Sally gave a lovely image of a cluttered cabin for Blake, but I've
always liked the idea that Avon would be the one with clutter, a
technological version of Sherlock Holmes.
(narrated by Vila, in Watsonesque style)
I walked into Avon's cabin and it was like nothing I expected. If he
ever criticizes me again for leaving empty glasses on the flight deck,
I'm going to tell everyone about this. There were perhaps 15 moniter
screens, each tuned to a different newsfeed and all left on even though
Avon wasn't in the room. Near his bunk, the wallswere covered with
magnets-- not decorative, but ones stripped from the insides of
machines, which he used to hold to the wall printouts, charts, sheet
music, and a small photograph. Sheet music? Sticking out from under his
bed was a keyboard, which appeared to have a dark stain on the keys from
a spilled expresso.
Caffiene was Avon's drug of choice. He'd built his own in-cabin coffee
maker, I saw, and paper cups that had missed the waste recycler rolled
on the floor slowly in response to the vibrations of the ship. Leathers
were draped and stacked all over a chair, and I wondered if he had not
found the ship's cleaning facilities, or was just too lazy to wash them
when there was a rack of clothing his size yet untouched in the
wardrobe.
My foot slipped and twisted on a pebble as I strolled over to his desk.
Startled, I looked around and saw that a box lay open on the desk with
several labelled compartments. There were a dozen more boxes like it,
and a spectrometer made from what looked like nothing more than clear
plastic tubes and a blacklight bulb.
I looked back to the door, feeling uneasy in Avon's cabin and saw that
he had used his weapon to burn ornate script initials into it. Figures,
he'd even tinker with the weapon settings.
As I headed for the exit, another door opened, the panel to his bathroom
which had been disguised by the oversized starchart screen livefed from
Zen. His hair was still damp, and his black silk bathrobe clung slightly
to his skin, smelling of coffee.
"Ah! Vila," he spoke Perhaps you can help me identify the last planet we
went to by the minerology... I do believe Blake lied to us about its
name. This could be a three cappaccino problem."