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I.
Jenna stared at Vila as he materialized onto the Liberator. "What is all that stuff you're carrying?"
Vila bounced out of the teleport bay, his arms full of goods. He turned on his way out of the room. "Jenna! Don't you know it's New Year's Eve?"
"What of it?"
Vila looked hurt. "Well, I always enjoy New Year's Eve, and since it's our first one together, I thought it might be fun..." His voice trailed off and he hoisted the armful of material. "I could have just stayed down on the planet, but I decided to bring the celebration back with me instead. It's a really important holiday down on Nozomi 3; they've got a lot of neat customs." He tilted his head and looked at Jenna like a kicked puppy dog. "Come on, Jenna, it'll be fun. Let's celebrate a little for a change."
The smuggler looked sour. "What have we got to celebrate?"
"Well...we're all alive, aren't we? We just got Cally back from that crazy Travis guy, and we're doing pretty well so far. I mean, being alive and together is all you've got, when you come right down to it."
Jenna snorted, then flashed him a sudden, mercurial smile. "Well, since you've already brought everything up, we might as well enjoy it." She was halfway to the flight deck when she suddenly rounded on the thief. "You did actually buy all of that, right?"
"Uh...sure!" Vila stammered. Her eyes narrowed, but she shook her head resignedly and continued to the flight deck.
Vila laid his loot out on the table while the rest of the crew watched. To be precise, Blake, Jenna, Gan and Cally watched; Avon struck an attitude of lofty disinterest from his seat. The first thing drawn out of a bag were six small wreaths made of braided straw and ribbons. "They're supposed to be good luck. You hang them up on your door."
"Ah, we can tack one up in the teleport bay as well," Avon commented dryly, tapping at his controls and not looking up. Vila tossed the wreath at Avon like a quoit, perhaps aiming at his nose, and it bounced off his chair. Avon shot Vila a look, bent to retrieve the ornament with exaggerated, sarcastic care, and hung it on a convenient lever on his control panel.
"What is this small animal drawn on the ribbon, Vila?" Cally inquired, examining her wreath.
"Oh, each year supposedly belongs to a different animal. This is the Year of the Rat," ("How appropriate," came a sotto voce comment from the side) "so the ribbons have rats on them."
From a different bag emerged a variety of food containers. Vila, clearly enjoying being the center of attention, kept up a running commentary.
"These white cakes are pounded sticky rice. Careful, they're really chewy. Blake, if you make faces like that just see if I ever bring you real food again. See, Cally likes them. Uh, Gan, could you give Blake a pat on the back? He seems to be choking a bit--OK, thanks. And these are cold buckwheat noodles. You dip them in this sauce and then--hey!" He broke off to wave a finger at Gan, who had forked out a tangle of noodles and was chewing them. "You're supposed to slurp them. They symbolize your life, and if you bite them like that, it's like you're cutting your life short, see? Well," he added, seeing Gan's stricken face, "It's just a superstition, of course. Never believe 'em, myself." He made a visible effort and bit a mouthful of noodles short himself. "Delicious!" he mumbled.
When the food was gone, Vila rummaged around and found a handful of envelopes with gold thread knots tied onto them. "Ah yes," he said with studied casualness. "Here's a fascinating custom. People give envelopes of money to their family members. I was thinking credit slips would fit just fine. I mean, you're practically my family now--" Scanning the crew's faces, he reluctantly put the envelopes away. "Well, I thought it was a good idea."
He brightened as he reached into a last, gold-papered sack and drew out a bottle and then six slender glasses. "And finally, a bit of bubbly to see the old year out." He started to pour the pale liquid into the glasses and hand them out. "On Nozomi, they have something called a 'Year Forgetting Party,' where the point is to drink so much you forget all your troubles of the last year. But I didn't like their alcohol--" ("There's a first," murmured Avon) "so I brought some old-fashioned champagne to make a toast with."
Cally held her glass up and watched the bubbles. "Toast?"
"Oh, that's when you dedicate your drink to something important to you. Something you hope for in the new year. Like I'm sure Travis toasts 'To sadism!' before he drinks. Come over here, Avon, you need to toast with us." The dark-haired man lifted an eyebrow, but left his station. Jenna dropped her jaw in mock astonishment as she slid over to make room for him.
Cally put her glass out. "I see. Then I shall toast to 'increased understanding of the self and others,'" she pronounced.
"Um. Well, that's a good toast." Vila raised his glass. "I was thinking more like, 'to long life.'"
Blake lifted his champagne. "To justice."
"To safety, speed, and common sense," put in Jenna.
Avon leaned forward. "To freedom," he said, casting Blake an ambiguous glance over the rim of his glass.
"To friendship," added Gan.
Six glasses clinked together.
II.
It had been a long and uneventful week. Blake walked down a quiet corridor, yawning. He was embarrassed to admit it, but he was a bit bored.
As he walked onto the flight deck, he caught sight of Vila. The thief had a disorganized pile of paper, mainly in pinks and reds, piled up in front of him. Loops of lacy ribbons and metallic braid spilled off the top of the heap, almost obscuring the blinking form of Orac below it all.
"Vila, what are you doing?"
Vila jumped a bit. "Well, it's been really slow around here lately, and I was just chatting with Orac here, and I asked it what Old Calendar holidays were this time of year--"
"You know, Orac isn't exactly a toy, Vila."
"Well, you did say we were going to take some time to figure out what its capacities were. Avon's not the only person who can do that, you know."
"Can do what?" Avon strolled onto the flight deck as if conjured by the speaking of his name. Blake darkly added this tendency to Avon's growing list of demonic characteristics.
Vila drew himself up. "I have been conducting research with Orac's help," he declared.
Avon slanted a glance at the nearly-buried box. "And you have decided to smother it in spangles and tissue paper because...?"
The thief grabbed a handful of paper and ribbons and waved them at Avon. "It's for Valentine's Day!" Avon looked at him blankly, and Vila snorted. "Considering what it celebrates, I'm not surprised you've never heard of it."
"Haven't heard of what?" Jenna entered the flight deck with Cally and Gan in tow.
"Valentine's Day. It's an Old Calendar holiday of love and romance. People used to make valentines for each other--messages of love and friendship on decorated pieces of paper. Usually unsigned. I thought it would be fun to trade valentines. It used to be traditional to give something called 'chocolate' that day too, but I haven't been able to figure out quite what it is. Something to eat of some sort."
Blake shuffled through the stack of paper. "We've still got a little while until I'll be ready to test Orac's knowledge in the field..." He trailed off as he came across a red and gold streaked piece of tissue paper and held it to the light. "This is high-quality paper. Rare stuff. Why would the System have a collection of paper?"
"Perhaps they liked to give each other valentines," commented his personal demon, leaning over to pluck the tissue paper from his hand. "Like: 'Dear Alta: how I love your tarriel cells. They are the cutest.'"
"Oh, hush, Avon," said Cally. "I think it sounds like a fun idea," she said to Vila. "We could use a bit of harmless entertainment.
The crimson and gold paper floated to the ground. "Please keep in mind, then, that love and romance are neither one," Avon commented as he sauntered out of the room. Vila handed out roughly equal stacks of paper and decorations to the remaining crew, but he left a small pile on the flight deck, and noted that it had disappeared by the next shift.
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The next morning, Vila swung open his door to find a small drift of colored valentines stacked outside. He gathered them up gleefully and spread them out on his bed. None were signed, but he was pretty sure he knew who had made the rather clumsy red heart marked with black block letters: "TO MY GUD FREND." The two pink hearts were more of a puzzle, but he decided that the rose-colored one with the intricately clipped lacework around the edges was probably from Cally, and the fuschia heart with gold braid tacked on it was from Jenna. Both had discouragingly friendly but bland inscriptions. He thought his messages to Cally ("May I steal your heart?") and Jenna ("Be my smugglebunny") had been rather inspired.
He held up the next one and whistled. Blake really *was* bored, wasn't he? He had pasted together bits of paper to form an image of the Liberator in shades of pink and red and signed it, "To a loyal friend." Well, well, well. At least he hadn't written "follower."
The last one--Vila unfolded a piece of paper to reveal a simple black square. On it was written, in a scrawl of silver ink, "There are times when I do not despise you completely." He chuckled. "Avon, I didn't know you cared."
There was a knock on his door and Jenna peeked in, holding a small gold box. Without stepping across the threshold, she held it toward Vila and smiled. "Here."
Vila looked into the box and saw eight brown lumps. She laughed at his blank look. "It's chocolate, Vila. Hard to get, even on the black market. I was saving it, but I thought it would be fun to share on Valentine's Day."
The brown lump turned out to be sweet and very rich, and perhaps even better than adrenaline and soma. Seeing his expression, Jenna laughed again. "I'm going to go share with the rest." She disappeared, then abruptly reappeared in his door. "Oh, and Vila--thanks. I enjoyed myself." He nodded mutely, surprised, his mouth still full of chocolate. After she was gone again, he just stood there for a moment, savouring the flavor. Then he headed after her. He wanted to see how Avon liked it.
But before he left the room, he took his five valentines and stored them with care in a drawer.
III.
Vila was rummaging through one of his drawers when he came across the small stack of valentines tucked in the bottom. Slowly he took them out and thumbed through them, gently smoothing out a crease across the "FREND" valentine. It felt like decades ago that they had made these. When was the last time they had celebrated anything on the Liberator? Well, there had been all the festivities preparing for the Teal-Vandor Convention. And a fun time was had by all, he mused bleakly. In fact, the whole last year had been a long string of disasters, it seemed. Everyone was tired and brooding on their losses too much--even he was, he thought with another pang for his lost Vilaworld. Well, he would find some reason to celebrate. There must be some holiday about now they could enjoy.
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A few days later, Dayna was eyeing a large gourd dubiously. "So, we are supposed to carve faces on these?"
The thief nodded vigorously. "Yep, Orac told me people used to hollow out gourds like these, carve faces on them, and then put light sources in them. What are they called again, Orac? Jockalinterns?"
*Jack o'lanterns,* the computer said fussily. *The holiday was called Halloween, and it has a long and fascinating history which I must study further. As a matter of fact, its origins--*
"Oh, skip the history bit," Vila cut in. "What's fun about it is that people would make these lantern thingies, and then they would dress up and pretend to be different people and eat candy together."
Tarrant tapped his borrowed surgical knife on the vegetable with a hollow plonking sound. "Are you sure the jack o'lanterns were supposed to be purple?"
"Hey, it was the closest thing I could find on that last planet. If you don't like it, you don't have to do it, flyboy."
"No, no," Tarrant said hurriedly, catching Cally and Dayna's disapproving looks. "It sounds like fun."
Avon had already hewn off the top of his gourd and was examining the iridescent lavender seeds within. "The part about the lot of you pretending to be other people sounds especially appealing," he muttered. Vila's curiosity as to why the sullen tech had agreed to his diversion was somewhat satisfied when Avon dug into the gourd as if imagining he were performing brain surgery on someone. Probably a rather particular someone, Vila suspected.
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In a while, five purple jack-o-lanterns sat in a row on the currently empty flight deck. Despite complaints about sticky hands, everyone had seemed to enjoy creating them. Vila had carved his with a huge, comical "o" of a mouth, and it seemed to be staring at the other four. Tarrant's, not surprisingly, boasted a gigantic toothy grin, as did Dayna's (with a gap in the front). Avon's lantern had a truly ferocious scowl and narrowed eyes. Cally's was also frowning, but with an odd twist to its eyebrows that gave it an ambivalent look. All of them held glowing orbs within them. Their eerie purple-tinted light was the only one on the flight deck beyond Zen's orange fascia and Orac blinking softly to itself on the table.
Dayna and Tarrant entered the flight deck together from one side at the same time Cally came in from the other, and the three of them stopped and stared at each other. Tarrant recovered first. "What in the world are you supposed to be, Cally?" The Auron had apparently sewn a variety of lettuce leaves to a leotard until she looked like a walking Brussels sprout.
"I'm a Decima. It's a race we ran into a long time ago," Cally explained absently, staring at Dayna. The other woman had attached a large plastic bag stuffed with something light and crinkly to her posterior, and four wobbly cables to her torso. On her head two smaller cables seemed to be mimicking antenna. Cally narrowed her eyes, looking at the apparition. "You're--"
"The spider monster of Kairos, of course!" Dayna announced proudly. She waggled her various "arms" menacingly at Cally.
"Well, I certainly feel upstaged," Tarrant said, his voice somewhat muffled by the Federation trooper helmet. He had pulled his old Federation uniform out of the back of his closet and was doing a credible imitation of an anonymous thug.
"You have no imagination, Tarrant." Dayna tried to sit down and discovered to her chagrin that the spider "abdomen" made the feat almost impossible. Watching the younger woman squirm uncomfortably, Cally started giggling, and soon the three of them were roaring with laughter. "Oh dear," Dayna said, wiping her eyes, "I can't believe we let Vila talk us into this!"
"Speaking of which," Tarrant added, "where is our larcenous friend, anyway? And will Avon be showing up?"
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," said a cool voice. "Seeing you all make fools of yourself is hardly new, but this is such a...unique and original way." Avon strolled onto the flight deck, dressed in his standard black turtleneck and jacket.
"Oh, Avon," Dayna pouted theatrically, "I wanted to see you dressed up."
Cally tilted her head to smile at him. "Oh, he is dressed up. He's 'Grouchy Computer Tech With No Sense of Humor.'"
His answering smile was unusually genuine. "Just so."
They heard stomping footsteps coming toward the flight deck and turned to see Vila appear in the entrance. He was clad entirely in black leather, with a black eyepatch over one eye, black gloves, and a huge yellow ring. The front of his suit was scrawled over with something red and sticky-looking, apparently signifying a fatal gun wound. At the sight of him, the spider, Decima, and trooper all burst out laughing again. "Travis" stood in the entrance for a moment, preening and clearly enjoying himself. Then he revealed the bag he'd been concealing behind him. "Candy for everyone!" he sneered in a fair imitation of Travis's voice.
As the others applauded and Vila moved forward, Avon bared his teeth. "Vila. Is that my leather outfit you have on there?"
"Um. Well, I guess it is!" Vila looked somewhat surprised as he looked down at himself. "Now, how did that get into my closet?"
Tarrant looked at "Travis" more closely in the dim light. "Wait a second, are those my black gloves?"
Cally blinked at his ring. "Vila! What have you done with my Auronar Meditation Stone?"
"My lipstick!" came the final cry from Dayna, glaring at the red scribbles on his chest.
The crew rounded on Vila with howls of mingled outrage and laughter, but were cut off when Orac suddenly interrupted excitedly.
*Fascinating! Simply fascinating! The human need for superstitious ritual is apparently almost infinite. This is quite amazing!*
"What are you babbling about, Orac?" said Dayna.
*Why, I have been doing research on the origins of Hallow E'en. Apparently it used to signify the day of the year when boundaries between the world of the living and the dead were especially thin. The spirits of the recent dead were supposed to walk the earth that night. The costumes and lanterns and such were all elaborate ways of convincing the vengeful dead to pass the living by. Why, even the candy used to be a ritualistic sacrifice to propitiate the spirits. Such a simplistic view! How charming!*
It was speaking to only Vila. During the lecture, all the other crew members had hastily taken their leave, looking variously stricken, grieved, angry, or merely stony. Vila pulled off his eyepatch and sat down near Orac with a thud. Glumly, he upended the bag of candy into Orac's plastic housing, ignoring the computer's furious sputters as candy corn and toffee clattered into it.
"Trick or treat," he said to the empty flight deck.
IV.
Soolin entered one of the common rooms at Xenon Base to find Dayna sitting at a table scattered with bits of what seemed to be explosives. In a corner, Avon was reading something from a computer terminal, his brow furrowed. Soolin dropped into a chair across from Dayna and started cleaning and reassembling her gun. She had the process down to five minutes, but hoped to improve on her record. "What are you doing?" she asked the other woman.
Dayna didn't look up from her work. "Oh, well." She paused. "Actually, I'm making fireworks. For Vila."
"For Vila? Why?"
"Oh, he took it into his head that there was a holiday he wanted to celebrate, and he wanted fireworks for it."
"A holiday." Soolin clicked a couple of pieces of her gun together and looked dubiously at Dayna.
"Well, before you met him--before we came here, I mean--he used to like celebrating holidays. He'd find some bizarre Old Calendar holiday and drag everyone into celebrating it." Dayna chuckled slightly, then frowned. "Of course, I was only there for one of them, and that one didn't go over so well. For this one he said he wanted fireworks and a big bonfire."
"I'm sure Vila has wanted fireworks from you for a long time. But why are you putting in the work for him?"
Dayna shrugged. "It's a challenge. I had nothing better to do." She worked in silence for a while. Then she spoke slowly, without looking up. "Besides. I feel...I don't know...bad for him. He's been really depressed recently. Withdrawn. Having to jettison that tachyon weapon seems to have really brought him down."
Soolin sighted down her reassembled gun. "I'm sure the little weasel is heartbroken at losing the chance to kill people from the safest possible distance."
There was another long silence. "But, if we have the bonfire and all, will you come?"
Soolin sighed. "If you do it, yes, I'll come." She looked at Avon, still focused on his computer terminal. "What do you think? Shall we waste our time on a bonfire, of all things, right now?"
Avon snapped off his computer and stood, looking at Soolin from shadowed eyes. {{He's been looking drawn out lately too,}} she thought. {{Maybe it's not such a waste of time to take a break.}}
"Why not?" he said flatly. Then he turned on his heel and left the room.
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Tarrant tossed another pile of wood on the leaping bonfire, then stepped back, wiping his forehead. It was a large blaze; the flames licked up to about eye level. Dayna was setting off some small things that made satisfying "bangs," and Soolin was waving a stick that emitted trails of scarlet and indigo sparks. Vila was pulling tumblers out of a bag and placing them on a flat rock. One of Dayna's firecrackers spun wildly about and made a high-pitched squeal before it exploded, and she chortled to herself at its success. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Then Tarrant's eye caught sight of Avon, standing on the other side of the bonfire, staring into its heart. Well, almost everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.
He went to grab one of the tumblers that Vila had just filled with wine, but the thief held up a warning finger. "Just so you know, this is the last of Dorian's wine."
"And you're going to share it with little old us? When did you turn all altruistic?" Dayna dropped down onto the rock, grinning.
"Well, it is a holiday, after all. And it wouldn't last more than a few days longer even if I did hoard it." Vila took a long, loving sip.
Dayna looked over at Avon. "Aren't you going to get your wine before Vila finishes his and starts on yours?"
The black-clad figure waved one hand absently. "Split it between yourselves."
Dayna shot Soolin a raised-eyebrow glance. Soolin shrugged and poured Avon's wine into the other four tumblers. After finishing her wine, she lit another sparkler. This one was gold and silver. She idly scribbled her own name in light. "So what holiday is this we're celebrating, anyway, Vila?"
Vila stood up and looked into the fire. "It was called Guy Fawkes Day. It was a day to celebrate the defeat of backstabbers, plotters and traitors." Something in his voice made his younger crewmembers look up. He and Avon were staring at each other through the leaping flames. Vila looked away long enough to pull something small out of his bag and throw it into the bonfire--a brief flash of black and silver that disappeared quickly into the flames. He met Avon's gaze again, and after a while, Avon dropped his eyes. There was a uncomfortable silence that seemed to stretch on and on, with the only sound the fire's crackling. Then a log suddenly snapped in the heart of the bonfire, sending a shower of sparks into the sky. Everyone jumped.
Vila sighed and turned back to his glass of wine.
"Well," he said softly, as if to himself. "At least the year's almost over."