"I'm twenty years older than you are," Vila said. "Spill it. What's going on? Why are you here - not that I'm not glad to see you, you understand, just…startled."
"Vila, you're babbling," Avon interrupted fondly.
"Yeah, right. So tell me, please, what's going on?" he prodded.
"I need your help, Vila," he replied calmly.
"I figured that, but which you needs help-Avon or…you, Avon? This is so confusing," Vila said, running a hand through his thinning blond hair.
"Listen, Vila, to keep us straight, why don't you call my adult self Kerr and continue to call me Avon?" he proposed reasonably.
Vila choked, then sputtered, "Call him…Kerr! He'd have my head for that!"
Young Avon frowned, looking at him measuringly. "Sometimes you act like such a coward, Vila, not at all like that brave six-year-old that saved me. I know you're not a coward, though, so it's all right." He considered for a second, then sighed. "Okay, if it'll make you happier, call me Kerr, at least for now, and him Avon." Vila had often wondered why the idea of being called Kerr seemed to bother the adult Avon so much. Obviously it affected the child Avon, too.
Vila nodded and muttered under his breath, "At least that way I can't slip up later and get killed for calling him Kerr!"
Not to be put off any longer, Vila demanded, "Come on, Avon…Kerr, I know that look. What have you gotten yourself into this time?" He wanted answers. Now.
"Remember when you taught me to pick locks?"
He nodded. Avon had been an able student with nimble fingers, almost Vila's equal. Avon's practice, though, if Vila remembered rightly, had often gotten him in trouble.
"Well," the boy began, looking sheepish and defiant at once, "I'm afraid I've gotten myself into a fix I can't get out of."
Vila knew how hard that was for Kerr to admit. To hear Avon talk, he didn't need anyone, much less Vila. Of course Vila knew that, like his own cowardice, was a pose. He raised an eyebrow, encouraging Kerr to go on.
"I was…exploring," he began. Vila knew that was his way of saying he'd escaped his familial residence and tutors to adventure on his own. "And I got myself locked into someplace I can't get out of."
"So you just sit tight and take your lumps when they open it," Vila advised. He'd had to do that a couple of times early in his own career - about age eight, if he remembered correctly.
"That won't work this time. See, I'm locked in a big, air-tight safe with only the air I brought in with me." He smiled ruefully at Vila. "I forgot to block the door, like you said to do, and it closed behind me while I was going through the drawers inside. I dropped my torch and it broke."
Over the boy's face crept a look of fear Vila couldn't remember seeing on the youth before. It made him look so very young.
"Vila, with no light in there, I haven't a chance of picking the lock from the inside. I'm sunk. My calculations lead me to believe the air will run out well before they open in the morning." He shivered and looked up desperately at Vila. "You've got to help me, Vila, please."
"Calm down, Kerr, of course I'll help you, but I need more information. For starters, how the heck did you get HERE?"
"Oh, that," Kerr began, regaining possession of his composure. "I've been studying the time displacement theories of J. M. Barrie in theoretical physics."
Vila groaned. He should have known better than to give Kerr an opening to lecture him on something too technical for him to understand.
"Wait just a minute!" Vila interrupted, putting up a hand. "I don't want to hear any theoretical physics, chapter and verse. Just tell me simply. You know how dumb I am."
Kerr smiled at Vila's patently untrue statement. "Well, simply put, then," he lectured, "a body, that is a person, can travel in time if he wishes hard enough. Vila, I was desperate! I knew I'd die, so I…wished for you. I got dizzy, disoriented, and found myself in this place, wherever or whenever this is." He looked around, taking in the spare surroundings and feeling the throb of Liberator's engines.
He returned his attention to Vila. "I don't know why I traveled this far into the future to find you, though," he said, clearly puzzled.
Brushing that mystery aside for the moment, Vila asked, "Tell me about the lock. What's it on and how'd you open it in the first place? Details, I gotta have details, young man.
As Kerr described the lock and its surroundings, Vila understood why Kerr had traveled so far in time to find him.
"Well, that's it then," he said when the boy had finished his descriptions. "I'll just go get my tools and a light and some oxygen and we'll be off."
He sounded almost jaunty to Kerr and very self-assured. "That's it? Just, let's go?" he said in disbelief, rising to follow Vila out of the cabin.
Vila stopped, blocking the doorway with his body and spread arms. "Whoa, there, you stay here! I can't take a chance of your being seen or, come to think of it, you seeing anything, either. Don't want to influence the time line, do we? I'll be right back." He paused, then asked, "You hungry?" He knew Avon had been hungry constantly at that age, just as he himself had been.
"YES!" came the emphatic reply.
Vila laughed. "Okay, okay, I'll get you something to eat along with my kit. Now," he paused meaningfully, "I trust you'll stay right here and not get into any more mischief till I return?" He raised an eyebrow and waited for an answer.
"Must I, Vila?" Kerr asked, looking longingly at the corridor beyond the door.
"You know you have to, so just accept it."
"Okay, Vila. I'll stick around here. Now hurry! I'm starving right before your very eyes!"
B7B7B7B7B7
A/N: Could it be as easy as that? With Avon, probably not! Watch for Part Three: The Plan.
