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Lunacy

By Marian Mendez



The dust was still settling, but Avon could see ... well, nothing he'd later describe to Vila. Orac was broken, but presumably repairable. Cally... was not.

He glanced up. The ceiling appeared reasonably stable, unlikely to give him a rational excuse for not making absolutely certain. He knelt in the rubble, noting that something sharp was cutting into his left knee, but somehow it seemed wrong to acknowledge a petty discomfort by shifting.

He touched Cally's throat. For a long moment he sat there, mind blank, head bowed; numb.

Open.

Accepting.

aavon?

Avon snatched his hand back. "Cally?" he whispered. Then he shook his head. There had been no breath to disturb the dust lying across her lips, no pulse, no reaction in those wide-open, staring eyes, no flow of blood from the many wounds. Imagination, that's all it was. He put his hand out to shut her eyelids. Avon!

"No. I am not hearing you. You are dead." Avon had a horrible suspicion that he had never awakened from Servalan's drug-induced nightmare. "You are dead!"

Yes. But we live.

The mental voice wasn't quite Cally's, Avon now realized. "Who is 'we'?" Avon asked, glancing around for a moment before acknowledging the futility of locating the origin of a sound he heard without the use of his ears.

We are Cally. We are the people. Cally called us Moondisks.

"And you are dead, too," Avon replied. "All save the one..." He suddenly realized the shards cutting into his knee weren't plastic, or glass, or metal. He was kneeling in the fragments of Cally's 'pet' moondisk. "Correction. You are all dead."

Yes. But we live. Cally taught us, without knowing she taught us. The Mind of Auron, she called it. We are the Mind of the Moondisks. We linked with Cally, and she is here with us. We are never alone. There is nothing left on our planet but our shells, nothing left to suffer and die when your people turn our bodies into poison. We live in peace. With Cally.

"Very nice for you, I'm sure." Avon was beginning to consider an even more distasteful possibility- insanity.

We need you, Avon.

"No." Avon stood up, backing away. "The dead need nothing."

We are not dead. But Cally's 'force' is fading. Soon we will die .

"There's nothing I can do for you. I'm sorry." Avon did actually regret it. The Moondisks had never threatened him. That was enough of a rarity in the universe for him to regret its passing. Not enough for him to agree to do something stupid and doing anything for dead cacti was bound to be supremely stupid.

There is, Avon, there is! This time the voice sounded more like Cally, and Avon liked it less. Please, Avon, let us link with you.

"No. Constant companionship may be a comfort to you, but I'm not you... Cally." Avon paused. "It would drive me mad." There was no answer. Cally must have accepted reality.

There is a risk Cally admitted. But there may also be gains.

"What gain?"

We would teach you. You would be able to link with others. Even with Blake.

Avon grinned sardonically, remembering what Servalan had said. "Over his dead body."

Yes. Cally sounded sad.  I am sorry, Avon.

ghost cally And then Avon felt something he had no words for. He fell to his knees and clutched at his head... not-pain.. .not-pressure...  not-dizzyness and not-disorientation.

Blake will need us.

After a moment, Avon sighed, twitched his shoulders as if settling under a burden, and then turned from Cally's corpse, brushing the shards of Moondisk off his trouser leg.

"Aliens." Avon said sourly as he picked up Orac and turned to the metal ladder leading out of the demolished base. "I told Blake we shouldn't trust you."

Yes, Avon. Cally replied, and he could hear her laughter.