Chapter 7: Crazy At The Maidenhead


"The spider still resides in a den with a weapons-check policy!" River clutched at Mal's arm, gazing at him in the pleading way that usually reduced Simon to helpless mush. "You mustn't go into the parlour without me!"

"We'll be fine." Mal detached her hands gently but firmly. "Won't be gone but an hour. You stay here and try to get some rest."

"Rest is non-essential." River turned her pleading look on Wash, who was usually strongly affected by it. "The smell of ozone is everywhere!"

"Mal's right, kiddo." Wash touched her just under her eye, smiling when her eyes crossed trying to look at his finger. "You have big black rings under here. You're tired."

"But what if you get shot and die?" River felt her lip quiver. "That is not the optimal outcome!"

"You got some special reason for bein' worried, River?"

Zoe was soothing, and River took her hand. Zoe's cool blue overlying heartfelt red wasn't as good as Jayne being her stone, but it did help. "I don't know if you'll be safe. It's too loud for me to hear you when you're off the ship."

"We're going too far away for you to know if something's wrong?" Zoe squeezed River's hand gently when she nodded. "We'll be fine. We're just going to give them money. People are generally pretty friendly when you do that."

River was less confident, but she couldn't explain why and they went without her. She'd known they would, when Inara didn't paint her tattoo again, but she'd hoped she could convince them that they were wrong.

If Jayne hadn't been angry, she could have taken his hand and told him that it was important, and he would have insisted that she go. He would have believed her. He would have understood. But she'd ruined everything.

River retreated to her hiding place in the air-vent and refused to come out. Eventually, Simon gave up trying to coax her out and Inara took him away to give him tea and have grown-up talk. Simon enjoyed those conversations - he'd be busy for a while.

When Kaylee had retreated to her engine, River emerged silently from the air-vent. She had Boadicea, which she would check as was required. She also had her small knife that Jayne had given her. Feeling that this was insufficient, she stole a larger one from Wash and Zoe's quarters. Zoe would be annoyed, but she wouldn't get especially fussed.

Trembling but determined, she pulled on her boots and tied back her hair in a loose tail. She must not stand out. The layer of dust that had befriended her inside the vent would pass for dirt, and her loose pants and dark red tunic were simple garments that would pass without comment on a dozen worlds.

The walk to the Maidenhead was frightening, but she comforted herself by walking the exact path that Jayne had taken, following the feel of him through crowded streets.

She didn't know why she was so frightened. She wasn't sure if something was going to happen in the Maidenhead, or somewhere else, or even on Serenity. But she was terribly afraid of something, and whatever it was she was determined that it would not harm Jayne or the others. She wouldn't let it.

Mimicking Jayne's rolling stride was very effective in deterring unwanted attention.

When she reached the Maidenhead, she was forced to endure the anticipated separation. "I'm sorry," she told Boadicea seriously, as she laid the gun carefully in the supplied box. "I wouldn't leave you in a strange place if it wasn't important."

The bouncer gave her a strange look, but River was immune to strange looks these days. She walked down the stairs, trying to move confidently. She didn't see the others on her way down, and while she knew they were here somewhere, her fickle senses refused to tell her exactly where. Reluctantly, she began searching the old-fashioned way. It was ineffective due to her inadequate stature - it was hard to see over all the tall people to her own tall people.

Then a chiming jingle caught her ear, and she looked up at a Core-Vu screen to see a particularly horrible commercial for a product called a Fruity Oaty Bar.

The strange-familiar orange octopus opened its fanged mouth and swallowed her thoughts.

River felt a half-healed wound in her psyche split open, oozing filth into her frozen, waiting mind.


Jayne didn't like the way this was going down. On the other hand, he was itching for a fight, so not liking how things were going was something he liked.

Gorram girl. He'd never have bothered to think a twisty thought like that before he'd met her. He'da just punched someone and let things take care of themselves, as they most always did.

He wanted a fight to help bleed out some of the anger at River. Wasn't anyone on Serenity he could vent it on, not any more, and he knew his resentment pained her. Sometimes he had a brief minute of being glad that she was as miserable as he was, but he felt guilty after. It wasn't her fault that she couldn't just have a stupid crush in private like any other girl.

The crash of - sounded like a thrown chair hitting first a body then a floor, to a finely honed bar-brawling ear - was a welcome sound. "Hey, a tussle!" He tried to see around Mal and the woman with the fans. Some guy went staggering back - blow to the upper chest was Jayne's guess from the angle before he fell.

Mal said something that Jayne ignored. Mal was being more boring and irritating than usual tonight. He was more interested in the table that hit another table, taking out both men sitting at it, and then...

Oh.

Oh, no.

River, moving in a fast and feverish way that he'd only ever seen during her worst crazy spells... but she wasn't screaming or twitching or ripping labels off cans this time. She was delivering a major beating to an entire bar. And she was winning.

Were he less scared that someone would hurt her, he'd have been drooling. Dreams and anger and heartache aside, she moved like... he didn't have words for what it was like. But it made his pulse speed up and a fierce, hot feeling surge in his chest. It wasn't lust - well, not only lust. He wanted to join her in the core of the brawl, dance with violence without letting it touch them.

Mal swore, and lunged away. Going the wrong way, Jayne realized after a second. He wasn't going for River (who had just knifed a man in the stomach). He was going for the check-boxes. For his gun.

He didn't make it. River picked the thought out of his head as clean as picking an apple out of a tree, Jayne could see it in the way her head swung around and her eyes tracked Mal. A hurled bottle hit Mal in the stomach just as he reached the stairs, doubling him over and leaving him winded and retching.

Mal had had it coming, but Jayne figured he should step in before things really got out of hand. Attacking the captain wasn't generally a good idea, as much as Mal asked for it sometimes.

He worked his way through the rapidly thinning crowd, punching anyone who didn't move out of his way fast enough. And one guy who'd pulled a knife on River, because nobody was allowed do that when Jayne Cobb was around. It was still less than a minute before he reached her, catching hold of her arm. "River - "

She somehow kicked up and around behind him, hitting him good and hard in the back, and he staggered but didn't loosen his grip. Without pausing she spun around, her eyes vacant as her hand blurred towards his face too fast for him to stop, too fast for him to do more than think oh shit...

The hand stopped less than a centimetre from his face. "Jayne?" River whispered, colour draining from her face until he was sure she was going to pass out where she stood.

"I'm right here." He ignored the few still-conscious patrons of the Maidenhead scuttling away. "Why are you?"

Her face crumpled up and she started to cry. "I can't hear them. They're there but I can't hear them. The sun went out but it's still shining, the poison seeps through and contaminates everything... it hurts..."

"It's okay." He didn't even think about dreams or being angry or anything else. He just picked her up and held her, cradling her tiny body carefully. She hid her face against his neck, weeping as if her heart would break. "Shhh..." Jayne murmured, tucking her in against him. "I gotcha."

"Jayne?" Mal was on his feet again, staring around with a sort of awed expression.

"Yeah, Mal?" River had managed to create a lot of carnage in a couple of minutes. Jayne saw at least two weren't likely to live long, if they weren't dead already.

"Time to go."

Jayne was inclined to agree.


"Simon, you don't even know where to start looking!" Kaylee was holding onto his arm. "You can't just run out into the docks and start wanderin' around, you'll get lost yourself."

"I know where she's going. She's going to the Maidenhead. She's convinced that they need her to protect them." Simon tried to pull his arm away. "I have to find her, Kaylee, you know how frightened she gets in crowds."

"Simon, you don't even know where the Maidenhead is," Kaylee said, refusing to let go. "Look, just hold on a minute. We'll grab a radio and then I'll come with you. Inara, you'll stay in case she comes back, right?"

"Of course." Inara looked as worried as Simon felt. "Mal and the others should be back soon. Given her abilities, isn't it fairly likely that she would have found them?"

"If she had, Wash woulda brought her back right away." Kaylee gnawed on her lip. "Cap'n don't like taking him along on these things anyway, he gets too excitable. If they'd found River, cap'n'd send them both straight back here."

"Unless River was right and there was a fight." Inara's fingers were lacing and unlacing nervously. "I checked in her room - she took her gun."

"Wonderful. My unstable sister is wandering around the docks, alone, at night... and she's armed." Simon rubbed his face with the hand Kaylee hadn't immobilised. "Look, Kaylee, you're right. Let's get a radio and - "

"Mal!" Inara rushed past him.

Simon turned. Mal was leaning on Wash's arm, a hand pressed to his stomach. No blood, Simon noted, so it was probably a blunt force trauma. Mal did seem to attract those. More immediately Simon's concern was River, who was crying hysterically into Jayne's shoulder as he carried her. "River, what's wrong?"

She wailed something unintelligible. Simon reached towards her, but Jayne's arms tightened almost possessively around her. Simon blinked in surprise. "What happened?"

"Well, we got to the Maidenhead, Fanty and Mingo suggested that there were too many of us and not enough of them, Mal sent us off to have a nice romantic meal, then ten minutes later he and Jayne come charging up out of the Maidenhead with River, grab us just as we pick out a place to eat, and hustle us back here." Wash shrugged. "Apart from that, your guess is as good as mine."

"We get off Beaumonde. Now." Mal let go of Wash and swayed a bit until Zoe took hold of him. "Wash, get us into space right now, don't care in what direction."

"Then can I know what's going on?"

"We'll speak on it when we're clear." Mal winced. "Doc, I could stand to have you look at this."

"Look at what?" Simon reluctantly left his sister to Jayne's apparent concern and went over to Mal. "What happened?"

"River threw a bottle at me. Hit me in the stomach hard enough that I revisted all my meals since yesterday in one heave." Mal tried to straighten up and was clearly having trouble with it.

"River threw a bottle at you, sir?" Zoe looked as startled as if he'd said River had done a striptease on a table.

"Countin' myself lucky on that, seein' as the guy before me got a knife to his gut. She took out more'n half the bar in a few minutes." Mal glared at Wash. "And why aren't we in the air?"

"I'm going, I'm going." Wash clattered up the stairs. "But don't you start the story without me!"


When Simon had checked him over and pronounced his injury as being only a very painful bruise with no signs of damaged or ruptured internal organs, Mal and the doc joined the rest in the galley.

They all looked worried, in their various fashions. Wash's face was all creased up, Zoe had a tiny line between her eyebrows, Kaylee looked ready to cry, Simon was looking more than usually stone-faced, and Inara's mouth had gone tight even as she sat with her arm around Kaylee's shoulders, clearly trying to reassure her.

Jayne looked ready to kill someone. That, at least, was a familiar expression. What was less familiar was Jayne sitting at the table with River curled up on his lap, still crying weakly. He wasn't talking to her or comforting her the way Mal would have assumed should be done, just sitting there with one big hand rubbing steadily up and down her thin back, the other fiddling with a long knife that looked vaguely familiar.

"All right." Mal lowered himself carefully into a chair. "Short version of the story - River walks into the Maidenhead, suddenly goes berserk and starts attacking everyone within reach, including me, Jayne snaps her out of it, and then we high-tail it back here. Doctor, do you have any ideas as to why this happened?"

Simon shifted uncomfortably. "It could be a lot of things. She might have taken exception to someone's thoughts, or just panicked because of the crowding or..." He trailed off.

"Or?" Mal knew a I-don't-want-to-tell-you-this expression when he saw one.

"Or... something might have triggered a piece of behavioural conditioning," Simon said reluctantly. "The... people who helped me to rescue her warned me that some of the subjects were having behavioural sequences conditioned into them. They didn't know if River was one of them, but they taught me a control-phrase that should knock her out and abort any - "

"Should? Should?" Mal's fist hit the table. Everyone jumped but River and Jayne. "Eight months, Simon! Eight months she's been on this ship and you've known all along that she might just go berserk at any moment and start attackin' folk?"

"It's not that simple." Simon looked more pained than ever.

Mal had no sympathy for him. "Not that simple? You didn't see what she was doin' back there! What if she'd done that on my ship? To my crew?"

"She wouldn't have. Mal, that kind of conditioning isn't set off by a random word or gesture. The triggers have to be complex enough that the subject can't be set off by mistake." Simon gave River a loving, anxious look that Mal would have thought was sweet were he not so damned angry. "They wouldn't want her turning on them. If that's what it was, she was presented with the exact combination of visual and aural stimulation that would trigger it."

Suddenly the anger drained out of Mal, leaving him cold and shaken. "So you're saying either she was kicked off by some psycho in the bar... or the Alliance triggered her deliberate."

"Somehow." Simon nodded, as pale as Mal felt. "And I have no idea if that means they know where she is, or if she just came upon a preset trap by sheer coincidence."

Wash lifted a hand. "Uh... if I could make a suggestion?"

"What is it, Wash?"

"None of us really know what happened in the bar, or if there's some kind of hunt on our tails as we speak. We're flying blinder than usual, here, and I for one feel the need for some guidance. I think we need to talk to Mr Universe."

Mal nodded slowly. "Good idea." And the fact that talking to that twitchy Cortex-addicted weirdo sounded good was an indication of just how sour this day had gone.

River's sobbing stopped suddenly and she lifted her head, seeming to look right through Mal. "Shot in the back," she told him in a flat, emotionless voice. "Stabbed by a sword. So many ways to die."

A cold chill went down Mal's spine. "Until we do know what's going on," he said grimly, "we keep her under lock and key. The store-room has a strong door - put her in there."

"You can't just lock her up!" Kaylee sounded horrified. "Cap'n, this ain't her fault!"

River stared unblinking at Mal. "If she goes woolly again, we'll have to put a bullet to her."

Mal wasn't sure whose thoughts she was voicing. What scared him was that he knew she was right.


Jayne was not paying attention to anyone right now. Except Zoe, who wasn't fussing and who had gone to get River's blanket and pillow when he'd asked her to. Well, told her to. The fact that she for once did what he told her to without a word told him how worried she was.

There wasn't no point in putting manacles on River - she could get out of them too easy. (He'd covered escaping-from-confinement, one dull afternoon, and she'd done well at it.) But the door locked securely from outside, so the store-room would hold her for a while.

While Simon cleaned blood off her and tried to get her to drink some water, Jayne emptied the room of anything she might use as a weapon, which was pretty much everything in the room save the walls, the floor, and the secured and immovable shelving. It wasn't enough to keep him from hearing their conversation.

"They're afraid of me," River whispered, sounding heartbroken.

"I'm sorry." Simon dabbed at the blood on her face.

"They should be." Her small face crumpled up. "What I'll show them... oh, God..."

Jayne had never heard her call on any greater power before. Not ever. The prayerful note in her voice scared him in a way he couldn't explain.

Simon was smoothing her hair. "Shh... it's okay, it's okay..."

River turned away, frowning suddenly. "Show me off like a dog, old men covered in blood - it never touched them but they're drowning in it. So much loss..." Then she looked back at Simon, her eyes focusing again. "I don't know what I'm saying. I never know what I'm saying."

"Sure you do." Jayne crouched beside Simon. "You just get confused about when you're sayin' it, and what you're talking about."

She reached out to take his hand. Her fingers were cold. "It's not mine," she whispered. "The memory. I didn't bring it and I shouldn't have to carry it; it isn't mine."

"You told me once that you had extra pieces. Extra memories that weren't yours." Simon's voice had the professionally soothing note of a doctor trying to keep the patient calm. Jayne was oddly annoyed by that - couldn't he be more human for his own sister's sake?

"It's not mine. It came to me and I can't make it go." River's lip trembled. "Put a bullet in me. Bullet in the brainpan, squish." She giggled, the sound creepier than all hell.

"Don't say that." Simon and Jayne spoke in perfect unison.

"Not ever," Simon continued alone. "We'll get through this."

River reached out to touch his face. "Things are going to get much, much worse," she said, as if speaking to a slow child.

"Well, the captain hasn't tossed us in the airlock, so..." Simon glanced at Jayne, and doctor and mercenary shared a moment of silent, bitter amusement. Gallows humour, Jayne had heard it called.

"He has to see," River said suddenly. "More than anyone, he has to see what he doesn't want to."

Simon shifted nervously. "See what?"

"Death."

"Whose death?" Even more nervous now.

River stared at him for a moment, and then she started to laugh. Quietly at first, then louder and louder. Leaning forward, she screamed into his face. "Everybody's!"


Mr Universe, having ambled into the security logs with the greatest of ease, was clearly enjoying the sight of River beating the living crap out of a large number of bystanders. Wash was reluctant to consider them innocent, since innocent people didn't drink at the Maidenhead as a rule.

"Oh, you guys always bring me the very best violence," Universe cooed, all but panting. Wash half expected him to fog up the vid-screen he was talking on. Then he pulled himself together a little. "You think you're in a hot place?"

"That's what we're looking to learn." Wash usually got to be the one to talk to Universe, since he'd known the man since flight school and could generally keep him more or less focused. Mal and Zoe were crammed into view behind him, though, filling his side of the cockpit, just in case they thought of anything else to say. "Is there any follow-up? A newswave?"

Mr Universe let out that scoffing chuckle that was always so gorram annoying. "There is no 'news'. There's the truth of the signal, what I see, and there's the puppet theatre the parliament's jesters foist on the somnambulent public. Monkey taught to say the word 'monkey', lead story on thirty-two planets. But the slum riots on Hera? Not a - "

Mal interrupted, which generally wasn't a good idea with Mr Universe. Of course, mentioning Hera to Mal wasn't a good idea either. "What about this?" He pointed at the image of River. "Did this make the puppet theatre?"

"No sir. And no lawforce flags either. I had to go into the security feed direct to find this."

"You can do that?" Mal sounded impressed, which probably meant he'd realized that he'd interrupted earlier and was now trying to soothe Universe's always unpredictable feelings.

"Can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere and I go everywhere. Security feeds are a traipse to access." He frowned. "And I wasn't the first one in. This has prints on it."

"Someone else has been fed this." Zoe's voice was calm as always, but it had the little edge that said 'worried' to Wash. "That doesn't like me too well."

Mr Universe, as always, was off in his own little world. "Zoe, you sultry minx, stop falling in love with me," he said sympathetically. "You're just going to embarrass yourself." He tapped a key or two, and his face on the screen was temporarily replaced by a brief vid of Universe wearing a fancy tuxedo and his Love-Bot - who he'd had since flight-school at least - wearing a wedding veil and a plastic smile. "I have a commitment to my Love-Bot. It was a very beautiful ceremony. Lenore wrote her own vows. I cried like a baby, a hungry, angry baby."

On the secondary screen, Jayne came into view, grabbing River's arm. She swung her foot up and around, in a manouvre she'd used a minute before to kick a guy in the back of the head while he was standing directly behind her. Jayne, however, was too tall, and the kick hit him between the shoulderblades. Jayne, being made as he apparently was of leather and lead, barely even staggered. River swung around, the heel of her palm arrowing towards his nose... and then she stopped. A moment later she swayed, and Jayne lifted her up in his arms. "Well. I see I'm not the only one who's made a commitment. How long have they been involved?"

Everyone in the cockpit shared a moment of total horror. "They're not." Mal said, sounding like he wanted to say a lot more.

"I call it like I see it, Mal. My second-favourite purveyor of violence seems awfully worried about my new star."

Jayne's tiny, blurry face did look sort of... concerned. But that was perfectly normal under the circumstances. It didn't have to mean anything.

"Can you go back?" Mal asked. "See if anybody spoke with her 'fore she acted up, made any kind of contact with her?"

Mr Universe nodded, winding back the fight to just before River started it all by taking out two men sitting quietly at a table. She was staring right at the screen, and she whispered something that Wash didn't quite catch.

Mal did, though. "Miranda?" He sounded confused. "Go back further."

"Hmmm... no." Instead, Mr Universe turned a little, a clatter of typing noises suddenly coming through the wave.

"Uh... please?" Mal had his fake sincerity on. He was getting annoyed.

The second screen switched from the frozen view of River to a Fruity Oaty Bar commercial that had been floating around for a while now. It was inane, irritating, and more than a little psychedelic. Wash had made a private vow to himself, around the third time he saw it on the Cortex, to never ever buy a Fruity Oaty Bar ever, for fear of encouraging them to make another one.

"You're very smart, Mal," Mr Universe said, sounding pleased. "Someone is talking to her."

"The oaty bar?" Wash stared at the screan.

Mal growled very quietly. "Subliminal. It's a subliminal message, right? Like Simon said - sight and sound, something that couldn't be duplicated by accident."

Mr Universe nodded. "I been seeing this code pop up all over, last few weeks. And I cannot crack it."

Wash didn't like the sound of that. He'd have been willing to wager, until now, that there was no code Mr Universe couldn't crack.

"It's Alliance," Mr Universe continued, "and it's high military, so here then is the bad. Someone has gone to enormous trouble to find your little friend. And found her they have." He raised his eyebrows. "Are you sure you know what it is that you're carrying?"

Mal sounded almost as tense as he looked. "Thought I was."


Teng - flying dragon

Yin hui - obscene, coarse

Ni Zi - little girl

Biao xiong - male cousin

Dong ma - you understand?

Wu Ji - dancing girl

Hun dan - bastard

Bai Chi - idiot

Bu Jing Chuan - whaling ship, whale-catcher

Mei Mei - younger sister

Feng Guang - scenic view

Xie xie - yes

Wu Dong - I understand