What Begins with an Apple, Part 5a
Talking it out.
The look on Ip's face was priceless, Mal thought, as he strode up to the bridge to check the course settings. He'd put on a good act, and he had Ip going there, believing he might really kill him if he talked. Mal chuckled darkly at his own twisted sense of humor. Bordered on the cruel, after all Ip had been through. Oh, he really was a bad man.
But it weren't really a joke. It was absolutely necessary to impress upon Ip the seriousness of blabbing his business to strangers. Loose lips…Mal remembered the war-time expression, about how idle chatter made in all innocence could reach the wrong ears, and everybody'd wind up dead. Weren't no joke at all.
Would he really kill Ip if he found him talking to a Blue Hand? Or an Operative? Truly he didn't reckon it would ever come to that. Ip wasn't really a bad sort at all. Shouldn't never come to the point of killing. Well, not unless the man did something really and truly stupid.
Mal knew something about stupid, and it was more than just a passing acquaintance. Fact was, Mal had something of a knack for stupid. Zoe was always telling him—no, not out loud, just with those looks that he understood so well—that he was about to do something monumentally stupid. What no one seemed to comprehend was that doing stupid at that level took a certain kind of talent. Way Mal figured, it had taken him years of practice to attain this level of accomplishment at stupid. A body couldn't maintain this level of achievement at stupid without some dedicated practice, and a thorough understanding of stupidity in all its forms.
Ip weren't stupid. But then again...Ip had a streak of true idiocy about him, when it came to running his mouth. The man had no notion of what he was saying, and to whom. He couldn't control that mouth of his. Always felt the need to talk. He'd cheerfully talk to individuals who were manifestly squirming with discomfort under his interrogation. He'd talk to groups, oblivious to the waves of antipathy he was causing, and never notice until he was swamped by a sea of hostility. He'd open his heart to strangers, and spill his guts, and—this was the part that had Mal worried—he'd spill Mal's guts, too, since he happened to have interrogated said guts or secrets out of him in one or another of the myriad of grill-the-Captain sessions that he'd entertained himself with ever since he first set foot on Mal's boat. Ip was dangerous because he'd managed to collect so much information, and the more so because his naiveté was so disarming and he appeared not to have a malicious bone in his body. Man was a walking, talking landmine of explosive information. Especially with the talking part.
Huh. The realization suddenly hit Mal like the concussion of a bomb. Ip was loaded with explosive information. And he'd had a life before he came to Serenity. He'd worked for Blue Sun. And doubtless done his magic grill-the-boss business long before Mal was the one in the hot seat. Ip was like to have a huge collection of explosive information about his bosses in Blue Sun. About Blue Sun research. About Blue Sun itself. Sword can cut both ways. It was time Mal made use of this windfall resource that had landed on his ship. Nope. He wouldn't never be killing Ip. No matter what kind of stupid the man did. Ip's knowledge was bound to be much too valuable.
. . .
"You really do have a twisted sense of humor, Captain," River remarked, grinning, as Mal entered the bridge. "You slay me."
Girl musta been listening in on his conversation with Ip. "And you got me laughing fit to kill. Really taken you this long to figure that out, Albatross? And here I thought you were a mind-reading genius."
"I can kill you with my brain." She accompanied the words with her patented creepifying look.
Mal wasn't the least bit taken in. "Oh, yeah, you're killin' me now."
"Don't you think you were a bit heavy-handed with the 'loose lips sink ships' line?" she inquired. "You know, a bit of overkill?"
"Don't be such a killjoy," he shot back. Turning to business, he asked for a status report. "What've you been up to here on the bridge, Albatross?"
"Killing time."
That prompted an eye-roll from the Captain. "Don't you think this particular line of word play has reached a dead-end?"
"Oh, you are dead wrong in that assumption, Captain."
"You gonna earn your keep and answer my question? Or are you just so much dead weight in a pilot seat?"
"If looks could kill—"
"You are a dead duck—"
"Not a duck. Albatross."
. . .
Listening to the Captain and River exchange banter on the bridge, Ip was reassured. He hadn't imagined the twinkle in the Captain's eye. It really was some kind of twisted black joke, and the man was not deadly serious about killing him. It somehow made Ip feel better, although he couldn't imagine why a joke about killing him could possibly help, so soon after Bill—no, not Bill, not his friend Bill, he corrected. The Blue Hand, the assassin—the man really had intended to kill him. He was going to follow the Captain's advice, and talk it out with a friend. Talking always made him feel better.
Ip waited while the Captain checked flight status and course settings with River. Soon after he left to attend to other ship's business, Ip made his way to the bridge.
"River?"
"Come in, Ip. I was expecting you." She gave him a sweet smile.
"Listen. River, the Captain just…" threatened to kill me, he didn't quite say, didn't quite believe, "um…" ordered me, "advised me, to talk over…" neck-snapping, friends who come to kill you in an alley, shellshock, "things…with a sympathetic ear." He looked into her eyes, now a limpid brown, so different from the wild look of the mad girl in the Missing Children picture, from the determined fierceness of the warrior who'd pulled him into the break room and sent him climbing down the wall of a building, from the panicked stare of the cornered quarry who'd kicked and broken the Blue Hand man's neck, and different still from the cloudy incoherence that had overtaken her when she turned all quivery in the aftermath of the Blue Hands' attack. He made his request. "Is there any problem if I make a lengthy long-distance wave?"
River gave the controls a quick check and engaged the autopilot. "No problem."
"May I have some privacy on the bridge?"
"Yes," she answered, giving permission. "You're going to talk with him. Your friend."
Ip nodded.
"There is nothing left to see." Ip stared blankly at her, so she translated. "Chan 'eil càil an so a' faicadh."
He brightened a bit in recognition of his friend's name. River finished setting up the protocol for the long-distance wave, then stood up, ceding the chair to Ip. "Now don't go talking to any Blue Sun Operative," she warned, "nor any Operative. Is that clear?"
Ip gave her a sharp look.
"Because if I do find that you've been talking to such, I'm gonna kill you."
Ip gulped, panicked briefly, but then caught the look in her eye and began snickering, as River exploded into giggles.
"Just an expression, Ip. Hyperbole. Means get very angry. No actual killing involved."
"No actual killing," he echoed in relief, although a note of hysteria remained in his voice.
"Can be dangerous to talk. The Captain's trying to protect us."
"Believe me, River, I am in no way eager to have another conversation with Bill. With a Blue Hand operative," he corrected, as he turned to the cortex screen. Especially not when he's holding one of those awful rod weapons and looking at me like I'm a thing to be 'neutralized.'
River exited the bridge, leaving him in privacy. He pulled out the electronic calling card and initiated the wave. He needed to talk it out with his friend and mentor, Brother Chan 'eil Càil an so a' Faicadh.
. . .
"…I'm just not sure I'm on the right ship." Ip sighed and pulled a hand through his hair. The young man was clearly in a state of turmoil.
"Why do you think so?" The Operative was careful to keep his voice neutral. He maintained a steadiness, a calmness: the young man seemed to need it. Throughout the young man's narrative of events, he had acted for the most part like a psychotherapist, letting Ip speak what was on his mind, prompting when necessary, avoiding the temptation to inject his own point of view into the conversation.
"When I first took on this job," Ip said, seemingly unmindful of the fact that the job that brought him to Serenity was long since completed, and he could have chosen to leave the ship at any of the ports of call since, "I expected that by now I would have learned all there is to know about Miranda."
The Operative kept silent, but raised his eyebrows as a sign of his interest.
"You told me that the Captain had been to Miranda…"
The Operative gave a sign of assent. They had been over this territory before.
"…but you didn't tell me what a closed-off, ornery, cross-grained 混蛋 húndàn the Captain is!"
The Operative maintained a perfectly calm exterior, but he couldn't help but grin to himself internally. He remembered his boast during his first encounter with Malcolm Reynolds. You cannot make me angry, he'd claimed. Oh please. Spend an hour with him, the Companion had retorted in such a tone of exasperation that he ought to have taken heed. He had learned that lesson the hard way.
"And you didn't tell me that the entire crew had been to Miranda," Ip continued.
"Is that so?" the Operative asked, as if it were news to him.
"Yes. Apparently it is. And yet, even now, after spending three months on this boat, I've made very little headway in finding out more about Miranda. And to add to the frustration, I haven't been able to get the Captain to open up about Shadow, either."
"Have you—" the Operative began, but Ip cut him off with a gesture.
"And it's not just that." Ip's voice rose as he exclaimed, "They tried to kill me!"
"The crew?" The Operative allowed himself to show some surprise.
"No, not—although the Captain did say he was going to kill me if I—but I think he was joking," Ip responded. "They tried to kill me on Beaumonde. Me and River. The Blue Hands."
"Blue Hands?"
"Yes. Blue Hands. They're some kind of secret operatives. They work for Blue Sun."
"How do you know they work for Blue Sun?"
"Because I knew one of them. From when I worked for Blue Sun. Bill. Bill Borjigin."
This was most interesting. Ip didn't know it, but he might very well be the only living person in the 'Verse who could positively identify a Blue Sun special operative by name. Because so few lived to tell the tale of their encounter. And how many of those actually knew, by name, the man who came to kill them? "You knew him? But you astonish me, my friend. They really tried to kill you?" He expressed as much personal concern as he could in his voice. Apparently, Ip felt reassured, because when he continued the tale, his voice was a little steadier.
"They were going to kill me. I really can't imagine why. Although clearly it had something to do with River. They wanted to kill me and kidnap her. 天啊 Tiān ā," he said, shaking his head, and holding it in his hands. "I seem to have acquired some really dangerous friends. I really should just get off this boat as soon as we reach Bernadette."
And there it was. This was exactly the line of thinking that it was his duty to counter. He chose his words carefully. "You want to go home."
"Yes."
"You're thinking it might be safer."
"Yes," Ip breathed. "I—I'm—well, I've made friends here. River and Simon and Kaylee and…I like it here. But it's too dangerous. River's an interesting girl, smart and witty and—she understands me. Like no one I've met before. But…she killed a man. Killed…"
"Tell me about it."
Ip was silent. At last he spoke, reluctantly, as if afraid of divulging too much. "I…well…River and I were returning to the ship from the university."
"University?"
"Dunsmuir University. We took on a scientific cargo—an in-flight experiment." He stopped, reconsidered what he was about to say, then continued. "Two men in suits set upon us in an alley. They were wearing blue gloves. Blue Hands."
The Operative nodded.
"One of them—Bill—pulled out a weapon—a rod—some kind of advanced sonic weaponry, I imagine. He was going to kill me with it." Ip was having difficulty with the telling, the Operative could see, but he could see it was cathartic as well. The telling was drawing the poison from the wound. "But then I looked in his face, and recognized him. I greeted him."
"Greeted him? You said hello?"
"I…called him by name. He wasn't expecting that. He…hesitated." Ip paused. "River launched herself at the other man right at that moment. Broke his neck. Killed him." Ip looked sick, like he might throw up.
The Operative gave him a moment to recover. "Has it occurred to you that she killed him to save your life?"
Ip was silent, looking down. Finally, he looked up. "Yes."
. . .
.
.
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glossary
Chan 'eil càil an so a' faicadh [There is nothing left to see (Scottish Gaelic)]
混蛋 húndàn [bastard]
天啊 Tiān ā [God]
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