. Stop to think— that was what Avon had been urging him to do, in his indirect way. Travis, meanwhile, wouldn't be hunting his fellow maverick any more. Blake wondered what he might do now. Rejoin the human race, perhaps. Choose a neutral world, instead of whizzing about alone in the dead of space courting psychosis. Maybe he'd even find something else to believe in. Whatever happened, Blake had a notion that Travis had saved them both from perdition.

He decided to leave Travis a reminder, for when he woke up, that the hatred was over. Limping to his grimy pile of chains, Blake salvaged one of the alien orchids — leaves wilting, but the blue and purple blossom unspoilt. Rolling Travis over, he laid it in his shirt, against the flat chest.Tombstones where flowers should be, he thought. No longer. He wiped aside that unruly forelock, so black that it gleamed slightly blue, like the petals.

Avon was staring ambivalently.

'May look funny, but I can explain,' Blake promised, and smiled, hugely amused at the whole thing.

'Let me guess.' Smoothly, Avon stabbed a finger at him. 'He drove you mad too perhaps?'

'I suspect he drove me sane.' Blake rose. 'To the ship then, Avon?'

Avon waited until Blake joined him. Sounding critical, he snapped, 'To the ship, Blake, where you belong.'

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