Winning Is The Only Safety (part 2)

Ricardo Kidd sighed. It wasn't his real name of course. It was more of a joke, really. On account of his looks, too often he was referred to as 'the kid' so he decided to adopt it as his current nom de guerre. Fresh faced, pale brown curly hair with a touch of red; the kind of looks that made teenage girls sigh and older women motherly. But it was no help when he wanted people to take him seriously. All they saw was a rich young man, ripe for ripping off.

He cursed the meteor storm that had forced him to put down on this pest-hole of a planet. What with the inflated prices for the repairs, and the port fees, he was running short of acceptable currency. Oh, his credit balance would have made most people's eyes pop out, but this barbarian planet didn't accept credit balances - just hard valuables, such as metals and gems. And he didn't have quite enough to pay what they euphemistically called 'departure tax', which was really a fee to give safe passage through the blockade. If you didn't pay, they'd shoot you down as soon as you left atmosphere. He didn't fancy that, not at all. He had to get cash for the fee.

So he'd put word about that he was willing to take passengers. Passengers who would find a regular route difficult to obtain. But there'd been no takers in the past few days. Maybe he would have to sell one of the swords. Surely not? In this flea-pit there wouldn't be a collector who would know their value, let alone pay a tenth of what one of them was worth. He'd have to wait a little longer.

He sat in a convenient corner making the nearby potted plant quite sozzled on his untouched beer.

A man approached his table. He had thinning light brown hair and walked small, as if he didn't want to be noticed, as if this was a habit.

"You're Ricardo Kidd?"

"I'm cursed with youth and good looks," he said, deadpan. "What do you want?"

"I want passage off this planet."

"And who might you be?"

"Del Green."

Kidd suppressed a quip about green dells. Most people wouldn't get the joke, and the fellow looked nervous enough already. Probably on the run. Del Green probably wasn't his real name, but then again, a lot of his own friends didn't go by their real names either. The delicate dance of negotiation began. Kidd was going to Bucol-2 'to look up an old friend'. Half the payment in advance - now - and half on delivery. A pouch changed hands.

"Day after tomorrow - Ryan's Pride, bay nine."

They shook hands and "Green" left.

The pine needles prickled his face. He ached. Avon rolled over and looked about him. The bounty hunter was lying on the ground, not far away. It looked as though he'd tried to crawl to the flyer, but the knife wound had been too much for him. Just unlucky. Or lucky, depending on how you looked at it.

But how come he himself was alive? The bounty hunter had shot to kill - at least it felt like it. But all he had now was a pounding headache. Did he miss? Impossible. There was something strange going on.

This was no time to be squeamish. Avon cleaned himself up with water from the flyer. He took the dead man's identification, and some spare clothing that wasn't covered with blood. Luckily it wasn't too bad a fit, though it hung loosely in some places. He was now Ren Perera, bounty hunter. He buried the dead man, adding an unmarked grave to a forest that had held such secrets for many years.

He settled down for the rest of the night in the flyer, snatching at sleep.

The light was red and lurid, wavering like flames. Tarrant stood in his ripped and dusty flight suit, a streak of blood crusting down the side of his face.

"Is it him?" Tarrant asked.

"It's him," said Vila, looking merely more crumpled than usual. They were both staring at him.

"He killed us, Blake," Tarrant said to the third man in the group, a man with curly hair the echo of Tarrant's, but older, bulkier, with a scar running from one eye down across his cheek. "All of us. Even you."

"Is it true?" Blake asked him.

"Blake, it's me - Avon," he said, moving forward.

"Stand still!" Blake said. He had a gun in his hand.

He stopped still.

"Have you betrayed us?" Blake asked pleadingly. "Have you betrayed me?!"

"Tarrant doesn't understand!" he protested.

"Neither do I, Avon!"

"I set all this up!" he found himself saying.

"Yes!" Blake rumbled.

He started forward again. "Blake, I was looking for YOU."

Blake brought the gun around and fired at him. He felt the projectile go though his chest. The pain. Another shot. He kept going towards Blake, and Blake fired again. He stopped, still standing. Blake swung the gun up to his face. His knees buckled, and he grabbed Blake's arms.

"Blake..."

Avon woke up with a shudder. Another nightmare. Blake's metaphysical revenge, a reversal of roles. The light crept through the flyer windows, giving him an excuse not to brave the shores of sleep again. He started up the flyer and made a beeline for the spaceport.

Avon was hungry so he decided to look for somewhere that was open at this early hour. When he saw the slight figure eating breakfast at the table his numbed mind couldn't comprehend it. He approached the table like a sleepwalker and sat down.

"Vila," he said.

The thief went white and tried to jump out of his skin. "You - you're dead!"

"I expect so," he said. It all made a sudden crazy sense. "Is this Hell, Vila? They won't let me die."

"What are you talking about?" Vila said confusedly.

"I'm talking about this!" Quick as a snakestrike, Avon took the knife from his boot and slashed his left wrist.

"Avon! What d'you think you're doing?" Vila cried, and went to staunch the wound with the nearest thing to hand - the tablecloth. The cloth soaked up the pulsing blood, turning red on white. Vila frantically wondered what to do next, and tried not to feel sick - he'd always felt faint at the sight of blood, but when your only friend in the world has sudden suicidal impulses, your own nausea somehow takes second place.

But Avon calmly took the cloth away, and when Vila tried to put it back, Avon held him back with an iron grip, and merely said "Look."

There was something in his voice which made Vila look. The wound had stopped bleeding. Even as he watched, the gash closed up and then even the scar faded away as if it had never been.

"I wondered what might happen," Avon said hollowly. "They won't let me die. This is Hell."

"No it isn't Hell, Avon, it's Gauda Prime." Vila began, filling up the awful silence with words, babbling on as was often his habit when nervous. "I know it hasn't got much to recommend it, not anything really, but you're not dead Avon, and I'm not dead either, unless they killed me when I wasn't looking which is pretty hard to do - I mean if I was dead I'd know it, wouldn't I? They didn't kill me there Avon, I swear. I just played possum - I mean as soon as she pulled the gun I knew we were for it, so I dropped, see, 'cause how were they to know I wasn't dead already - there were enough bodies on the floor," he faltered, seeing Avon go a little paler. "And if I'm not dead," Vila continued, "then you can't be dead, 'cause you couldn't be talking to me if you were dead and I was alive, could you? Unless you were a ghost I suppose, but then ghosts aren't solid and ghosts don't bleed and you've ruined this cloth do you know that, Avon?"

"You ruined the cloth," Avon countered.

Vila perked up slightly at this - at least he was getting a response. "H-how did you do that? You haven't dropped in on any strange basements on the way, have you?"

"No, Vila, I'm not like Dorian," Avon said wearily. Dorian had used an alien room to prolong his life - an alien room that needed a living occupant to take on Dorian's corruption. He put his head in his hands. "I don't know what's happened to me."

"We could ask Orac," Vila suggested.

Avon's head jerked up. "You have Orac? What about the key?"

"Er, I took the key from your pocket," Vila admitted. "I didn't think you would be wanting it any more..." He looked at Avon. "But I tried and it doesn't work."

"Of course it doesn't work," Avon snapped. "I had to have some sort of contingency..." he drifted off, realizing he had damaged Orac because he was expecting to be betrayed; he had gone into that base too ready to shoot. "Let's go."

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