Archive of Our Own

I never wanted to live in the country. A New Yorker born and bred, I liked the feel of city life going on around me; muted noises from the street, the distant drone of neighbors' stereos, the pulse of the subway beneath my feet. But marriage includes many compromises, and Greg lived in Iowa--not even in Des Moines, which might have been tolerable, but fifteen miles out on an acreage that had, in a more stable time, been part of a family farm. Now, only the big white house on the hill, a garage, one wall of a barn, and the chicken coop remained. Greg was in the insurance business, and he didn't even bother to plant a garden. I had always believed myself hopeless with growing things, but I planted flowers and the odd vegetable, and some of them actually grew.

We socialized in Des Moines, but it wasn't home, and only with Greg was I really happy, sitting in front of the big fireplace on a crisp autumn evening, watching the summer sunsets from the big front porch, making love in the bed that had slept three generations of Everetts. Then Greg was gone, killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver coming back from a Cyclones' football game in Ames, and suddenly Iowa was a vast and lonely place.

You wonder why I didn't sell the house and return to New York. I had plenty of money--I could have found a nice co-op on the Upper East Side and put the wide open spaces behind me once and for all, but I didn't. When I let myself think of it at all, I realized that I clung to the old farmhouse because it was all I had left of Greg. He hadn't been able to have children, so we had no family, though we'd talked of trying to adopt. His parents were dead, and mine were cool and disinterested, so I stayed on the acreage, growing more isolated as our married friends included me less often. I did some volunteer work, but it didn't satisfy me. I got a job, but with no real training, it seemed like pointless busy work, and I quit. Going back to school was another possibility--midway between Drake and ISU, I had two choices. But as the time passed, I never made the effort.

Then, one night in November, my entire life changed.

There had been several well-publicized plane crashes recently, and they must have stuck in my mind, because when I heard the increasing roar overhead, I thought another was about to occur on my front porch. The sound built to such a screaming crescendo that I dove futilely under Greg's grandma's heavy old dining table and covered my head with my arms. That ought to be a big help.

But the thunder raced past, and the crash, when it did come, was down the hill in the Millers' cottonwoods. I waited for an explosion and fIre, but they didn't follow, so I grabbed a flashlight, whistled for John Adams, Greg's ancient golden Labrador, and set off at a run to look for survivors. A sensible woman would have dialed 911 before investigating, but I had been too badly frightened to be sensible, and I didn't think I'd been very organized or practical since Greg's death.

It was dark and cloudy, so I had to take my time, but John Adams loped ahead of me, bounding down the hill, then suddenly starting to bark furiously. "Good dog, stand guard," I hollered encouragingly as I fumbled my way down the slope. Once, I caught the sleeve of my sweater in a bramble bush and lost precious moments freeing myself, cursing the country. Greg had loved nights here, but I had missed the city lights, and right then, I felt a row of street lights would have been splendid.

When I found it, the crash site was instantly recognizable, with broken branches, flattened bushes, and the ruin of the old rail fence pointing me in the right direction. I followed the path of destruction until I came upon the cockpit of the plane, pausing in astonishment at its size. From all the noise, I had half-expected something as big as a 747, but now I saw that fear had intensified the threat. The wings and tail section must have been sheared off, but I hadn't noticed them as I came down the hill, and there seemed to be no jagged edges. Even then, I didn't quite catch on. I thought I'd found the ruins of a small plane: a four-seater maybe, or even one of those tiny private jets. The cockpit was opened the way pre-war car hoods did, and there was a figure sprawled back in the seat, unconscious or dead, but evidently intact. I'd heard of crashes so severe that there were no recognizable bodies, but at least I was spared that. From the way John Adams was barking, I guessed the man was alive, so I gave the dog a sharp command for silence and tiptoed forward uneasily, afraid of what I might find.

My flashlight beam gleamed off the controls and I stopped dead, staring. I'd been up in a Cessna that belonged to one of Greg's friends, and the Millers had a Piper Cub, but the controls in this craft were so different that they resembled nothing I'd ever seen before. The absence of wings struck home then, and the insane idea flashed through my brain that maybe this was a UFO. I shifted the flashlight, and a very human face appeared, eyes shut, dark hair mussed. The blood that trickled down the side of his face from a cut at the scalp line glinted red in the light. UFOs? I must be hysterical. Maybe it was some kind of glider. After all, what did I know of aircraft? I had never been mechanically minded.

I let my fingers rest on the man's neck, drawing back when I inadvertently leaned against the side of the craft. It was hot to the touch, startling me. Was something burning inside? But there was no smell of fire, only that heat. Shifting a little, I resumed my examination, and after a few moments of amateurish fumbling, I discovered a pulse. I had no way of guessing if it was strong or weak, so I compared it to my own, which was racing. His was slower, but it was steady.

Aside from the hairline cut, there was no obvious blood, besides a graze on one cheekbone, and I couldn't feel any broken bones when I checked his arms and legs, but I didn't want to risk moving him in case he had damaged his spine or had internal injuries. I would have left John Adams to guard him and gone for help if I hadn't looked at his face again and noticed that his eyes were open and watching me unwaveringly. He was stunned and shaken, but something in the back of his eyes reminded me of the face that had stared back at me out of the mirror after Greg died.

I shoved that unwelcome thought away and said quietly, "You've crashed. I can't find any broken bones. Do you feel any pain?"

When he didn't immediately respond, my over-active imagination kicked in again, and I began to wonder if he could somehow be a Russian cosmonaut who had landed way off course and didn't speak any English. Then he replied, "Apart from a number of bruises, I seem to be intact. Where have I come down?"

"North of Des Moines. If you think you can get out of there, I'll take you up to my house and you can use the phone to let your family know where you are."

He received the suggestion in blank silence, but I suspected some kind of furious calculation was going on behind his eyes. At length, he nodded. "Thank you." He sounded rather British, certainly foreign, without the flat, Midwestern accent I'd become accustomed to in the past few years, but he had no problem with the language. Wincing, with great care, he eased out of the ruined cockpit, freezing warily when John Adams let go with a frenzy of barking.

"Quiet!" I ordered. "Sit! Stay!" John Adams subsided reluctantly, poised to spring up again, tongue dangling. His eyes never left the stranger.

"Is that...a dog?" the man asked.

"What do you think it is, an elephant?" I regretted the snapped words as soon as they left my mouth. He was bound to be shaken up and disoriented, but surely...

He looked down his nose at me as if I were beneath contempt, then he snapped his fingers at John Adams and stretched out his hand. "Come here," he commanded. He sounded like he was very good at giving orders.

John Adams forgot my command instantly and went to him. He sniffed the stranger's hand suspiciously for several minutes as if making a very unaccustomed decision, then his tail began to stir. Suddenly and rapturously, he licked the man's hand, and when the stranger gave his head an awkward pat, he quivered eagerly and whined in sheer pleasure. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it. Since Greg's death, John Adams had barely tolerated me and despised the rest of the world, but all this character had to do was snap his fingers.

For a moment, his guard dropped, and he looked as delighted as John Adams did. There was life in his eyes as he ruffled the dog's fur and scratched behind his ears. "I've never seen a dog before," he confessed.

"In your whole life?"

At my incredulous question, he caught himself, and the barricades came up again. His eyes went dark and hard, and his face closed away completely.

I dropped my own eyes, feeling I had presumed too much, wondering if that was the impression he had meant to convey. I pretended I hadn't overreacted and said, hastily, "Do you think you can walk? I should get you up to the house and take a look at that cut. You're bleeding."

His fingers probed the wound and he winced. "It's not serious," he said flatly. "I don't have a concussion, and scalp wounds have a tendency to bleed. I'll make it."

After the force of the impact, I was reluctant to move him. They always ten you that--not to move an accident victim--but I couldn't leave him standing here, and I was beginning to feel curiously protective of my prickly stranger. Besides, he was standing on his feet with no evidence of dizziness and broadcasting a determination to carry on even if I tried to restrain him, and I suspected if it came to a battle of wills, I'd probably lose. Then, there was the strangeness about him. He was definitely different, and though his English was fluent enough to be his native tongue, I couldn't help believing that someone who had never seen a dog before had to come from...someplace else. But John Adams liked him, and John Adams hadn't liked anyone but Greg in his whole life. I was tolerated and protected as an extension of Greg, no more.

The trip up the hillside to the house must have hurt him, but he didn't complain, bearing it with a silent stoicism that I admired even as I regarded it as just plain stupid. Men, I thought impatiently. They made terrible patients and always seemed to have a macho urge to seem indestructible; either that, or they were complete babies when they had nothing more serious than a cold or a cut finger. But this man's restraint was of heroic proportions. He was in pain and I knew he was in pain, and pretending he wasn't proved no useful purpose. I was a restrained type myself and it had never done me any good. Only with Greg had I been able to drop my guard completely and be the person I was meant to be. Maybe my mysterious crash victim had never found himself a Greg-equivalent. Or worse, maybe he'd found one and then lost her the way I'd lost Greg.

Once inside the house, I got my first good look at him, and while he stood in the entrance to the living room, staring about him as if he'd never seen a farmhouse before, I considered him. He was wearing some kind of crazy biker outfit, all black leather and studs, a vest over a jumpsuit, and black boots, and while he didn't seem armed, the get-up made me nervous. It didn't help that there was blood spattered around, either, but that must have happened in the crash.

I thought he might be around 40, but it was hard to tell because his eyes were ageless, with a look I might have thought was grief or despair had his face mirrored it. He had a strong face, the dark eyes intense, nose like a Roman coin, and thin lips that gave away no secrets. He was handsome in a dangerous way, and I think I would have feared him if he hadn't been hurt, and if I hadn't seen the pain in his eyes.

I made him lie down on the couch and set about cleaning up and bandaging his cut, then examining him for more serious injuries. There were no obvious fractures or major wounds, though he had his share of scrapes and bruises, now turning dark. When I commented upon his good luck in coming through the crash so well, he said flatly that the 'escape pod' was padded to prevent injury. He seemed cynically amused by my amateurish attempts at first aid. yet was patient when I compared his pulse with my own again to see how normal it was.

"Assuming I am human at all, that is a valid test."

I dropped his wrist uneasily. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, come, I can see your speculation. You're half afraid I might be a 'little green man.'"

"You look human to me," I said tartly to hide my embarrassment, lifting one of his eyelids to check for dilated pupils. They seemed normal enough, and his pulse was close enough to my own to qualify as normal, too.

"Well?" he asked coolly. "'Will I live?"

"I think so," I replied with equal coolness, annoyed at him. "You'll probably be sore in the morning, though. Are you hungry?"

He considered it. "Yes."

We went into the kitchen and I seated him at the table, pulled out the remains of the pot roast and made him a sandwich, pouring him a glass of milk and leaving him to it while I heated some soup. The sandwich went down rapidly and with obvious relish. He wasn't so sure about the milk, raising an eyebrow at the taste as if he'd never experienced it before.

"What am I drinking?" he asked with pragmatic curiosity.

"Milk. Cow's milk," I clarified before he could ask.

"I thought cow's milk was a drink for children."

"Yes, but adults drink it too. I'm making you some soup now. I think you need some hot food. By the way, we didn't get introduced before. I'm Meredith Everett. John Adams you've met."

John Adams, the experienced old cadger, had his head firmly planted on my guest's knee, trying to give the impression that malnutrition would claim him in the next few seconds if he didn't get fed right away. Few people were hard-hearted enough to resist that pleading expression, but my guest was made of sterner stuff. He hadn't spared John Adams as much as a crumb, though once the sandwich was gone, his hand sneaked back under the table to stroke the dog. Disappointed but persevering, John Adams stayed where he was.

I set the soup before the man. "And you are...?"

"My name is Avon."

"Avon? As in 'Bard of' Or 'Avon calling?"'

He looked momentarily confused. "Shakespeare I understand," he conceded in the tones of one who might have endured a 'Bard of Avon' joke or two in his time. "But I don't recognize the second reference."

"It's part of an ad--an advertisement--for a cosmetics company."

"Wonderful." He applied himself to the soup with apparent pleasure.

"Just Avon? Or is your other name unpronounceable, like Spock's?"

"Who is Spock?"

"He's a Vulcan." That produced a blank stare, and I said hastily, "Forget it. He' s a television character."

"Perhaps you should stop while you are still ahead. My name is Kerr Avon. I prefer simply Avon. May I use your comm unit?"

"My what? Telephone?" This was getting beyond a joke. "Are there more of you here?"

That pulled him up short. I displayed the wall phone to him. He picked up the receiver blankly and, assisted by a few mimed directions, put it to his ear. I showed him the television next, and Greg's Apple IIC. At the sight of the computer, he closed his eyes in evident disgust and muttered, "Primitive."

"Lucky me. I meet an alien, and he's a snob."

He glared at me. "I am not an alien."

"Well, you're not quite from here and now. Don't tell me. You're from England. You only work in outer space."

He didn't catch the reference, of course, but he nodded "Geographically correct, though the old terminology is no longer applied."

"When, in the 23rd Century?"

"We use a different calendar, too."

"Oh, wonderful. A time traveler." I was a little punch-drunk from all this, and I don't think I really quite believed it yet. "How will you get back where you belong?"

"That is a question which has been concerning me as well."

"Will your friends be looking for you?"

"No." That was completely final. If I'd thought him closed up before, I was wrong. He' d been as open as the morning compared to this.

Okay, forget about friends, Meredith. Wrong question. "How'd you get here, anyway?" Surely, there would be no pitfalls in that question.

"Servalan's ship was pulled into an unexplained vortex. In the confusion, I managed to reach an escape pod. I landed here: Earth, obviously, but the wrong Earth. Were it not so primitive, I would be tempted to stay here."

"But you might alter history," I blurted involuntarily. I'd seen enough Star Trek episodes to know what might go wrong. "You might do something to destroy the future, maybe even prevent your own birth."

"Perhaps that would be no great loss." He sounded so matter-of fact that something leapt painfully in the region of my heart. No one should be so completely hopeless. He continued calmly, as if teaching a boring class. "But altering history is not so easy as one might assume, except in minor ways. I do not intend to go into the theory with you now, as it would serve very little point, but while it would be possible to alter history , one man, randomly placed, with no equipment and without a comprehensive knowledge of the next several hundred years' history could do very little. There is, of course, the theory that I am here now because that is the way it happened and that my presence is a part of history already. I have always felt that a foolish and sentimental theory, though some fools find it comforting. I have never bothered to study time travel in any depth."

"Oh," I said. It was his own history that would be changed, not mine, but I still didn't care for the idea of tampering with it. "Who's Servalan?" I asked instead.

His face darkened. "She uses the name Sleer these days. Once, she was President of the Terran Federation."

"Terran Federation? We do get into space, then? That's wonderful! And we expand through the galaxy? What about aliens?" I was excited, forgetting for a moment his brooding eyes in my delight at the thought of a future which might match some of the science fiction books I loved to read.

"What about them?" he asked impatiently, favoring me with a disgusted look.

"Well, are there any? Are they part of your Federation?"

"It is scarcely 'my' Federation. And it is human. There are other races, but they have fared poorly against humans. Servalan destroyed the Auronar with a plague in hopes of getting to us. You might now understand why the thought of altering history does not alarm me unduly."

I stared at him, horrified. My dreams of the future had never pictured Man as the aggressor, though perhaps that was foolish of me: Man had been nothing else during the history of the Earth. Crushed, I asked in a small voice, "You mean Servalan killed a whole race of beings? Genocide? That's monstrous. What do you mean, to 'get' you?"

"Blake's people." His eyes turned away, and his voice was flat and cold as if he were relaying something learned by rote-or by bitter experience. "Blake was a resister. He thought he could defeat the Federation. He was wrong."

Avon's voice changed every time he said Blake's name. "Was?" I probed gently, tearing my thoughts away from the horrors he had been telling me and focusing on him again. "He's dead, then?"

"Yes." He closed his lips over the word as if he wished he could call it back. "At least in my time," he added, as if he found some slight consolation in the fact that here, it hadn't happened yet.

"Did Servalan kill him as she killed the Auronar?" I wondered what the Auronar had been like, but this was not the time to ask. Speaking of Blake, Avon's voice had been full of a pain that was even worse than my pain over Greg's death.

"No," he said expressionlessly. "She didn't kill him, though perhaps she orchestrated it." He was silent a moment, then he said, devastatingly, "I did."

For a few seconds, I could think of nothing to say. Then I heard myself burst out, stupidly, "But he was your friend!"

"Was he?" His head jerked up and he stared at me as if I were incredibly naive. Maybe I was, but I hadn't misunderstood the pain in Avon's eyes. "Yes," he agreed suddenly. "Perhaps. Why should that matter? The woman I'd believed I loved betrayed me and tried to shoot me in the back. I had to kill her. I was told Blake sold me. What else could I do? If it had been true, shooting him would have been the only answer." In spite of the cold reasonableness of his tone, I suspected he was trying desperately to convince himself this was true. It was horrible. I found myself wanting to conspire with him to change his history. How did the people of his time endure it?

"But he didn't betray you?" I asked softly. The novelty of my time and the trauma of the crash had distracted him momentarily from this unspeakable tragedy, but now it was freshly recalled and the man that stared at me out of his eyes didn't look quite sane. And no wonder.

Avon shook his head. "It was a mistake. I was...paranoid, and he'd learned to be suspicious. He left it rather late. He was betrayed to the Federation."

"Servalan's doing?" I was beginning to dislike her very much.

"Ultimately. But too many things had gone wrong. I was a fool to believe that finding Blake again could matter." It was almost as if he had forgotten I was there and was speaking to himself. I let him. He needed the catharsis badly. "I told the others the Rebellion needed a figurehead, someone I could use, someone the rabble would follow, and Blake suited my purpose. I meant to use him." He was pacing the floor as he talked, and I followed him into the living room. Suddenly, he sat on the couch and took his head in his hands. "It wasn't entirely true. Damn him! I didn't want to need him. I didn't want to need anyone."

"It's not wrong to need our friends." I knelt before him and took his hands in my own, tightening my grip when he made an involuntary attempt to pull free. I should have been frightened of him, of the violence I sensed in him, of his tale of murdering his friend, but I was not. I knew what loss felt like and I'd suffered it alone. No one should have to face it alone. "I wish it had been different for you. Servalan and people like her and the time you lived in induced paranoia. I think you should try to change the future." Then, when he flashed me a scornful look, his eyes glittering with rigidly suppressed tears, I went on, hastily, "I'm so sorry. I know that doesn't help. It didn't help me when Greg died. But it wasn't your fault, not completely. It sounds like it was mostly other reasons."

"Do you believe that matters?"

I shook my head. "I know it doesn't. Cry for him, Avon. It's all right I understand."

He shook his head violently. "You understand nothing." A tear trickled down his cheek, and he jerked free a hand to dash it away. He was not a man who cried; he couldn't have been, not in a culture like his where sentiment was probably counted as foolish. He was the type of person who refused to admit he cared, at least consciously. But he had cared anyway, and everything had gone wrong. Meeting Blake after an apparent separation, they had evidently misunderstood each other, and someone had helped the misunderstanding along. Now, Blake was dead, and apparently other friends with him, and he'd been a prisoner. Being stranded in the 20th Century and the crash must be the final straw. No one would have been strong enough to take any more.

"I understand," I soothed. "Go ahead and let yourself cry. We'll never speak of it again."

It wasn't my sympathy. It was nothing to do with me, but with the fact that he'd been pushed as far as it's possible for a human being to go. If he didn't release it now, he'd snap completely. So when he turned away helplessly and choked on a sob, I put my arms around him and held on without speaking. I was simply a lifeline, another human being. His body shook with the ferocity of his grief, and I ached for him. I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. I knew I was in no danger now.

When he got control back, I freed him and led him to the bathroom. "You can wash up in here," I told him. "Know how to work things?"

He shot me a look of mild affront at the question. "I will manage."

"Okay. Have a shower if you like. I'll find some of Greg's things for you to wear. You're about the same size. I'll leave them for you here on the hamper."

He shut the door in my face. After a moment, I heard water running.

A few friends had told me I should get rid of Greg's clothes, but I couldn't bear to do that, so I packaged them up and put them in the attic. Deep down inside, a part of me couldn't help refusing to believe that Greg was dead, that someday he would come back and need his things. At first, that part of me had been quite strong, though I knew better now. But I left the clothes in the attic, pretending I had forgotten them. Now I was glad to have them. Greg might have been an inch or two taller than Avon and his arms a little longer, but I thought Greg's things would fit. I didn't know how long Avon would be here, if he would be rescued, or even pursued through the vortex by Servalan--at that thought, I resolved to load the shotgun and be ready for her--but if he couldn't get home immediately, I didn't intend to turn him over to the authorities. I had shared his grief; I would protect him.

I got out some jeans and slacks, shirts, sweaters, and tee shirts. Socks and underwear. Shoes might be a problem; Greg had big feet. Well, I'd find out Avon's size and pick up something in the morning. I put jeans and a sweater on the hamper along with a pair of moccasins that might be too big but would at least keep his feet warm. Iowa can be cold in November, even though it hadn't snowed yet.

When I was washing up in the kitchen, it occurred to me to wonder if anyone else had heard Avon's escape pod or, worse, if it had been picked up on radar. I found myself planning the lies I would tell if anyone came to investigate. I wouldn't turn Avon over to the authorities, not after his escape from Servalan. Besides, if the government found out there was someone here from the future, they'd take over, and he'd be cross-examined, studied, practically dissected in order to provide answers to their myriad questions. Avon was in no shape for it; he'd probably come apart. No, Avon was my find, and I was determined to protect him.

When he emerged from the bathroom, looking comfortably 20th Century in blue jeans, a blue pullover sweater, and floppy moccasins, there was no trace of tears, or even the inclination toward them, on his face. He had found his control again and pulled it around him tightly as if defying me to remind him of his breakdown. I knew better. Accepting the truth of loss doesn't make it go away. Only time does that, and not even time works perfectly. I knew I was badly adjusted to Greg's death--a few friends had tried to tell me so--but maybe that would be useful now. I knew where I'd gone wrong. Perhaps I could help Avon.

At the moment. he looked prepared to refuse all offers of help. He said, flatly, "I left my clothes on the hamper."

"I'll see that they're cleaned." At first I had thought the blood on that outfit was his own from the crash, but as he'd talked of Blake, I'd begun to wonder if it might be Blake's instead. There had been times when he had noticed it and stared at it in appalled disbelief before calling his thoughts to order.

"I don't want them," he replied, confirming my speculation. "The boots will be necessary until I can replace them." He looked around the cozy farmhouse. "l find I am stranded in this time. I do not intend to be a burden upon you."

"When you get to be a burden, I'll tell you about it. I think you should stay here until you find your feet. Besides, if anyone comes looking for you, they'll come here."

"The only one who would come is Servalan. After your help, it would be a poor reward to expose you to her less-than tender mercies."

"She'll come whether you stay or not. I think I'd feel safer if you were here to protect me from her."

He considered that. I suspected he had wasted little concern on strangers' well-being in his life, but my words pulled him up short. "There is that to consider. Have you nowhere else to go?"

"This is my home. Greg's home. I'm not leaving. Besides, it surely can't be something she'd do immediately--follow you into that vortex, I mean. She might think you're dead. If she knows you're in another time, might she just leave you here? You'd be no threat to her."

"She might relish the thought," he agreed. "My specialty is computers. After seeing that primitive device in the other room, I realize how backward your time is."

"That's just a personal computer," I defended. "There are much more complex computers than that."

"But conceptually at much the same level?" He shook his head. "To me, it would still be primitive, Meredith."

"I'm sorry," I apologized uselessly, then froze as I heard the unmistakable sound of a car pulling into the driveway, gravel sputtering under the tires. "Damn, they're here."

Avon stiffened and looked at me as if I'd betrayed him, too. "Precisely who is here?" he asked coldly, and I felt the first real threat from him.

"Well, the government. If they picked up your escape pod on radar, they'd come to investigate. Mostly the government is okay, but if they thought you were an alien or something, they'd--"

"I can imagine what they would do. However, Federation escape pods are shielded from planetary detection in the event that one should have to come down on a hostile planet. There is a homing beacon which can be activated, but I did not activate it."

"Good. Then we're probably dealing with a visual sighting. It might be someone from the Sheriffs office. I think the best thing is to deny all knowledge of anything."

"Won't your property be searched, then?" he asked.

"Probably. Oh, damn, if they see the pod, it'll be the same thing. We've got to delay them, or hide it somehow."

"Is that possible?" The threat still hung around the edges of his voice, but he no longer looked quite so threatening to me.

"I hope so. Play along with me anyway. You're an old friend from Boston. You're staying here a few weeks. If I say you're from England--you sound like it--somebody might want to see a passport."

The knock came at the door. I squared my shoulders and went to answer it. It was a sheriff's deputy. "Excuse me, ma'am," he said politely. "Are you Mrs. Everett?"

"Yes, I am. Is something wrong? Won't you come in? I was just going to make a fresh pot of coffee."

He stepped into the hall, and as he did, Avon emerged from the living room, holding a glass of liquor--a nice touch, that. "Who is it, Meredith?" he asked casually. He'd done it perfectly.

"Someone from the Sheriff's office." I let a touch of curiosity enter my voice. "What's happened?"

"We'd picked up a report of a plane crash--someone thought they heard a plane coming down in this area." He chuckled suddenly. "Somebody else said it was a UFO. I wondered if you'd heard anything."

"I most certainly did. Some idiot in a small plane buzzed the house. I thought he was coming through the roof. Whoever he is, he ought to have his license revoked. He was probably drunk. I didn't hear a crash, though. After he'd scared us to death, he pulled up again and went flying off as if it was nothing." I smiled faintly. "A UFO? It didn't sound like one to me. Some people have excellent imaginations."

I didn't think anyone else lived near enough to have actually heard the crash, and if I could get them to waste time looking for a hotshot pilot, it might give us time to conceal the wreckage. It wouldn't be visible from the road, but if anyone went up in a helicopter in the morning to search out a possible wreck, they might spot it, and I didn't want them to do that.

"Did you hear it, too?" the deputy asked Avon. "I didn't catch your name."

"My name is Kerr Avon. I'm a friend of Meredith's from Boston. Yes, I heard it. Some reckless, suicidal fool. A slight miscalculation, and he would have hit the house." He had masked his accent a little so he sounded more like me. The locals still think I sound like a New Yorker, but once, on a visit to New York, I realized I'd picked up a little of Greg's accent. The result from Avon could have been a Boston accent; certainly, it sounded less obviously British. The deputy seemed to notice nothing untoward.

"We'll look into it," he promised. "If it crashed, it was further afield, then. I wonder what airport he came from."

"He wouldn't have needed to come from a airport, " I pointed out helpfully. "A couple of farmers around here have their own planes, and some of them have lighted runways." I sighed a little. "You know, I almost wish it had been a UFO. At least that would be something different. I'm from New York, and it sometimes feels like nothing ever happens around here."

"Well, I'm glad it wasn't a UFO, Ma'am. I've got enough to handle without something like that." He declined my offer of coffee and took himself off, and Avon and I exchanged glances.

"That was easy," I managed, letting the tension seep out of my neck and shoulders.

"Assuming he believed you."

"Why shouldn't he? As far as he knows, I'd have no reason to lie."

"And when they find no evidence of a hotshot pilot?"

"Then they don't. They probably won't pursue it. I don't think we should move your escape pod tomorrow after all."

"What brilliant reasoning leads you to that conclusion?" he demanded as we returned to the living room.

"Well, what we should do is cover it with brush and camouflage it. If Servalan comes, she'll probably find it wherever it is, but if the police look, they'll believe I'm uninvolved a whole lot longer if it isn't hidden in my garage. Even if we move it, the place where it landed will be noticeable. You took out a fence, and there are broken branches and even a small tree or two. If they find footprints, they'll have to assume I went down in the morning to look. If we move it, they'll find tire tracks and they'll know I was involved. I think we'll have to call the sheriff back tomorrow and tell them we found the pod."

"And when they ask why we didn't hear a crash?"

"I'll tell them we were otherwise occupied," I replied without meeting his eyes. Then, I added quickly, "Besides, it's a UFO--unidentified flying object--or it will be to them. It's not broken up. Maybe they'll assume it made a soft landing."

"Perhaps." He sounded very skeptical, but he didn't argue further. Instead, he said, "I have no identification papers here. If they should ask..."

"I don't think they'd ask unless they got suspicious, and we're trying to prevent that. Maybe you can use Greg's 'primitive computer' and make yourself something."

"What would I need?"

"Usually, people have driver's licenses, but you're supposed to be from Massachusetts, and I don't know what a Massachusetts driver's license looks like. And everybody has a Social Security card."

"Social security?" He cocked an eyebrow at me. "That sounds rather ominous. What are the functions of your Security branch?"

"Oh, it's nothing like that." I explained Social Security cards hastily. "But the thing is, people aren't really required to show ID unless there's a driving violation or a crime involved. Or unless you're writing a check. That's the only time I ever have to prove who I am. Since you don't have a bank account, that won't be a problem."

"At least, not immediately." His face was brooding, but I could not read his eyes. It had dawned on him that, short of the intervention of his enemies, he might be stranded here for the rest of his life. That pulled me up short, too. In many ways, tonight had been like a game and I was willing to help Avon, but I couldn't make it my life's work. I might be able to help him out and get him started with a financial loan. If he was as good with computers as he claimed, he could design a new system or something and make enough money to repay me. We simply had to find a way to keep him inconspicuous until then.

I had told Avon the government was no dictatorship, and in reality I had never felt its restrictions, but I was pretty sure if 'they' found out the truth of Avon's origins, any hope of escaping detection would vanish. Avon would be put under protective custody and interrogated. He would be guarded 'for his own protection,' but in effect, he would have no rights and no freedom, and I didn't trust the intelligence community one bit. They might decide it was to the benefit of national security to 'terminate' the problem. Knowing too much, I could be in danger, too.

"You suspect trouble," he observed. He noticed too much sometimes.

I nodded and explained my reasoning. "Maybe I'm paranoid, but I think we should plan for the worst-case scenario." I didn't even smile at the spy terminology; this was no smiling matter. "Maybe we should just leave the pod alone. Let them think the pilot was picked up. But we'll have to call in the morning." I shivered. "Once it's found it'll be more than the Sheriff's office interested. The people we want to avoid will be here in droves, and they're the type who ask for IDs. I don't know what to do, Avon. It seemed so easy before we thought it through."

John Adams padded into the living room and stood leaning against Avon's leg, and his hand went automatically to the dog's head. Damn it John Adams liked him. I couldn't let the government get their hands on him.

"The best thing for you is for me to vanish," he said flatly. "That way, you could tell the sheriff I held a weapon on you last night. It might remove suspicion from you." He was silent a few minutes, then he continued in a voice edged with suspicion, "I do not understand why you put yourself at risk for someone who is a stranger to you. Surely, there must be some benefit for you, but I am at a loss to understand it. All I can see is the risk of exposure to the less pleasant elements of your government and the disruption of your life, not to mention danger. I am nothing to you, nor you to me. Why are you doing this?"

"I've wondered that myself. You're right to be suspicious. People usually aren't so altruistic. I don't know why I'm doing it, except for one reason: Greg would have done it."

"Ah, yes, your husband. It's interesting how often late spouses and friends become true paragons after their deaths."

That hurt. "Damn you, Avon," I flared at him. "That wasn't fair. I know I dwell on Greg too much, but that doesn't mean he wasn't special. What about Blake? Is he going to change in your eyes now that you've killed him?"

He winced, but to my surprise, he smiled, though it was not a warm smile. "That's better. I was beginning to doubt you could be human. I'm glad to see you can hold your own. As for Blake, he is not relevant to this discussion."

"Yes, he is. If it hadn't hurt you to kill Blake, do you think I'd do anything for you? Act as cold-blooded as you like, but I know better. There's someone else buried inside, and that's who I'm helping. It won't do any good to talk about it any more tonight. We're both exhausted, and I'm sure you feel terrible. Let me show you your room and you can go to bed. In the morning, we'll get up early and decide what to do next."

He drew all his emotions inside and presented me a bland and unfeeling face, but he let me show him upstairs to one of the spare bedrooms. I went after the clothes I'd retrieved earlier and brought them to him. "Greg didn't use pajamas," I explarned. "Will you be warm enough?"

"Yes." He took the clothes and stood in the middle of the room, looking curiously at a loss. I smiled at him. "Good night."

"Meredith?"

I stopped in the doorway.

"Thank you." The words came awkwardly and with difficulty. He was unaccustomed to thanking people for anything.

"Sleep well." I pulled the door shut behind me.

I lay awake for several hours, wondering what I had got myself into. I had to be crazy, taking on a problem like this. How much of it was sheer sentiment? I had rescued Avon and bandaged him; now I felt possessive, like a mother with a hurt child. That diverted me momentarily; had the deputy noticed the bandages on Avon's forehead and the bruise on his cheekbone and put two and two together? The rest of Avon's bruises wouldn't show unless he stripped, and hopefully, the deputy wouldn't have thought anything of a bandage or two. I'd have to think up an excuse--a car accident back in Boston, maybe.

I hadn't been thinking of Servalan, either, although if Avon was right about the thoroughness of her determination to rid the Federation of Blake's people, I could not disregard her. Maybe she would arrive and be captured by the Feds. I chuckled to myself at the similarity--the Feds, the Federation--and realized how tired I was to find it humorous. I slept after that, but restlessly, with strange and disturbed dreams, and I did not wake up refreshed.

In the morning, Avon was wearing an impersonal facade as if he feared he'd given away too much of himself the previous evening and now wanted to make up for it. The fact that he was wearing a plaid shirt that had been a particular favorite of Greg's distracted me momentarily from his grim, touch-me-not attitude; then I noticed the floppy slippers and the fact that he'd brought down his black boots as if preparing to don them and run. I resolved we would go shopping for shoes as soon as possible. Most men I knew didn't wear knee-high boots as a matter of course.

"How are you this morning?" I asked sympathetically, for he was moving stiffly.

"I have felt better, but exercise should relieve the worst of it."

"Then I can give you some of that. Come and have breakfast, then we'll go down and make sure your pod isn't visible from the air. It's a good thing it's cloudy."

"Do you mean your world's aircraft cannot fly in cloudy weather?"

"No, they do it all the time. It's just that the clouds are pretty low and it's not the best weather for an air search. It'll give us a little time."

"Not if you still mean to notify the authorities this morning."

No wonder he had brought down his boots. If I called in, he meant to leave in a hurry. I shook my head. "No, I mean to go shopping this morning. There's the possibility of heavy snow today, and I want to lay in a supply of food. We'll get you some shoes and boots, a coat, maybe, and some underwear, too. Then, when we get back, we might call in. I don't think they'd expect us to go out first thing, do you?"

He shook his head. "Will this heavy snow delay things?"

"It's exactly what we need," I assured him. "It'll hide everything we need hidden. It won't cover the broken branches, but it'll make them less obvious. Better yet, it'll protect us from an air search. The only problem is that Iowa weather is unpredictable. It may not snow at all. It may pass us by."

"But weather control--"

"This is the 20th Century, remember? We don't have anything like weather control. Our weather forecasts are little more than educated guesses. Sometimes, blizzards strike without warning. I remember waking up one morning and finding five inches of snow on the ground that hadn't been predicted when I went to bed. Come and have breakfast, then we'll go cover the pod with dead branches. Then we'll go shopping."

He didn't look enthusiastic about shopping, but the idea of breakfast did appeal. I fixed a big breakfast, bacon and eggs and toast and oatmeal with milk and orange juice. He still went sparingly on the milk, but the way he polished off everything else made me wonder about foods of the future. Maybe they only had concentrates or artificial foods. When I asked, he nodded. "Most things come from processing units, which are adequate at best." He sipped the coffee I'd set beside his plate. "I've drunk coffee for years, but it doesn't compare to this."

"It's real," I said. "Made from real coffee beans. I never asked if you had any dietary restrictions, but tell me if you do."

He shook his head, his mouth full of scrambled eggs, an expression of bliss on his face. Once, I'd eaten powdered eggs, and, while they were tolerable, I suppose, if one were hungry enough, they didn't match the real thing. If all his food tasted like that, this ordinary breakfast must seem like a feast to him. I'm not a great cook--I can fix plain food well enough, but nobody goes into raptures about my baking or anything. Until that moment, I'd never really thought much about food except for treats at the odd expensive restaurant. Now I saw that I had complacently taken it for granted.

My eggs tasted better than they had in years.

It wasn't snowing yet when we went out to conceal the escape pod, but there was a sharp edge to the air that stung with the promise of bad weather ahead. Wearing Greg's old green parka and a pair of faded leather gloves he'd found in the pockets, Avon took deep breaths of the sharp, clear air. "The wind is rather nasty," he observed when he saw me noticing him enjoying it.

"You're in Iowa now, buster. Let me tell you about something unpleasant called 'wind chill factor.'" I tucked my hands in my pockets. "I'm not a native here, but one thing Iowans love to do is to discuss the weather."

"How charming," he observed sardonically.

"Wait until you see a Midwest blizzard."

He eyed me skeptically, as if uncertain if he should take me seriously, but didn't reply.

In the daylight, the damage from the crash was noticeable enough, even if the bare ground didn't show it as badly as a green, growing field would have. I thought we could rearrange the rail fence adequately enough and scuff some of the traces over, bringing twigs and branches from the thicket to make the long scar less obviously a straight line. As we worked our way down the hill, I broke off dangling branches and strewed them about artistically so there wouldn't be a direct line to the downed craft.

It had slid in among the cottonwoods, but it was visible if one came in from the southeast, and since the Des Moines Airport was south and a little east of us, I thought it best to make sure the pod really wasn't visible. Low-flying craft would spot it right away, but I doubted anyone would risk flying beneath those low-hanging clouds. We might get away with it altogether, though I wouldn't bet on it.

We spent about an hour fetching brush and arranging it to look natural around the pod. Avon was very careful to do a thorough job--I don't think he ever took chances when his life was at stake, although perhaps he had taken a chance or two beyond the usual when he went to find Blake on Gauda Prime.

Finally, we returned to the house, pausing at the top of the hill to survey our handiwork. I didn't think anyone would notice anything amiss if they weren't looking, but someone might well be looking. Though more likely, the Sheriffs office would dismiss it as a prank and move on to more important things, especially if we did get a blizzard.

Before we set off for Des Moines, I listened to the weather report. It seemed that the threatened snow had moved closer, and there were warnings to people en route to Omaha and other places west. Interstate 80 was ice and snow packed the other side of Atlantic, and when I heard that, I hurried Avon out to the car. "We don't have as much time as I thought."

He got into the car obediently, asking a great many questions about its function, then commenting with a touch of arrogance that it was inefficient and that the use of fossil fuel was stupid. Well, I agreed with that, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it. I lived here and now and had to use what was available, and I told him so. He threw me a slightly pitying look and went back to watching me drive. After about five miles, he said, "I should like to try that."

Well, he knew enough to pilot a spacecraft, so he should be able to manage a car. If we ran into snow on the way back, I'd need to be at the wheel, but it wouldn't hurt to let him try it now, so I pulled over and we changed places. He put the car into drive and edged back onto the road, testing this and that, and shifting the wheel cautiously. At first, he had a two-handed death grip like a nervous little old lady, but after a few minutes, he relaxed and a perfectly spectacular smile brightened his face. It was a good thing he didn't smile more often. People might need sunglasses.

After one violent stop when he hit the power brakes a lot harder than necessary , he settled into driving as if he'd done it a long time, though he was wary at comers. I gave him a quick run-down on traffic laws, and then, before we came into Johnston, a northern suburb of Des Moines, I made him stop again and relinquish the wheel. He looked like he would have liked to do some hot rodding, making me realize that men and their fascination with machines were the same in any century, but I didn't want to inflict my future man and his untested performance on poor, innocent Des Moines.

As we came into town, he watched everything with fascinated interest that turned into skepticism and contempt whenever he thought I was watching him, and when I took him into Merle Hay Mall to find a shoe store, his stare became even more intense. Nobody gave him a second glance, but I knew he could easily make mistakes that might be remembered and remarked upon, so I told him sternly, "Follow my lead. You're supposed to be from Boston. People from back East tend to think Des Moines is out in the sticks. Provincial and backward," I clarified when he looked blank. "It's not necessarily so, but it doesn't do to go around looking like a child in a candy store."

Resentment flashed in his eyes, and he gave me one of those haughty, down-the-nose stares that he must have used to intimidate people in the future. I shrugged, secure in the knowledge that I was right, and took his arm to guide him into a shoe store.

The shoe salesman liked Avon's knee-high boots. "You're all set for the blizzard," he commented cheerfully. "Where'd you get the boots? I haven't seen any like that around here."

"Boston," said Avon repressively.

"Oh, well."

He displayed plain brown loafers to Avon, who eyed them with disdain and said, "I should prefer black."

"To match his nature," I said a little spitefully. Avon could be wearing.

"No, only my heart," he responded, and I wasn't quite sure if he meant it or not, for there was the faintest trace of a twinkle in his eyes. The shoe clerk must have decided we were having a fight and wisely stayed out of it, producing black shoes. I bought Avon a pair that didn't particularly appeal to him, but at least they were free of metal studs and didn't look like he could use them to kick someone to death.

We went into a men's clothing store and bought him some underwear and a couple of shirts and jeans, then I took pity on his curiosity and we mall-crawled for about 45 minutes. I had to drag him out of first Waldenbooks and then Radio Shack, where he got into a discussion with a young man selling computers. Avon put him in his place in precisely ten seconds and proceeded to explain in pitying terms how primitive and inefficient his PCs were. After a few minutes, interest lit the salesman's eyes and he overlooked the contempt and demanded answers. Avon must have viewed him as a bright, retarded child, for he became slightly benevolent and plunged into a discussion that left me miles behind. The young man countered with an argument of his own and battle was fairly joined. When we finally left the store, Avon was smiling and looking quite human, and the salesman' s eyes followed him with respect, almost awe.

"So there are some intelligent people in your time, Meredith," Avon observed as we headed back to the car.

"As many as there are in your own. At least, we don't use suppressant drugs or butcher whole planets."

"Touche."

"We simply don't have the technology," I pressed on. "People like that guy actually might help to bring it about."

"Perhaps, though you are a long way from tarriel cells."

"Whatever they are." I noticed it had begun to snow, a few flurries anyway, still melting when they hit the pavement "Look, it's snowing."

"If this is a blizzard, I am not impressed."

Living in the country as I do, I had learned that a bad storm could cut me off for days at a time, so we stopped to lay in a supply of groceries. I was ably hindered by Avon, who had to be dragged out of the meat department, pried away from a tank of live lobsters--he'd never seen a crustacean before, either--and forcibly restrained from filling my shopping cart with everything from apples to zucchini. Taking Greg shopping had always raised the price of groceries, but shopping with Avon could bankrupt a millionaire.

When we emerged from the grocery store laden with practical and exotic foods, the snow had intensified. "I'm glad we didn't leave it any later," I remarked as we stowed the bags in the trunk. "This could get nasty."

"Will it keep the 'Feds' away?"

"If anything will."

"What kind of weapons do you have?" he asked as we headed north on Merle Hay Road.

"Greg liked hunting--the one area in which we disagreed. He had a couple of rifles and a few shotguns. I've still got them and ammunition. If you start shooting at the FBI, we will be in trouble."

"I was thinking of Servalan."

"I know. I thought of her last night, and I meant to get out the shotgun, but I never did. We will when we get home."

"Do you have the remotest idea how to shoot?"

"Yes, Greg taught me. I like target shooting." I added quickly, "But I don't think I could shoot another person."

"Not even to save your life or mine?"

I hesitated. Self defense is a powerful motivator and I had come to feel curiously protective of Avon. It was nothing to do with love, at least not the man-woman kind of love, but it was a strong feeling. What would I do if Servalan came and tried to take him away, back to a trial and a death sentence? This woman who had killed the Auronar, who viewed life and everything else as cheap before her own desire for power. "Well," I conceded, "I don't plan to let her take you."

I must have sounded very fierce, for Avon stared at me. I couldn't take my eyes off the road while it was getting so slippery, but I could feel his eyes boring into me with surprise and slight respect. He said, "You owe me nothing." It was a touch-me-not warning; he was holding me at a distance as he must hold people habitually for fear they will get too close and see the man beneath the mask. He did not want to accept the responsibility of my loyalty and was warning me that anything I chose to do, I chose on my own and did not obligate him by it. If I would have believed him, I would have lost all desire to help him, but I didn't believe him, not quite. I knew he was quite capable of warning me off and meaning it, but I also suspected he did this to people for their own good sometimes, content to let them think the worst of him. He was something of a fool to think he could spare himself hurt this way, but I didn't intend to go into that now, if ever.

"No," I retorted. "It's the other way around. You owe me. After all, I spent a lot of money on you this morning. It's to my advantage to keep you safe so I can collect."

For a moment, he was quite taken aback, then, unexpectedly, he laughed. "A hit. Well done, Meredith. But I warn you to expect nothing from me."

"And that way, I won't be disappointed?"

"Precisely. I am not a nice person. Because you have helped me, I am warning you that you cannot expect me to be properly grateful."

"Good lord, I don't want you to be grateful," I burst out. "Do you know how tiresome gratitude is? That's why I quit volunteer work. I didn't want people to feel they had to be grateful to me. I know I got sick of feeling grateful after Greg died when people kept calling and being nice and sympathetic and trying to help--and making me feel like they were doing me favors. I know they meant well, but it didn't help."

"How long has he been dead?" The question surprised me. Avon wasn't the type to ask conventional questions and offer sympathy, and I knew he thought I had a bad hang-up about it, which I did. But he had his own hang-ups, and I didn't think he'd jump in and mess with mine, because he'd expect it to give me the right to ask my own questions in return. He wouldn't like that. But I answered automatically.

"Just over a year. Now, go ahead and tell me it will feel better later and that I'll get over it in time."

"No, I won't tell you you'll get over it. I'll suggest you'll get used to it. A different thing entirely. Some people, of course, feel nothing deeply, and make easy adjustments." He smiled suddenly; I could hear it in his voice. "I once told a...a friend that regret was part of life but that she should make it a small part."

In spite of the smile, I didn't believe it was a happy memory, but I knew what he meant. "Think of Greg but not his death?"

"Was he such a paragon?" Avon asked skeptically.

"Well, no, he had faults, too, but usually they didn't matter. Some people draw you almost against your own will. I didn't want to live in Iowa, but I did because Greg lived here. There was something about him that drew me and I didn't understand it. Before Greg came along, I was always practical, but Greg was a dreamer. I used to think dreamers were fools until I met Greg."

There was a sharp silence, and I risked a quick look at Avon before returning my eyes to the steadily glazing road. He had withdrawn into himself and there was pain on his face. I said, gently, "Avon?" Maybe he was remembering Blake.

He was silent a moment longer, then he asked, "Are these roads dangerous?" So, he was still erecting walls. I decided I'd better respect them. After all, he'd been tricked into shooting Blake. At least Greg's death wasn't on my conscience.

"They're getting that way," I agreed. "I'd hate to have to make a sudden stop. We'd be in the ditch for sure." The snow was coming fast and furious, now, and the wind was picking up. If it had been this bad when we'd left Des Moines, I might have considered staying in a motel there instead of risking the drive home.

"I noticed we were making less speed." He stared out at the swirling snow. "And this will keep your government away?"

"I think so. The only thing that would have brought them is the pod, and the snow will have covered it by now. If it wasn't found while we were gone, we'll be fine. If the sheriff's inquiries didn't come up with anything, he'll probably let it drop. I don't think we should phone in. If it hadn't snowed, we would, but for once, the stupid weather worked in our favor."

I bit off the words as the car slithered sideways slightly and fought to control the skid while, unable to help, Avon tensed, biting back a protest. When we'd straightened out and were proceeding forward again, he said abruptly, "I thought you meant to put us off the road."

"You need to turn in the direction of the skid to get the wheels back under control. It's instinctive to do the other thing, but I've done a lot of country driving."

"I see there is more to it than I had expected." After that, he was quiet. letting me battle it out with the worsening weather conditions, and I was grateful not to have to make conversation. I could feel the muscles in my shoulders stiffening and I flexed my fingers carefully, one hand at a time. By the time I finally turned into my driveway, my jaw ached from clenching my teeth and I wanted nothing so much as a hot bath. When I pulled the car into the garage, I could feel Avon relaxing, too.

"You are very good at that," he observed quietly.

"Why shouldn't I be? Because I'm a woman?"

He looked at me in genuine surprise. "Should that matter?"

"It does to some men."

"Well, now, I told you this was a primitive time."

We carried the groceries in through the thickening snow. I had a feeling that in a few hours, it would be difficult to see as far as the house, but at least it wasn't bad enough for us to get lost as we hurried across the yard. It took several trips to bring the groceries and other purchases in, then we shed our outer clothes with relief and I set about preparing a late lunch while Avon went to turn on the television set and find the weather channel and the news. There was no mention of the mysterious 'plane' that had buzzed my house last night or anything about a possible plane crash, which I found reassuring. Avon considered it suspicious.

The storm kept getting worse, and it was mid-afternoon when we heard that the interstate highways were closed across the state and only emergency travel was recommended. I was glad we'd got home when we did. Finally, Avon appeared to believe that he was safe from my government and unbent enough to question me extensively about the 20th Century and our customs and level of technology. No scientist, I often came up with answers he found woefully inadequate, but there was nothing I could do about it. I hunted up magazines for him to look at, and found People, Psychology Today, the TV Guide, and finally, a recent Omni. He began to skim the latter and quickly became absorbed in it, ignoring the fiction and reading the articles. Once or twice, he muttered, "Primitive," but for the most part, he read in silence. When he'd skimmed it thoroughly, I commented on his grasp of written English and asked if it was his usual language.

"There are some differences, and slang, I presume, would be quite different, but there have not been too many changes. Why are you smiling?"

"Because if you speak English, it means my culture doesn't end, but goes on."

"And becomes the Terran Federation," he observed repressively, picking up People Magazine and leafing through it contemptuously. "It's hardly a heritage to be proud of."

"There have been repressive governments before," I reminded him. "I don't think much of your Federation, but my own government is a revolutionary government. We overthrew the vastly superior British Empire when we were just a colony. Your Blake has the right idea. If you can't get justice by legal means, maybe rebellion is the only recourse."

"Blake was a fool. He couldn't hope to defeat the Federation, not with only a small band of followers."

"Small bands grow. Nobody thought the American colonies could beat the British, but we did. We had some outstanding leaders, though. A remarkable collection of great men. They got together and wrote a Declaration of Independence, and--"

"I'm sure it took much more than simply proclaiming their independence."

"Oh, yes. We fought a war for it Once we were free, we developed our Constitution. I should let you read them both." I went and fetched a small pamphlet that I'd bought for the Constitutional Bicentennial and left him to it. He was silent a long time reading, then he said, "I can only be glad Blake did not see these documents."

"I wish Blake had seen them," I disagreed. "It sounds like you lacked organization and proper leaders. You were like terrorists, and moderates probably held that against you. I'm no student of political science or of revolution, but I don't think you went about it right."

"Don't tell me about it. It was never my revolution."

"No, but it was Blake's, and you were his man."

"Indeed? You have a remarkable imagination, Meredith."

He was looking distant again, and instead of convincing me I'd been wrong about his feelings for Blake, it only reinforced my belief that he had feelings for him. His description of that Gauda Prime encounter had been remarkably sparse, but how hard would it have been for Blake to have reassured Avon he hadn't turned traitor? Why hadn't he said, "Avon, we're still on the same side," or something like that? Had Avon shot first and asked questions later? What would I have done if I'd believed Greg had betrayed me? Not shot him, of course, but would I have waited for reassurance? I didn't know. I trusted Greg; Avon had trusted Blake, but he didn't seem very good at giving his trust. He was still wary of me after everything I'd done for him, but then, if I'd lived in his time and dealt routinely with people who thought nothing of killing entire planetary populations, I might be a lot more reluctant to trust people, too.

"Do I?" I asked. "If you weren't his man, it wouldn't have bothered you to kill him, would it?"

"This discussion serves no purpose." He got up, tossing aside the magazine with a hand that trembled slightly, and went to the window, where he stared unseeingly at the wall of white that now cut off the view of even the garage. My instincts told me I should go and put my arms around him, but that's what I'd do for someone of my own time, not someone like Avon. He wouldn't welcome it at all. So I gathered up the magazines and said lightly, "I don't suppose you know how to play Monopoly?"

"I know how to play chess."

"You'd wipe me out in two or three moves. I'll teach you Monopoly. It's all about acquiring property and wealth. I think you'll like it."

I usually win at Monopoly, playing it as if it were life and death, but in Avon, I met my match. Ruthlessly, he acquired houses and hotels and utilities, and it was a remarkably short time later that I found myself bankrupt. He was smiling as he counted his 'money.' "I should have liked to introduce that game to Vila," he remarked.

"Vila? One of your friends?"

"One of my crew," he corrected, as if he didn't dare claim friends. "He was luckier than Blake: he survived my attempt upon his life."

"You're trying to shock me," I ventured doubtfully as I folded up the board and gathered up the game pieces. "Either that or you're trying to distract me. Tell me about Vila. Why did you try to kill him?"

"You will push your luck too far one day. I should guess it would be within the next half hour."

"You're not armed. And much as John Adams likes you, he'd defend me from an attack."

We both turned and looked at the dog that was curled up on the hearth rug. He looked indolent and unconcerned, and I had a feeling he might fight on Avon's side instead of mine. Sensing our eyes upon him, he opened his eyes and lifted his head long enough to stare at us. When he realized we didn't have any food for him, he heaved a frustrated sigh and went back to sleep.

Avon's lips twitched. "Yes, I am in terrible danger."

I heaved a sigh much like the Labrador's. "You are a difficult man, Avon. I don't think I like you at all."

"You lie poorly as well."

That time, I chuckled. "I don't know why I should like you," I complained. "You're a dangerous man, and your friends don't live long."

"Remember that."

"I'll be careful. Now, tell me about Vila."

So he talked. His words were contemptuous as he described a coward and a thief, but the feeling I got was quite different. Vila always had a ready quip, and of everyone Avon had known, Vila was one of the few to take him as he was and like him in spite of it. That made it possible for him to trust Vila, and to like him, though he sounded like he'd pretended contempt as well. When he described their verbal spats, I hid a smile, for I knew a number of friendships that worked in precisely that way. It was only in event of an attack that the apparently feuding pair would join forces against the world. I'd once had a boyfriend like that, back in my first year of college--I'd dropped out when I met Greg. Dave and I had bickered amiably and insulted each other with wild abandon, and only once, when another guy had tried to insult me, had Dave jumped all over him and defended me. As Avon talked of Vila, I began to suspect that he had sometimes defended Vila in a roundabout way, and I got the impression, though Avon didn't seem to realize it himself, that Vila had occasionally protected him, too, in subtle ways.

But, one day, it almost ended when Avon and Vila were trying to leave the planet Malodaar by shuttle. An enemy had loaded the craft so it weighed too much to reach escape velocity, and unless the required amount of weight was ejected, the craft would burn up in the atmosphere. It came down to Vila's weight, and Avon, who always protected himself, went looking for Vila with a gun. It was an eerie story, enhanced by the odd, insane voice Avon used as he described his search through the stripped-down vessel, hunting for Vila to put him out the airlock. My blood ran cold as I listened. I could picture Vila hiding out, terrified, while Avon called to him, hunting him. But there was a pain in the region of my heart, because it hurt Avon to tell the story. It was as if Vila was the only one left who could keep him human, and now that was finished. For the first time, I began to understand how Avon could have gone on to kill Blake.

"I found the answer first," Avon said flatly. "It was a piece of neutron material embedded in a crystal: microscopic and incredibly heavy. I managed to eject it instead of Vila. He didn't come out until it was gone." He looked up at me--he'd opened out the Monopoly board again and had been studying it as if it were the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen--and smiled, and I drew back in alarm, for it was a horrible smile, as different from his joyous one in the car as night from day. "He never forgave me for it, of course," he went on as if it didn't matter.

I knew it did, though. I couldn't think of much in the way of consolation, and perhaps consolation was the wrong thing. Self-preservation was a strong urge, and in Avon it was honed to a fine art. Besides, it would have been stupid for them to die nobly together. It was just the ruthlessness he'd displayed that upset me. And yet... "It must be a complex thing, a shuttle, if there were so many places to hide," I suggested tentatively.

He looked at me down his nose, and if it weren't for the seriousness of the moment, I might have giggled, for his look reminded me of a refractory camel. Then he said in an odd voice, "Actually, there were no real places to hide," and he looked thoroughly perplexed.

"Maybe you didn't want to kill Vila," I offered, and let him think about it.

"I didn't want to kill him," he echoed, as if the concept were as difficult to grasp as the theory behind tarriel cells. "Vila had his uses. A gifted thief is rare."

"A true friend is rarer still."

He shot me a scornful look. "Sentiment is a destructive emotion."

"And yet, you couldn't find Vila on that shuttle. Did you ever think that might be because you didn't want to find him?"

"I had no choice," he spat, returning to his scrutiny of the Boardwalk and Park Place.

"No. Survival at any price, is that it?"

He didn't respond, and I went on, "Sometimes, no choice is a choice. I think you knew exactly where Vila was. I think you postponed looking there in hopes of finding a better solution."

"Even if true," he countered, "there would have come a time when I could have deceived myself no longer. Vila would still have died if I had not found the neutron material." He lifted his eyes. "Don't try to whitewash my actions, Meredith. You will always be disappointed."

"You can't know what would have happened. Vila must have a survival instinct, too. Maybe he would have resisted you." I sighed. "It's pointless to talk about it. I think you're sorry it happened like that."

"I told you regret should be a small part of one's life. In what way would regret matter to Vila?"

"It might."

"Even if it had, it would matter no longer. Vila is dead."

He was careful to sound uncaring that I knew Vila's death had hurt him. "With Blake?" I asked.

He nodded "I was Servalan's only prisoner on the ship. I confess to examining the other cells before I went to the escape pod. They were empty."

He had cared enough to look for his crewmates. There were no words of comfort, so I said quickly, "Tell me of the rest of your crew."

So I heard of Tarrant, young and arrogant and hot-headed. Avon appeared to despise him, but I didn't think he quite did. Tarrant had challenged him for control of the ship, and Tarrant could be both noble and cruel. Avon thought him a fool, but then, I was beginning to realize that Avon thought everyone a fool. Yet he acknowledged that Tarrant would have had potential if he'd been allowed to survive. "He was well educated," Avon went on. "Sometimes, his knowledge surprised me. He did remarkably well for someone who came through the Federation Space Academy. The military of officer potential are taught to regard themselves as little less than gods, dispensing Federation order throughout the Inner and Outer Worlds. They are taught never to question an order. Yet Tarrant did. He never lost that FSA arrogance, but he was capable of learning." He shook his head. "He would have done better away from me."

"Who else?" I asked.

"Dayna and Soolin." He talked about them, and I realized that while he had loved neither woman, he had sometimes felt protective of Dayna, whom he'd found hiding with her father on a primitive world. Servalan had killed her father--another strike against Servalan--and Dayna had joined the crew. She was a weapons expert who enjoyed danger and who had tried several times to kill Servalan. Soolin was a gunfighter. Hearing that, my thoughts ran rather perversely to Clint Eastwood and Western movies, and I pictured Soolin practicing a fast draw.

Life on the Scorpio and Xenon Base sounded hard, with rivalries and disagreements, but there had been crew loyalty, too. I don't know what I would have felt about being part of such a group because of the lack of warmth and support, but I was used to being without warmth and support, and I wondered if the horrible things that had happened to the members of Avon's crew had taught them not to get too attached to each other. Had I lost Greg in Avon's universe, might I not have become rather like them? Wasn't I a little like that even now? Not that I would kill people to stay alive because it hadn't come to that here, but I hadn't gotten close to anyone since I lost Greg, not until Avon came and I had no choice. In a sense, Avon was holding up a mirror in front of me, and I didn't like my reflection very much. I wondered if he liked his.

As we sat there across the game board, he lost in his memories and I deep in my thoughts, the telephone rang, shrilling across the sudden silence like an alarm. I must have jumped a foot, and he tensed and sprang up because he didn't know what a telephone sounded like. When I relaxed and went to answer it, I hid a smile at his reaction; he wouldn't appreciate it much. "It's just the phone. Hello?"

"Merry, how are you holding up against the storm?" It was Joellen Sprague; she and her husband Jason had been Greg's and my best friends. Greg and Jason had grown up together, and when everyone else had faded away, Jason and Joellen had stayed in touch, sometimes inviting me to dinner with them or to their home for an evening. Joellen was probably my closest friend.

"Isn't it awful," I agreed. "I went in this morning and stocked up on groceries and had the devil of a time getting back. I think I'm stuck here for the duration."

"You should have come and stayed with us," she reproached. "This could be a bad one. Suppose your pipes freeze or the power goes out."

"So far, so good," I replied, crossing my fingers. "Besides, I've got company."

"Oh?" She sounded intrigued, and I knew she was thinking it would do poor Merry no end of good to get me a new man on the scene. I wasn't quite ready for that yet, but for a minute I toyed with the idea of letting her think so.

"He's from Boston," I said calmly, conscious of Avon listening for all he was worth.

"He? Better and better. Do I scent a romance?"

"No, you don't. Avon's a friend. That's all. Stop playing matchmaker, Jo. It doesn't suit you." Across the room, Avon lifted an eyebrow in cynical amusement.

"Avon? Great name," she commented facetiously. "Just a friend? Now, Merry, you know it would be good for you to have a bit of a fling. You're cut off by the storm. Why not make the most of it?"

"You're wrong," I insisted. "It's not like that at all." I lowered my voice. "He's just getting over a nasty shock. Several of his friends were killed in...an accident. He needs some time to get it into perspective."

"And he came to you?" she asked in wondering disbelief. "I'm sorry, Merry, I don't mean to be unkind, but you have held onto Greg's memory awfully hard. Stuck away out there alone like that--it isn't good for you. I hope the two of you aren't out there wallowing in misery."

I shook my head. "No, I'm beginning to see you're right. I don't want to let Greg go, but maybe I'll have to. If it comes to that. I might be the best person for Avon right now. I've been there, too."

"I didn't give you leave to discuss my personal life," Avon said coldly. I threw him an apologetic look. After all, he might never meet Joellen.

"Well, maybe," Joellen mused doubtfully. "But when the roads get plowed, I expect you to come in and spend some time with us. Stay a weekend; and we'll get you back into the swing of things."

"I might," I agreed, and was surprised to discover that I meant it and wasn't simply temporizing to distract her as I usually did. I had been away from people too long. Looking at Avon, who was good at holding people at arm's length, I could see what I didn't want to become.

"I'll hold you to that, girl," she declared. "Now, I've got to get off the phone. Jason' s supposed to call from the office before he leaves, and it's almost quitting time."

"It's getting so dark out. I thought it was later." I said goodbye and hung up, turning to face Avon. "Well, I had to have some explanation of why you're here," I defended myself before he could speak. "Jo might be a bit of a busybody, but she's in town and not here."

"The minute your roads are passable, she will come out here. I am familiar with the type."

"I'm sure you're capable of dealing with the type without effort."

He smiled faintly. "Usually, I go armed."

"Then I'll hide the guns if Jo comes over." We'd got out the shotguns and loaded them in case Servalan showed up, but so far , we were undisturbed. At least we were prepared. "In the meantime, I'll fix dinner. You can help me."

He looked affronted but he came along, and John Adams, realizing that food would soon be served, jumped up and padded along beside Avon, whose hand went automatically to the dog's head.

"He'll expect you to give him table scraps," I explained. "You keep disappointing him."

"Surely he has his own food." Avon pointed to the dog's dish.

"Oh, yes, but it's much more fun--and probably tastier--to get it from someone at the table. Greg used to sneak things to him, though we had an unwritten rule about it."

Avon shook his head as if the daily routine of my household was completely alien to him. It was certainly different from life on Xenon base, and, coming here directly from a life of constant threat, he might find it mundane and boring, yet he was slowly relaxing. Now that the snow had come, he didn't have to look over his shoulder every five minutes, expecting danger or pursuit, and the only demands I put upon him were to tell me a little about himself. He had the right of censorship, and I was sure he'd taken it a time or two, though he had described Blake's death and the attempt on Vila's life. Maybe he felt he must describe them, and in doing so make them less important, to give him control over the situation and to believe--however falsely--that it didn't matter. Sentiment was weakness, he had told me. Up to a point, perhaps that was true. Maudlin sentiment certainly did no good. Wallowing in misery over Greg's death had made me feel no better. But I had to care that he was gone, to give his life meaning. If that was sentiment, then I was sentimental. I don't think that much honest feeling would hurt Avon, but maybe he wasn't capable of it. The feelings were there, or he would never have cried for Blake, but he'd been forced to bottle them up. It was like a pressure cooker. As long as it was handled properly and the pressure contained right, everything was fine, but try to tamper with it, and you'd get a nasty explosion. And where in his cold and dangerous world could he have gone to find someone to listen non-judgmentally instead of taking advantage of what might be counted a weakness?

I made goulash, my one specialty, with a variety of herbs and spices and tomatoes from the garden. No, I hadn't canned them--Joellen had come out and done it for me--though I'd managed, amazingly enough, to grow them. Then good Iowa beef, and pasta. Avon watched the sauce simmering in the pot while I added this and that; green peppers and onions. "I'm not really a good cook," I told Avon. "This is just easy. When Greg and I first got married, he did most of the cooking. I never learned anything useful growing up. We had a cook and maids, and my parents didn't think I should have to lift a finger. As a result, I'm not trained for anything. Just a useless body." I shrugged.

"Is the money gone?" he asked curiously. His eyes always gleamed when money was mentioned.

"No, I've got some money of my own, and Greg's insurance money, and I'm my parents' heir. Someday, I'll have more. And you probably wonder why I live out here without servants."

"I know why you live here," he countered. "Sentiment. Though I don't understand why you live here without every luxury you can afford."

"I have everything I need," I replied, and my mind echoed, as always: Except Greg. Except Greg.

"I wanted to be so rich and powerful that no one could touch me," he said to my back as I drained the noodles.

"Maybe it was different in the 23rd Century," I returned. "Maybe you needed the security there. But it's a precarious thing to base security on. All the money in the world wouldn't have kept Greg alive, and it certainly wouldn't have saved Blake, either. Being rich wouldn't have stopped Blake from being a rebel. It sounds like it was in his blood."

"He was a fool."

"No, he was a man with different motives than yours. You can't call everyone else a fool."

"Can't I?" He shrugged as I dumped the noodles into the big pot and turned down the burner to low. It would simmer while I got everything else ready.

"Well, you can, I suppose, but what good does it do you? You won't convince a real fool, and the rest of the people will just ignore you and go on with what they're doing anyway."

That won me a toned-down version of the beautiful smile from the car, and he said easily, "Perhaps you're right."

"I know I am." I sliced French bread. "Like garlic bread?"

"I don't know. I've never tried it."

"Well, you'll try it tonight."

Dinner was a huge success, capped by a bottle of red wine. Having gone to the effort, I felt triumphant to see it so well received, and I hid a smile and pretended not to notice when Avon slipped a bite of ground beef to John Adams, who looked delighted that his favorite human had finally learned the proper way to treat a dog. Avon would never be mellow, but he seemed the most relaxed that he'd been since his arrival.

After dinner, I turned on the VCR and showed him a couple of episodes of Star Trek, which he watched with moderate interest, commenting on the transporter and comparing it with the teleport system he and his friends had used. He seemed to find the episodes unrealistic and eyed them with scorn, but that seemed natural for him; he viewed everything with scorn. I felt sorry for him because of it, thinking of how much he missed when he shut himself away from people and from new experiences.

I wondered how many new experiences I'd shut myself away from in the past eight months.

We watched the weather report, which indicated the storm might blow itself out overnight, or at least by morning. The wind still howled around the house, and the snow continued to accumulate at an alarming rate. We were expected to get a total of ten or twelve inches of snow, and the temperature kept dropping all the time. The wind chill was around 47 below, and may roads were snow-packed and drifted closed. If we'd needed to go into town, there would have been no way to do it. I turned on the yard light and went to stand in the doorway, peering out at the moving white wall that cut us off from everything, and only intermittently could I catch a glimpse of the garage or the trees or the windbreak. It was as if the world had gone, leaving us trapped in limbo.

Sensing a movement behind me, I turned to Avon as he stared past me at the snowstorm. "I don't believe I care for your weather," he remarked.

I closed the inner door and turned back to the warmth of the house. "People die in storms like this. Everything grinds to a halt. Can Servalan track you in this?"

"She might be able to find the pod, but I don't believe she will risk herself in such severe weather."

"Could the vortex have damaged or destroyed her ship?"

"It's possible, but I should be a fool if I believed that." As always, when he spoke of Servalan, his eyes went hard and unyielding. He gestured at the lock on the door. "That puny lock won't keep her out if she wants to come in."

"Maybe not, but it won't give way without some noise. If she tries to break in, we'll hear her in time to get the guns. And don't forget, I've got a foolproof alarm system that she won't expect. John Adams doesn't like strangers around the house. Remember how he barked when he first found you? Even if she has the same charm for him that you do--which I doubt very much--it would take her time to get to him, and he'd get our attention right away. She isn't likely to zap the whole house without warning, is she?"

"I should think not. She would never pass up an opportunity to gloat."

"What I can't understand is why nobody's killed her before now." I really meant it. I'd never thought myself particularly bloodthirsty, but if Servalan died, it would be only what she deserved.

"People have tried, myself included. I shall have to try harder."

The tone of his voice chilled me down to my socks. In his own way, Avon was probably as ruthless as Servalan herself, but I suspected his ruthlessness was rarely directed against the innocent. He was hard and didn't give anything away, but he didn't hurt those who had never harmed him, at least not unless it could not be helped. He'd gotten into a position where he'd been forced to consider killing Vila, but Servalan would not have hesitated to eject Vila from the shuttle, and it wouldn't have disturbed her in the least. When Avon was driven to something like that, he paid the price, paid it with a little more of his sanity. Given a fair shake, Avon could have been a good man, but the Federation gave no second chances and not too many first ones.

Avon would be better off if he could stay in the 20th Century, even if he had trouble adapting. Of course, his only other option was Servalan, and that didn't bear thinking of.

I went to bed to the sound of the wind whistling around the house and the rattle of the ice-laden evergreens beating against the siding and the windows, and I lay for a long time listening to it and wishing I faced nothing more sinister than the storm. In the guest room, Avon would be trying to sleep while John Adams tried to sneak into bed with him, and I doubted Avon was the sort to fancy sharing his bed with a large dog. I didn't think he'd sleep very well, unless sheer exhaustion moved him. He'd looked ill-rested when he'd got up this morning, the shadows under his eyes almost as dark as the bruise on his cheekbone, and I wondered if he lay awake unable to sleep because he hurt from the crash, or because he saw Blake die every time he closed his eyes.

I awoke to silence and a room that seemed as bright as day. The clouds had gone and the wind died, and the light of the full moon glaring off the snow added a pale and unearthly light to my familiar room, making it resemble some strange stage set. I got up and padded over to the window, grateful for the warmth of the carpet beneath my bare feet, and looked out across a world composed of endless whiteness, filigreed with a black patchwork of shadows from the bare trees. An alien landscape if I had ever seen one.

Lost in my fantasy, I scarcely noticed the movement at the foot of the hill until it repeated itself; then I stiffened as one, two, three shapes detached themselves from the shelter of the cottonwoods and began to work their way up the hill, hampered by the deepness of the snowdrifts.

It was 4 a.m. No one in their right mind should be wandering through the Millers' cottonwoods. That left two options: the government and Servalan. I hadn't heard a spacecraft come down, but maybe it had awakened me, or maybe it had landed under cover of the storm and only now that the moon had come out and the wind had died were any of its occupants risking exposure to the harsh weather.

Whatever the case, I had to be ready for it. I threw on clothes without regard for style and hurried along to Avon's room, opening the door softly and keeping my hand away from the light switch. I had the idea Avon would wake up mean, but I never found out, for the bed was empty. Tangled covers told a story of sleeplessness, and I backed out of the room again and went downstairs, pausing to pick up a shotgun on the way.

Avon was on the couch, fully dressed but dozing. He'd turned on the radio and music played softly in the background, an almost subliminal sound. When I came in, he raised his head and looked at me, dazed from sleep. John Adams, sprawled on the couch asleep, his head on Avon's lap, didn't even stir.

Before I could speak, he saw the gun, and in one hasty movement, he jumped up and faced me, startling poor John Adams. "Trouble?" he asked, taking the gun from my hands and checking to make sure it was loaded.

"I woke up when the wind died and looked out the window. There's someone coming up the hill from where the pod went down."

"Servalan," he said flatly.

"Or my government," I countered, though I didn't think it likely. Unless they knew more than we'd guessed, they wouldn't come in the middle of a blizzard. They probably couldn't come in the middle of a blizzard, short of arriving by helicopter. "Did you hear her ship come down?" I asked.

"No. I couldn't sleep, so I came down here and listened to music, but I must have slept after all. Did you hear it?"

"No, but something woke me."

He nodded impatiently. "All right. We'll leave the lights off; that way, they won't know we're here. I would guess they'll try to enter from several directions at once. I could hide and let you pretend innocence, but Servalan wouldn't believe it, and you might do something to give me away. Get the other gun."

He was all business now, and I wouldn't have dared disobey him for anything. I went for the second shotgun. "The only advantage is that we're in here where it's warm and they're wading through hip-deep drifts. They'll be exhausted by the time they arrive."

"They'll still have us outgunned. A projectile weapon is no match for a para-handgun."

"It's still lethal at close range," I defended. "I makes a big hole in a person." I shuddered. I didn't like the thought of shooting someone, even if they were going to be shooting at me. I didn't know if I could do it, and I said so.

"But you have no objections to dying?" he asked scornfully. "Servalan won't care for your sensibilities or your scruples. How many people did you see?"

"Three. They were too far away to recognize, or even to tell if they were men or women."

He looked around the room, then he strode to the couch and pulled it forward a little so there was a space behind it. "Get in there," he ordered flatly. "Stay down and try not to be seen. If you get a clear shot, shoot. Don't take time to think about it or you won't be able to do it. I guarantee that Servalan will consider you expendable, and the only hope we have to defeat her is to do it at her own game."

"I don't want to be like her," I insisted as he steered me toward the couch. His grip on my arm was hard and unyielding, and I knew he would not take no for an answer, so I let him push me into the dubious shelter of the sofa. "I don't want to kill first and ask questions later."

"I don't believe you want to die, and I do not want either of us to die for nothing. Besides, I shall need back up."

That was inarguable, so I nodded faintly. "I hate this," I muttered, realizing for the first time how utterly terrified I was. Here I was, contemplating blowing someone away in my own living room. I'd never get the stain out of the carpet. At that thought, I giggled nervously, wondering how close I was to hysterics.

When John Adams let loose with a frenzy of barking, it was all I could do to keep from screaming. Avon tensed and ducked into shelter behind the desk. I thought resentfully that it was more likely to stop a bullet than the couch was, but then I remembered we wouldn't be ducking bullets. I didn't know what a para-handgun was, but it would probably cut through the desk as easily as a phaser could.

"Sit!" I snapped at the dog, realizing that if he attacked Servalan and her henchmen, they'd kill him without hesitation. "John Adams, come here! Stay!"

He capered about, barking frantically, and it was Avon who took charge. "Come here!" he ordered the dog, and John Adams whined suddenly and slunk to Avon's side. Avon pushed the dog under the desk and said, "Stay!" in a tone I would not have dared disobey myself. The Labrador whined and lay down, resting his head on his paws. I could feel his tension all the way across the room.

They came in through the kitchen door. That was the weakest lock, and the chain didn't hold up against the weight of at least one determined body. John Adams barked once, then, when Avon muttered "Quiet!" to him, he relented again.

There were footsteps across the kitchen floor, and a bright light suddenly flared out through the doorway--a narrow beam like a flashlight, but much more powerful. Long shadows stretched in front of it, and a moment later, I saw a form hesitate in the doorway, clad all in black with some kind of helmet or mask covering the face. I hadn't expected that, and it made me think of Darth Vader, even though the mask bore no resemblance to the Sith lord's breath mask. Some kind of military? The future equivalent of stormtroopers? I raised my shotgun and aimed at the eerie figure, but I could not bring myself to shoot.

When a second black figure joined the first one in the doorway, Avon aimed his weapon and cried, "Now, Meredith!" as he fired, and so compelling was his voice that my gun went off almost automatically. There was a choked cry from the doorway and both men fell.

I felt sick. The light went out, and a moment later, the kitchen light came on and a woman's voice purred smoothly, "I hope you will give me a chance to explain myself, Avon."

Avon stayed in shelter, but he raised his voice slightly. "Oh, yes, Servalan. I will give you a chance to explain yourself, right before I kill you." He sounded a totally different person from the man I had begun to know in the past day and a half: someone I didn't recognize, someone I feared. I lowered my shotgun and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to contain the shivers that suddenly wracked my body.

Servalan came slinking into the living room, stepping fastidiously over the bodies. Having learned from the kitchen light how to work them, she put out a hand and flipped the switch, bathing the living room in light, then she lifted her long, snow-caked skirt with a careless hand to keep the hem from dragging against the bloodied bodies. Little pieces of snow dropped off and mingled in the blood. She had shed her coat and I had expected military fatigues, but instead she wore a glamorous black gown. She had a striking face with magnificent eyes, eyes that chilled my blood. Her hair was short as a man's, but it did not detract one iota from her femininity. She was as beautiful as an ice princess, and for a moment I thought bizarrely of Cruella DeVil, only to hesitate when I realized that this woman made Cruella De Vil seem like Santa Claus. I thought her the most truly evil person I'd ever met.

"You were a bit hard on my troopers, Avon," she observed, eyeing the bodies dispassionately before raising her eyes to Avon and pinning him in his corner with them. He stared back more of a stranger than ever before, because in spite of his hatred for her, he was drawn to her, too. I thought I'd felt sick before, but the reaction of these two people as they locked eyes made my shivering worsen.

"What did you expect?" Avon returned. "Surely you brought more than two troopers after me, Servalan?"

"Oh, but, Avon, I considered you no threat. I remember the way you looked when I walked into that room on Gauda Prime and saw you straddling Blake's body. I thought you quite mad. How is it that you are not?"

"Perhaps I am unlucky."

He meant it. Insanity would have been easier on him than what had happened to Blake. I'd been happy to see him growing stronger, but now I wondered. Maybe it had all been for nothing. I hated that.

"Then I am the lucky one," she crooned. "You will come back with me to our own time, Avon. I shall use you to destroy finally the rebel movement and return to power. Perhaps I might spare your life. Of course, I could not share power with you, but we have always dealt well together. The two of us would be unstoppable."

"You do not tempt me, Servalan."

"No? Surely you aren't tempted to stay here with this--this milk and water creature." She gestured at me in offhand contempt.

"I don't expect him to stay with me," I retorted. "And Avon only shot one of your men."

"Oh, it can talk," she observed with a little smile.

"You're not welcome here, Servalan," I told her, standing up and picking up the shotgun again. As if sensing my feelings toward the woman, John Adams growled ferociously and barked.

Her eyes flicked over to the dog, and for a moment, she looked uneasy, then she turned back to Avon. "Consider what I am offering you, Avon," she said as if there had been no interruption.

"You are offering me nothing," he spat. "To regain power, you would be required to produce me back on Earth. Assuming you could safely cross the vortex once more, once you had displayed your trophy, the Federation would hardly turn me over to you as a tame pet. I would be summarily executed."

"Perhaps. The vortex is not so difficult as you assume. It simply requires pin-point accuracy in navigation." She launched into a technical explanation that passed right over my head, and I saw Avon's eyes narrow as he considered it. "It helps, of course, if one uses the Orac computer," she finished up, casting a sideways glance at Avon.

He saw and interpreted it "You do not have Orac, Servalan. Do not attempt to deceive me that you do."

"I will have it soon enough. There are only so many places to search for it on Gauda Prime."

"And if Orac wishes to remain hidden from you? I do not think you will find it."

A computer that wanted to stay hidden? No wonder Avon had been so contemptuous of Greg's Apple IIC. Orac must be self-aware, and from Servalan's interest in it--I could see the greed in her eyes--it must be special, even in their time. It might give Servalan too much power to resist.

"Oh, I think I shall find it eventually."

"Do not delude yourself. You are no match for Orac."

"Perhaps not, but I am a match for you."

"Are you?" He shoved his shotgun against her throat "I think not, Servalan. I could kill you right now."

I winced at the thought of what would happen if Avon pulled the trigger at such close range, and Servalan must have known it, too, for her eyes darted over to the two dead troopers, and she looked uneasy. "So you could, Avon, but when you reach my ship, my troopers have orders to kill you if I am not with you."

"And if I should choose to kill you and remain in this time?"

"Oh, I do not think you will do that. You see, the man you killed on Gauda Prime was not Blake."

Avon froze, and for a moment I thought the gun would go off, but he masked his reaction to her words and growled out, "You're lying."

"Am I, indeed? Surely you recall that I had Blake cloned. Travis killed one of those clones, and another is in possession of IMIPAK. But I had two more made. One of them proved defective and had to be killed. He died on the planet Jevron." She smiled sweetly. "Yes, as I told you, I saw Blake die. It was simply not the correct Blake. The other I used for the electronic image of Blake I created on Terminal. He was never there, but his image was. He believed he was Blake. What you saw on Terminal was actually a holographic projection. He was conditioned to believe the two of you were actually face to face, and with the equipment on Terminal, we convinced you of the same thing. Later, of course, we pretended to cure him, and he went to Gauda Prime, where he set up a base. Yes, he tested you there. You had abandoned him on Terminal, you see, and he wasn't sure he could trust you. I had several agents there to watch him and report back to me as soon as word came down that you were on your way. Arlen you know about. There were two others. One of them had one job alone: to foster suspicion in Blake, to make him doubt you."

"You said he wasn't Blake," Avon countered. I could tell he was deeply shaken by her story. I didn't know about Terminal or IMIPAK, but I could tell that Avon believed her, and I wasn't sure if that was wise, no matter how convincing she sounded. Could a clone be so believable that it would fool Avon? Or had impending madness taken away his reasoning power?

"A clone, Avon. A useful tool. I was sorry when you killed him. He had been betraying rebels there for some time, since shortly after you escaped from Terminal. However, the end result was worth it. Now 'Blake' is dead, killed by one of his own people. The propaganda uses are limitless."

"And did you plan on the vortex as well, Servalan?"

"A minor inconvenience. Soon, we shall return to our own time, and I will regain power. The presidency has eluded me too long."

He jammed the gun against her neck again. "Where is the real Blake?" he demanded, and I heard the desperation in his cry.

"I don't know. He may be dead. I lost track of him after the alien war. A pity."

I don't know if he believed her or not, but maybe it was true, because she wouldn't have played her little games with the clone if the real Blake was likely to pop up and discredit her. I didn't know how long it had been since the alien war, but it had evidently been long enough for Servalan to feel confident in her deception.

"I wouldn't believe her, Avon," I cautioned.

She ignored me, but Avon glanced briefly in my direction before turning to face her again. "If you are lying to me, Servalan, I will take great pleasure in blowing your head off."

"Oh, but I am not lying to you. You know me well enough to separate my truths from my lies. Right now, it is to my advantage to tell you the truth. Blake may be dead, or he may live somewhere, but I do not know where he is. I wish that I did. He would then be my prisoner. But should he emerge from his seclusion, he will find that he has left it too late. The galaxy will believe him dead once I return to Earth--to my own Earth--and the real Blake will be considered an impostor." She smiled. "Well, Avon? Will you return with me?"

"No, Servalan. You will return with me, as my prisoner."

"How will you manage that, I wonder? There are a dozen men on my ship."

"No, there aren't," I scoffed. "If there were, you wouldn't have brought only two of them after Avon."

"She's right." Avon insisted. "Suppose you tell the truth for once, Servalan."

"There is one pilot and one guard," she spat. "They are better armed than you are, and they are prepared for danger."

"I cannot count the times that Blake and I between us managed to thwart you, Servalan," Avon told her. "Find something to bind her, Meredith. I don't want her to try anything."

I got some sturdy rope, and Avon tied her while I kept her covered. She watched me a moment, her eyes full of secret amusement, probably guessing that I didn't believe I could actually kill her. The guard in the doorway was a silent reproach, and I couldn't stand the thought of going closer to either body. I wondered how I would ever get rid of them.

Then John Adams started barking again, loud and urgent, and running back and forth between us and the door. Servalan smiled, her eyes smug. "You see," she observed pleasantly, "my men have come after me."

"Then they'll fare no better than the others did," Avon insisted matter-of-factly. He shoved Servalan down roughly on the couch and loaded another shell into his shotgun. "We're ready for them."

The door burst open, splinters flying as the chain lock was pulled right off the frame. Two men burst into the room, followed by a fair-haired woman and a young black woman, none of them in a Federation uniform. All of them were armed, and I moaned faintly at the thought of yet another bloodbath in my living room, but Avon grasped my arm and pulled my shotgun down. "Don't fire," he ordered.

"Avon!' cried the shorter of the two men. He was a nondescript little man with thinning hair, but his eyes gleamed, and I suspected there was more to him than met the eye. Like the others, he looked glad to see Avon, but also like them, he didn't seem overwhelmed at the reunion. Avon had insisted he had no friends. Maybe he'd been right, or maybe Vila--I was sure this was Vila--still held the shuttle incident against him.

"You took your time, Vila," Avon told him unenthusiastically, though I suspected he was glad to see them all. "How did you ever find your way here?"

"We were on Servalan's ship, Avon," the taller man, curly haired and rather good-looking, offered. Tarrant? "We managed to overpower her crew, and here we are." He gestured at the group with a touch of flamboyant style.

"You're lying. I checked the other cells before I took the escape pod."

"Did you, indeed?" It was the blond woman, who must be Soolin. She sounded skeptical.

"We weren't in the cells, Avon," Dayna said practically. I wondered if she might be the crew's peacemaker. "Servalan had us in a secured cabin on the other side of the ship. We wondered if you were meant to escape."

"And die in the process?"

"I doubt it," cut in Tarrant. "Perhaps Servalan had another use for you." He glanced at Servalan, and she gave him a perfectly devastating smile. He flushed slightly and turned away.

"If so, the vortex intervened," Avon replied. "She never counted on that."

Dayna had gone to check on the troopers' bodies. She looked up. "Where did it bring us, Avon?"

He smiled, one of those nasty little smiles of his that have nothing to do with good humor. "Into the past," he announced baldly.

"The past?" Vila cried in alarm. "Can we get back?"

"Do we want to?" countered Soolin. "Our own time was not particularly wonderful. How far in the past, Avon?"

"Twentieth Century, Old Calendar. President Sarkoff would love it. But I think you'd find it a primitive age. I hope you have not damaged Servalan's ship or its records."

"You mean that you want to go back, Avon?" demanded Vila involuntarily, staring. I noticed they were all regarding him warily, as if he were a time bomb primed to go off at any minute. I wasn't sure that was accurate any longer, but they'd have to find that out for themselves.

"Oh, but he does," Servalan purred. "To look for Blake."

The others turned to stare at Avon in varying degrees of alarm, and, knowing Avon, he would not explain, at least not in a reassuring way. I plunged into the conversation, rather irritated with him. "Servalan told him the man he shot on Gauda Prime was not the real Blake, but one of four clones she had made. Someone named Travis killed one of them, one has something called IMIPAK, one died on a planet called Jevron, I think it was, and the fourth was used to create an illusion on Terminal before he went to Gauda Prime and set up a base there. Servalan doesn't know where the real Blake is, but it's possible he's alive."

They all stared at me except Vila, who sneaked a considering look at Avon, his eyes softening. I hoped he could work things out about the shuttle incident. If I had my way, I'd take a few minutes alone with him and tell him Avon hadn't wanted him dead. Maybe it would help.

"Aren't you going to introduce us to your friend, Avon?" Tarrant asked.

Avon did, proving I'd given them the right identities in my head. "Meredith has been introducing me to the 20th Century," he explained.

"And what about that?" Vila pointed at John Adams, who had taken a defensive stance against Avon's leg, though he wasn't growling any more.

"This?" Avon stroked the dog's head. "What do you think, Vila, that it is a hairy alien? Haven't you ever seen a dog before?" I doubted even Vila would see the mischief in his eyes.

Perhaps Vila did. "'Course I have," he burst out. "I never led a sheltered life like you Alphas did." He grinned at the others quickly. "We saw a pack of wild dogs once when we broke out of the detention center and found a way out of the domes. I didn't like them."

"John Adams isn't wild," I defended. "He's not a friendly dog except to Avon, but he won't hurt you now he knows you're welcome here."

Tarrant lifted an eyebrow in evident recognition at the name, but none of the others made the connection. Or maybe he was simply reacting to the fact that John Adams liked Avon. I wasn't sure if Tarrant did. In fact, I couldn't quite make out the group dynamics at all. They supported each other, but didn't really seem close. Right now, they were united in their distrust of Servalan and the threat of being stranded out of time, but I don't believe Avon could have lowered his guard to them as he had to me earlier. Sometimes, it's easier to let a stranger close to you than to trust the people who are always there.

"The dog's got bad taste, then," Vila muttered, but without real malice. He edged closer to Avon, darting uneasy glances at John Adams, and reached out to tap lightly the bruise on Avon's cheekbone. "You look like you've been to the wars," he observed. He didn't quite sound concerned, but I suspected he was.

Avon batted Vila's hand away. "I came through the vortex in an escape pod. That is when Meredith arrived on the scene."

"Lucky Meredith," Tarrant commented. "Dragged into our affairs willy-nilly. At least you'll be free of us soon."

I discovered I would miss Avon, though he had not been the most comfortable of companions. "It'll be getting light soon," I observed. "Even if your ship is able to block radar, that won't prevent a visual sighting."

"She's afraid her government will question her about unidentified flying objects," Avon pointed out coolly.

"I'm afraid they'll scramble fighters and come after you with missiles," I corrected. "We're not totally helpless here. Maybe your deflector screens or whatever you call them will help, but I think you'd rather get away without being seen."

"What about weather conditions?" Avon asked. "The roads are blocked for the moment, but how long will it take for them to be cleared?"

"Probably all day and into tomorrow."

"Then who is to see us?" He looked at Servalan and back to me. "I don't feel comfortable leaving her in this time a minute more than I can prevent. It is unlikely that she could alter history, but I don't trust her."

"Alter history?" Vila demanded in dismay. "Avon, what if you've done something to alter history already?"

"I should doubt that. Meredith knows where I come from and some information about our time, but I think she will not take the risk of changing anything."

"I don't believe I could, even if I had the inclination," I assured him. "Don't worry, Avon. I wish I could change some of the events of your time, but I wouldn't take the risk. I might make it worse."

"If that's possible," Soolin mumbled under her breath, but Avon heard her and the look he shot her didn't seem to faze her.

"Do you think Blake really could be alive?" Vila asked suddenly, and for a moment, he and Avon stared at each other. I wondered how I could get Vila alone long enough to tell him about the shuttle.

"If he is," Avon remarked, "I plan to find him."

"It was rather risky the last time," Tarrant cut in. He looked as battered as Avon did. I wondered how that had happened.

"It might have been less risky if you hadn't managed to confuse the issue," Avon snapped at him.

"That's not fair, Avon," Dayna defended the curly-haired man. "If Servalan's right and that wasn't the real Blake, then Tarrant was right to warn us about him."

"The problem, as I see it," Soolin mused, "is that we're relying on her word for all of this."

"Maybe," Vila argued, "but I'd rather believe that was a clone who didn't really know Avon than to think Blake had got like that. He wasn't the same, and Avon knows it."

Avon dropped his eyes to the hand resting on John Adams' head. "I wasn't the same either, Vila," he pointed out in a low voice. "But that does not mean I was a clone. We have no way of knowing what might have happened to Blake since Star One."

"I think she means it about the clone," I offered. "I don't know her, but it seems she wants Avon back. She wouldn't have had to tell him about Blake being alive except for that. She's kept it a secret until now."

"But it's just like her to lie about it," snapped Dayna. "All she has to do is say what she thinks Avon wants to hear."

"I know that," I persisted. "But I think one of the reasons Avon shot Blake was because a part of him could tell the difference. I don't think it was a conscious thing, but Avon knew Blake best. He expected Blake, but it went wrong. Part of the reason was because it was a clone. I'm not trying to raise false hope, Avon. That would be cruel. But I think there's a chance the real Blake is still out there somewhere."

"You believe I should risk my life to make certain?" he asked me. "The risks would clearly outweigh the advantages of such a search."

"One of the advantages is right there," I burst out, pointing at Servalan. "I think the real Blake would keep her from taking power again. Some things are worth fighting for. Make excuses if you must, but go and look for him. You have too many things to forgive yourself for already. Don't add to the collection."

"Outspoken, isn't she?" Vila muttered to Tarrant. Both men were grinning.

Avon stood looking down at me. "I will take your advice if you will take mine, Meredith. Move out of this house. Go back to New York. Greg is dead, and he's going to stay that way. You are alive. Don't waste your time hiding here."

"We're even," I agreed. "All right. I know you're right. It won't be easy, but it won't be easy for you to go looking for Blake, either. I think we have a deal. I'll expect you to hold to your part of it."

"I always keep my word." He turned. "I think we should go now. Tarrant, you and Vila move those bodies out of here. We'll take them back to the ship with us." My grateful eyes followed Avon as he crossed the room. "Come along, Servalan," he told her. "You're going to show us how to cross the vortex. I don't think you'll mislead us about it, not with your own life at stake."

Vila trailed after Tarrant, grimacing at the gruesome sight of the two bodies. "Is this really necessary?" he asked uneasily. "I shall be sick."

"Oh, move over, Vila," Dayna urged in disgust, and she and Tarrant picked up the first body and carried it through the kitchen and outside.

Vila came to stand beside me. "So you rescued Avon," he said. "I like his outfit. Much better than studs and black leather any day."

Ignoring Vila, Avon took Servalan's arm. "I'll escort her to the ship," he explained. "Come along, Soolin. You can guard her. I'll be back before we go."

When they had gone, Vila sat down as far from the remaining body as possible, relieved when John Adams bounded off after Avon. "What did you do for him?" he asked when he was sure Avon was out of earshot "He's like a new person. We're grateful."

"He was on the edge of a breakdown, I think," I said. "I don't believe he's well, Vila, not yet. It helps that it wasn't really Blake he shot. If you can find Blake, it might do the trick. He won't tell you himself, but he feels badly about that shuttle. He didn't want to kill you. He knew where you were the whole time. He didn't look as closely for you as he could have."

Vila's eyes widened. "He told you about that?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yes. We talked about a lot of things. If you push, he'll tell you that eventually he would have had to find you, but if he was as bad as people seem to think he is, he wouldn't have hesitated at all. I don't think he could have lived with himself if he'd killed you. He came to pieces over shooting Blake's clone, remember?" I reached out and caught Vila's arm. "He's afraid of sentiment, afraid of dropping his guard. That doesn't mean he doesn't care."

"I believed that until Malodaar." He shook his head. "Maybe he couldn't help it. I'll try, Meredith. We're not friends, any of us, not really. We need each other to stay alive. It's the five of us against the Federation and we won't win. But with the others, we'll stay alive a little longer."

"I think you're more friends than you believe. You've become close friends because you've had to. You need each other. You're a part of each other even if you won't admit it. I don't think Avon will make any first moves, though. Why not let it be you?"

"Didn't he tell you I was a coward?"

"He told me you pretend you're a coward, Vila. He knows better. Maybe you can't change everything, and maybe you can't win, but if it were me, I wouldn't give Servalan an inch. We had a wise man a few hundred years ago who said something to the effect that if he and his friends didn't hang together, they would assuredly all hang separately."

That won a reluctant smile from Vila, who sat up straighter and proved there was more to him than a cowardly thief. "Maybe you're right," he said seriously. "I'll do what I can, but Avon won't listen to me, and neither will the others."

"Make them listen." I sighed. "Maybe he's not as bad as you think he is."

Dayna returned then, stomping the snow off her boots as she came in through the kitchen door. "Come on, Vila, we're supposed to bring the other body."

"Can't we just stick it in a snowdrift?" Vila suggested slyly. "It's cold out there, Dayna. I don't want to wade through giant snowdrifts lugging a messy corpse about."

"Please, Vila," I said. "I could never explain away any bodies. I don't even know how I'll get the blood out of the rug as it is."

Vila grimaced, but he went, and for a few moments I sat dazedly on the couch staring into space. None of this could be real. I'd go back to bed and wake up in the morning to discover I'd dreamed the whole thing: people from the future, and gunfights in my living room, and Avon. Particularly Avon. I had never met anyone like him in my life. Not entirely sane, perhaps, but intriguing in his own way, infuriating, difficult, confusing, impossible.

I would miss him badly.

It would take them time to work their way down the hill through the snow. I got out a bucket and filled it with soapy water, then went to investigate the bloodstains. Almost all of them were on a throw rug that ran between the kitchen and the living room. I wadded it up in a ball so the blood was all on the inside, then I set about cleaning up what was left. Lysol or something might remove the marks. I could burn the throw rug in the morning.

Avon found me there a little while later, and instead of remonstrating with me for doing the cleaning so quickly, he simply took the sponge from my hand and pulled me to my feet. "It will be light soon, Meredith," he told me. "We'll leave now. The longer we stay, the more chance we have of mistakes. I've asked the others to retrieve the pod. I owe you that much."

"Thanks." I knew doing me that favor caused him no risk, but it had been good of him to think of it. "I'll go and run the toboggan--a kind of sled--over your tracks this afternoon. Well, Avon..."

"Well, Meredith."

"I didn't like the shooting," I said shakily, though I maintained control. "But the rest of it was worth it. I only wish--"

"Not to come with us?" he asked. I couldn't tell if he would be glad if I asked to come along or not. I didn't think I wanted to find out.

"No, not that," I said quickly. "I don't belong in your time. I wouldn't fit in. I only wish I could know if you found Blake or not. And I never will."

"No," he agreed. "We can't risk the vortex to tell you."

"I'll always wonder," I said sadly. "But I think I'll believe you did--you will. Confound it, this future/past stuff is hard to keep straight. I'd like to believe you find him and work things out."

"I have warned you about sentiment, Meredith."

"It's my sentiment, and I'll enjoy it if I want to. It won't hurt me this time." I knew that sounded juvenile, but instead of looking down his nose at me, he smiled faintly.

"I would like to believe it, too," he admitted. "But I know better. "

"I've got something for you," I offered, smiling a little. "Keep the clothes anyway. But here. I want you to have this." I picked up the Monopoly game and, when he wasn't looking, I sneaked the copy of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence into the box. If he found Blake, he could give them to him. If not, maybe Tarrant would enjoy reading it. "Now you can play Monopoly with Vila."

His eyes brightened. "I shall enjoy that."

"Don't be too hard on the others," I said. "They cared enough to come looking for you."

"I know where Orac is, you see."

I grabbed his arms and tried to shake him. It was about as effective as shaking the house, but he got the message. "Stop that. You know it wasn't that. Why do you have to deny it; so you can beat them to it in case you're right?"

"Put like that, it does sound rather foolish."

"Good. Remember that." I heaved a sigh. "I'll miss you, I think, even if it would have been the very devil to hide you from the Feds."

"I shall miss you," he confessed. "I appreciate the guided tour of the 20th Century."

He started to tuck the Monopoly box under his arm, but I said, quickly, "Oh, no, you don't. Not so fast," and threw my arms around him in a goodbye hug. I wasn't surprised when he stiffened against it, annoying man that he was, but then he unbent enough to enclose me in his arms. The Monopoly game dug into my shoulder blades, but I didn't care. I went up on tiptoes and pressed a kiss against his cheek before backing away.

Avon's face was the rigid mask he wore when he didn't want anyone to guess he was moved. Adjusting the box under his arm, he turned toward the door and came to an abrupt stop when he found himself face to face with a delighted Vila. The thief's eyes were alight with amusement, and Avon must have been embarrassed, but maybe he'd guessed that Vila was beginning to come to terms with the shuttle incident, for his voice was not very harsh as he barked. "Well, come along, Vila. There's no reason to stay any longer."

Vila winked knowingly at me and fell into step with Avon as naturally as if it were his rightful place. Avon would need him there in his search for Blake. I crossed my fingers for both of them, a childish superstition maybe, but something I couldn't resist. Please, God, let them find Blake. Make it so.

I stood in the back door with my fingers laced through John Adams' collar to prevent him from running after Avon, who couldn't take him with him, letting the light spill out past me into the pearled world of early morning. The snow glowed under the moonlight, and one star still hung defiantly in the early morning sky. Nobody but farmers would be up this early, I told myself. If they heard the ship, they'd think it was an airplane, surely. It would be all right.

Avon and Vila waded down the hillside through drifts of snow that sometimes came almost to their waists, but a track had been made by now, and they followed it, Avon wrapped in Greg's old green parka. Once, Vila stumbled and fell into a drift, and I heard Avon's mocking, amused voice as he hauled him out, followed by Vila's complaints growing fainter and fainter as they worked their way down to the trees. Even after they disappeared into the shadow of the cottonwoods, I stayed where I was, waiting. The house would be freezing when I finally went back inside.

The roar of the ship's launching was loud, but not as bad as I'd feared. Maybe it would really pass for the noise of a jet. I watched it rise up out of the meadow and I was glad that no one ever went there, at least not in such weather. When the snow melted, the evidence would surely melt along with it.

I watched the ship rise into the sky , tears stinging my eyes. I'd never seen a launch from the Cape, and maybe never would, but at least I'd seen one spaceship heading for the stars, and I couldn't help wishing, maybe just a little, that I could have gone, too, though I knew I couldn't.

John Adams whined when the ship finally vanished from sight, as if he knew it meant Avon was never coming back. "Goodbye, Avon," I whispered softly, my face lifted to the dawn. Then I sighed vastly and added softly, "Goodbye, Greg." It didn't hurt as badly as I'd expected to let him go.

As the sun rose, I drew John Adams back into the house and began to make my plans. It was time to get on with living.