If this seems a little rambling, it's supposed to be. The amazing Bytemite, being the clever girl that she is, wondered if River became more incoherent the more important of a message she had to deliver. I happily stole that idea (I'll send her a check if someone pays me for this).
Can I admit that I'm nervous? I'm nervous. If this doesn't live up to your expectations, then please do me a favor and tell me nicely. If you want me, I'll be hiding in the smuggler's hold with River.
It is a strange thing, to be seventeen. Seven – the fourth prime number. The number of magic. Seven is the only dimension besides three (also a magic number) in which a vector cross product can be defined. The lowest dimension of the known exotic sphere. The golden mean in music. A seven-sided shape is a heptagon.
Seven is very important in religion. Seven days of creation. Seven years of famine, seven years of plenty. Vengeance and punishment delivered sevenfold, but forgiveness is given seventy times seven times. Seven sins and seven virtues. Seven strands on the lamp for the candles, one for each night the oil burned. Seven layers of earth and sky, seven layers of hell and heaven. Seven demons and seven angels, seven forms of magic, seven disciples, seven promises. Magic Seven. Golden Mean. Plus or minus two?
I must be careful. I became obsessed with the number five once and scared Simon an awful lot. Numbers are so beautiful. They do not lie or hurt you or slip around like serpents, hiding in the grass so soft and beautiful. You lie there, gaze up at the stars, try to count them, try to see the shapes of the clouds and the shapes of the stars, the shapes of the dark in between… try to see… but the snake bites and your head tilts and the world isn't safe anymore.
Numbers do not do that.
Shepherd Book says that the Bible is how we understand God, but men wrote the Bible. It holds numbers, and numbers are truth, but men do not see truth or they do not understand it, or they twist it to suit them. Book reads God in the Bible. I read God in the numbers. Numbers make up the table I write on, the pen I write with, spirals and triangles and hexagons, fitting together and creating the universe. Order out of chaos.
Ten – beyond the threshold of nine, the addition of single units; a number that cannot stand alone but exists only because of those before it. Ten is the basis for the decimal numeral system, for factors and divisors. Roman numeral for ten is X. X marks the spot.
I am not a child, but I cannot be an adult. I wonder if I ever could be. I might have been, once, but I do not know now. What makes someone an adult?
Not being seventeen, apparently, because I am stuck on the shuttle while Inara delivers the letter. Mal was most insistent upon it.
"What in the 'verse are you doing here, River?" Mal was confused but mostly annoyed. He wasn't scared for me, which was good. I've only seen Mal scared once, when Inara fell after the Reavers nearly got us, and I don't want to see him scared like that again. Mal isn't allowed to be scared. I am scared enough for the both of us.
Mal didn't know what I knew. I would feel bad about keeping it from him but I keep a lot of secrets from a lot of people. I keep secrets from Simon and secrets from Wash. I keep other people's secrets for them. But other people have no secrets from me. There is nothing that I do not know or cannot find out. The puzzle is in knowing how to figure out what I know. My mind is not numbers or equations. It is riddles and mazes, twisting and turning, shades and ghosts and halls of mirrors.
Am I getting off track again? I don't know. The track wavers, looping around itself, uneven, rough, and turning corners too sharply but it always goes on. What track am I on? Where am I going?
The shuttle. I was left on the shuttle.
"You're staying here." Mal insisted. "I don't know what idea got into that crazy head of yours, but this is a mighty nice area of the planet; liable to be crawling with Alliance police. I don't much like the idea of having to explain to that brother of yours that I got you arrested."
"It wouldn't be your fault if I was arrested." I reminded him.
"Try telling that to your brother." Mal argued.
He had a point. Simon and Mal are not yet the best friends they will become. That will take a few years. Hopefully someone will not have to die to get it to happen.
I wanted to explain that I was an adult. I could take care of myself and I was here to help and don't they know that there is trouble ahead? I can smell it in my mind, like a fog that clouds the eyes inside my head, visions blurring… surely they need me?
But I am not an adult. I am not a child, but I am not an adult. I don't feel like an adult. I feel small and young and like a puff of wind could blow me away into the black and the scary things that wait on the other side.
The track is twisting again.
"You can't go either." I reminded him.
"He's not." Inara stated firmly. "He's staying in the shuttle with you while I make the transaction."
Mal didn't like the idea of Inara going on her own. His jaw didn't clench. It simply… solidified. Like water becoming ice, hard and immovable. It looked like a more solid matter, the atoms packed in tight together, numbering in the thousands, than the shuttle and Inara standing next to him. Inara looks like a goddess, but goddesses aren't real. They vanish like dreams before the morning or dew before a sun, and sometimes I wonder if Inara will vanish, too.
Mal wonders the same thing.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::
It starts out as an itch.
It always starts differently. Sometimes, it's a huge wave crashing over me. Other times, I feel like a tiny box has been opened, very quietly, the knowledge inside small and quiet. Once, it was a pricking behind my eyes, hot and harsh and thin as a needle. This time, it was an itch. Tingles in the ends of my nerves, just under the skin, bugs crawling just beneath the surface where I can't get them. It distracts me. I start to ramble. I tried writing about what happened before but then I spoke of numbers and now it's all a jumble in my head. The buzzing is distracting me. Why won't this itch go away?
Scratch and scratch, wondering if I should tear at the skin, rip it off, dig into the juicy muscle. Track down the bugs, get rid of the itch… the itch in my blood, buzzing and humming, each cell floating among others, solid and not solid all at once… what am I made of…
"River? You okay there?" Mal comes over to me.
The voices in my head are back. Why do they scream? No, no screaming. Screams are fading… silence blankets, smothers, hides… must dig deep, peel back the skin, crack open the bones and suck out the marrow. Find the meaning, find the soft truth in the hard silence – crack, crack, crack – open the bones and find the truth. Dead men tell tales, but only speak in silence. Rewind the cortex, follow the stream of time, find the beginning of the screams. What caused the screams…
Why do you scream, little bird? Fly away, away into the sun… fly with the sun at your back, so your enemies are blinded. Blind them… sun is yellow, sky is blue… I learned that when I was little. Learn your colors, little River. Rivers are blue. Skies are blue.
Suns are blue…
The truth that came so easily when I did not need it hides from me when I would give it life. Mal, Mal, we have to get to her. Mal, Mal, it's me they want. Mal, Mal, bad, bad…
"River? Look at me. Hey, qīn'ài de háizi, it's okay. What's wrong?"
What is wrong?
I am on the floor instead of Inara's cushions, clutching at my head. My arms are covered with red scratches from my nails. Mal holds my wrists, lowers them slowly. I taste salt. Am I crying?
No time for tears. Dry them up.
"He started it." I can only whisper. Whispers in the dark corners of my mind, a hollow wind down the corridors within. Follow the ghosts. Retrace the screams. Whispers are for secrets. The darker the secret, the harder to speak. "He started it… created them, created me… she's tricked us. The Harlequin dances, turn on the tabletop… dance, Columbine, dance… played us for a penny show. She saw me, they want me, he started it…"
"River, you're makin' ten kinds of no sense right now. You sayin' Inara's in trouble?" Mal searches my eyes. Brown into blue, mud and water, the river churning…
"Saffron sees…" Why can't I make sense? Why won't the words come? "Inara never kissed her." I blurt out. "Saffron didn't fool Inara. You can't play a player."
I can't name the emotions swirling in those eyes. Water stirs the riverbed, sending the mud downstream…
"Saffron knows. Saw me. She's cunning, she's married to him, she knows… They want me, they want to bait the rats… the roach checks in but never checks out…"
"They're after you." Mal nods. "And they'll use Inara to get to me to get to you?"
I nod. The words stick in my throat like peanut butter.
I can't remember the last time I had peanut butter. It was before the Academy, but I don't know exactly when. I used to eat it off a spoon. Mother said it wasn't proper but Simon laughed.
"Right." Mal stands, strapping on his guns. "If you're what they want, then you're stayin' put. I ain't letting a two-faced snake steal any of my crew."
I do not put up a protest because I am too happy to argue.
Mal said that I was crew.
That's as good as saying I'm family.
::::::::::::::::::::
"You're sure about this, sir?"
"I hate to argue, Mal, but Madame Psychic isn't known for being particularly clear about things." Wash cut in.
"I'm certain, Zoe. Wash, you just fly her sure. And someone remind Jayne that I'm captain, so if he tries anything I will serve him his balls in won-ton."
"Will do, sir."
"Stay frosty." Mal cut out the transmission. "You keep the shuttle ready to go, bao bei. We'll be back 'fore you can figure out the solution to pi."
"It's 3.1415926535897932384626433832 7950288419716939937510582097 4944592307816406286208998628 03482 5342117067..."
"Okay, okay. Just stay here."
"But I have two hundred and thirteen more digits to recite!"
Mal is getting better at knowing when I'm joking.
:::::::::::::::::::::
When I lived in the Core, we had access to lots of shows on the Cortex. One of the most popular genres (I like that word, it sounds fancy) was mystery. Detectives, authors, meddling kids… they all solve crimes in different ways. I did not like them, but Simon enjoyed them.
First of all, they were all annoyingly easy to figure out. Each show follows a set formula. Deduce the formula and you have an equation that you can reliably apply to each situation. It's like math, or a law of nature.
Secondly, fifty-six percent of them employed a most irritating habit of giving a character a speech that breaks down the motive, method, and means of the killer. Surely the audience should be expected to be clever enough to put together the pieces without a nonsensical monologue?
Simon tells me this is why I should not go into theater.
Unfortunately, I am now forced to employ such a method. I do not know how else to write down the events or the reasons behind Saffron's actions or explain the planning.
Knowledge comes to me in different ways. Sometimes I touch an object and I see when it was last used and how. I get memories when I sleep. I don't always know that I know something; it slips in through the back door, hiding among the cabinets and chests and boxes of my memory, slinking through my brain. Sometimes it's like a movie, but the frames don't match and someone cut the film early so I can't see the ending. Parts are warped like melted plastic, or scattered on the cutting room floor and I have to put the pieces back together while single frames play over and over.
Nobody knows how the Blue Sun started. I don't know. Or maybe I do but I don't know that I know yet. Haymer came from a good family in the Core. I know that. He was the second son. No, the third son. But one son died, so only two were left. He was good at chemistry.
I used to love chemistry, but then they used it to hurt me. I don't like it so much anymore. But he loved it. He wanted to create behavioral drugs to combat depression.
Depression is why there are only two sons now.
It's blank between the home chemistry set for Christmas and the first strain of the Pax.
It wasn't my intention to kill – just put them to sleep. But the government went rampant with it.
Did Durran create the Blue Sun, or did the Blue Sun create Durran? Which came first – the Pax or the organization?
He retired, after the war, but the Blue Sun still burns. Athens sends their children to Minos, the Districts give their tributes to the Capitol, and Germany pays the tribes of Israel. Le Marque is dead, yet the people rise.
Then the record skips again. It's tied to the Academy, but it gets jumbled up with my own memories of the Academy and I can't quite straighten the tower. The puzzle pieces are mixed.
The music plays, and Saffron is here now. One if by land, two if by sea. Light the candle, leave the light on, the prodigal wife returns home. She specifically targeted Haymer at that dance. She was contacted, told to get information. When I try to figure out what information I am bombarded and drowning in random equations and chemical solutions and it will take me weeks to sort it all out so I am ignoring it for now. I will write it all down later, in the back of this book, separate from my personal accounts. One must be organized about these things.
I'd ask Mal if I could try some of the solutions, but I think he'd be too worried about my blowing up Serenity.
The point that I am trying to make – the tip of the shaft, the point of the spear – that's what she said… and now Jayne has most certainly poisoned my mind… is that Saffron knew about the Academy. Knew about the children. She must have heard or seen something when she was with us, and kept it like an heirloom in her chest. Some people collect stamps or old guns. Saffron collects identities and secrets.
She wants to make it up to him. She wants to show she loves him.
She wants to pull another con.
I wonder – is this Saffron's only way to show her love? Or is it the only way she'll accept? Do other paths scare her too much?
Or is this the only path she can see?
I am a product of his work. Perhaps she thinks he'll want to examine me, or take me back to the Academy. I don't know. So many things I don't know, so many things that I do, all blurry like a foggy windowpane. Rain smears the glass… clear and cold, pure and cool, and yet it hides things, distorts things. Even angels can disorient you. Even the clearest truth can warp your mind.
Mal is gone.
I will follow.
::::::::::::::::::::
Sneaking through the house – luxurious Earth-That-Was style mansion – posed little difficulty. The number of household staff was minimal and they were nonexistent in Haymer's private chambers. Trash chutes make excellent hidey-holes as long as you take care not to slide down the chute.
Ceilings are also surprisingly easy to utilize as a method of transportation.
I wonder if I was this flexible, balanced, and all before the Academy. Simon says that I loved to dance, but I don't know if that's the same thing. I couldn't kill a man the way I killed those Reavers, though. That I know.
I think my mother would have said something if I had killed a dinner guest.
Mal walked right into the trap. He's not that stupid – he knew it. He knew when he left the shuttle he'd be walking into the muzzle of a gun. But I think Mal would walk into any trap if Inara's there as well.
Inara still doesn't know what's going on. She suspects, but she's a mite confused because nobody is explaining the exact plan to her. I can feel her brain whir as she tries to work it out, like a paint-by-numbers kit but with no numbers, just colors and the canvas, trying to find the picture in the strange shapes and outlines.
They're all talking. Probably saying something witty. They are all gifted in the art of barbs. Mal and Inara will stop to argue at some point. Saffron has most likely dropped a bomb or two, and an innuendo. I can't read Haymer. Does he want me? Am I the cattle led to slaughter? Or does he want that all behind him? Does he want nothing to do with me? I pray it is the latter, but I am too scared about the former to brave the room.
Given my conflictions, sinking to the floor and sitting against the wall outside the room seems like the best option. My knees come up to touch my chin and my arms wrap around my legs. The fetal position – named for the arrangement of the fetus in the womb. Adopted as a subconscious method of calming one's nerves or promoting a feeling of safety and comfort.
Nothing in the 'Verse can offer me comfort anymore. They stripped that from me. Promises are hollow, hugs are only temporary, and the stars are black and cold. Worlds cannot hold, and the void waits, hungry.
I am not hiding. I am not flinging myself into the black. I am not shrinking away, and I am not going to fall. I press my back into the unyielding stone and focus on my breathing. Sometimes at the Academy, the only thing I could do was breathe. In and out, one and two, don't think, don't think, or you'll slip away forever.
We were required to do interviews and keep diaries on a standard-issue PAD at the Academy. I just now remembered that. I wonder what else I've forgotten or am scared to recall. I wish I could read what I wrote then.
Then again, it is probably wise if I do not.
Breathing helps. I have to do something. Voices are rising, swelling like the ocean.
I can't go in there; too many variables.
But if I stay here, my crew is lost. I've seen what we could become together. I've seen how our roots and branches could interlock and intertwine, a forest of individual plants that grow as one.
I remember glimpses, memories and how they come to me. Sometimes, they come to me in the moment. I see through the person's eyes, and I am them for a moment.
Could I do it again?
Reaching out… I am reaching… I might fall, I am on the edge, tipping – I must be balanced. Dance, little seamstress. On toe, extend, feel the pulse of color. Pure color, each soul a color, bright and clear and deep and true. Sense it and let it envelop me. Swathed in the color, the pulse of life, the breath of being. Muscle and tissue and bone, same as me yet not mine to own. Mine to borrow. Mine to use.
I look through Saffron's eyes.
I feel Saffron's heart beating, and her blood rushing, and her skin buzzing.
I let her senses take over me. I hear what she hears, and I see what she sees, and I smell what she smells, and I taste what she tastes, and I feel what she feels. I let her thoughts consume me, zooming along with mine until I am an observer in her brain, watching her thoughts as they whirl and hum like an overworked computer.
Her body is my body. Her mind is my mind.
She is mine.
I take her fingers, my fingers, our fingers, and I slowly lift our finger off the trigger of the gun. I lower our arm, and I bend our knees until we're crouching, and I lay the gun on the floor.
Everyone is stunned.
You will not come out on top.
Saffron will not win this petty game.
Revenge is petty.
It's okay. I like the bottom, too.
I ignore Saffron.
Mal figures it out first.
"River, I don't know what game you're playin' at, but that's a big keg of powder you're holdin'. Careful you don't let it slip." He is worried that I will lose control.
Don't worry, Mal. It's okay.
I hold our hands out, ready to be bound. "I'm sure you can find something to tie her up with." I speak in Saffron's voice, but it doesn't sound like Saffron. It's small and higher pitched, not at all sultry. Only Saffron would have a fake voice as well as everything else.
"Because handcuffs and duct tape are essentials in everyone's hall closet." Mal replies. Why must he be so difficult?
Saffron is fighting back. I can't hold her for long. Feel the atoms, the rush of blood and breath, the tug and pull of muscle. Focus on the body I'm in. Wear it like clothing. Own it like property. Believe it like religion.
"What's going on?" Haymer's watching us.
"Is that – mei mei, what are you doing?" Inara is scared for me.
"That's the girl? She's possessing Yolanda?" Haymer can hardly believe it. "She told me about her but I never thought…"
"You created a drug that made people just lie down and die." Mal considers spitting at his feet. "You think your successors wouldn't take things a step further?"
"Get her out. Get her out of Yolanda." Haymer is angry. He loves Saffron. This image does not match my knowledge. Which is true? The good man who loves his wife, or the man who paved the road to the Academy?
The gun. He has a gun.
"Durran, you fire that thing and I swear…"
This isn't how it's supposed to go!
"Put it down." I say. "Shoot her!" Comes out of my mouth right on the heels before I can stop it. Saffron is strong. I wrestle her down.
Inara doesn't move. If Durran shoots her, he will die. Mal will see to that.
"Put it down." I repeat. "Put it down, and I'll let her go."
"Who's speaking now? Yolanda or the girl?"
"Her name is River Tam." Inara speaks too calmly. "And I suggest that you speak to her with respect. Anything about her that you despise is a product of your company."
"It's not my fault! I gave it up to the Alliance, took my cut and retired. I didn't create this Academy, and I didn't create her."
"Her name is River." Inara's words are smooth and sharp as steel. One turn of the blade and you cut your finger.
Haymer gestures.
Guns make such an odd sound. It's almost like a pop, but sharper and longer, like a tunnel instead of a hole. They don't snap or boom the way you would expect. It's a mite frightening, how quiet it is.
If Haymer had hit Inara, he would not be alive right now. But the gesture moved his hand to his right, and Mal moved to his right, and it hit Mal instead. Right in the shoulder where the Reaver weapons got him.
And Simon stitched those wounds up so nicely, too.
Mal staggers, and Inara catches him. Saffron claws up to the surface again, trying to swallow me. I choke her down. This is spiraling down, sliding down, down; down… we need to get out. We need to get out. We need to get to Serenity.
I have to reach them. If I can enter someone's head, then I can send them a message, can't I?
I can't. I'll spread myself too thin. Stretching until I snap. I can't snap. You snap, you die. The Academy has no use for broken toys. There's a kind of grace to her. Hide how thin the rubber's become. Don't think - breathe.
But I'm not in the Academy. If I don't get us out, I will be. They'll send me back, collect the reward. Stupid bounty. That's what they want, isn't it? Early or late, they all want me. I can't go back. I'll die if I go back. I'll make sure of it. Out, damn'd spot. But the signal might be too weak. The light is thin, and the darkness is thick and harsh. What if Saffron fights back while I try to reach them? What if no one hears.
Haymer points his gun at Inara. Warning her. Saying something. Inara's with Mal. Don't you touch her, Haymer. I'll make you bleed out of your ears.
I have no choice. I have to try.
Seven blossoms, tiny flowers of heat that flicker and float, lanterns in the darkness. One inside another, a paper lantern within a lantern, but the others stand alone. Simon, my brother… Kaylee, so sensitive… Wash, game for anything… Zoe, on her way to becoming a mother… Book, with his thoughts of God and the still small voice, for God was not in the earthquake or the tempest…
But none of them hear me. My voice is too faint or their minds are closed off. They cannot hear me. Perhaps Book thinks I am a temptation or God speaking in riddles. Maybe Simon fears he's going crazy. It doesn't matter why. Their ears are stopped.
One of them hears, though.
Wash is wrenched away from the controls and I hear Serenity give a groan of protest as she is spun, turned too quickly for her liking.
I feel Zoe's anger and then I am back inside myself, slipping into my skin like a comfortable pair of boots and I feel my bones sigh with relief.
Serenity lands in a way that would make Wash cry and Mal curse a blue streak, but it doesn't matter at the moment because it means they're here. We're getting out.
And this is the part that's a little crazy. (That sounds strange to say, as I am on the unbalanced side, but it was the word I liked best.)
Jayne was the pilot.
Jayne came for us. Out of all of the crew, Jayne Cobb heard me.
If Mal was in to fainting, I think he just might have done so.
I almost forgot to apologize for the long wait. I'm sorry! Work and holidays and getting a new puppy and sobbing my eyes out over Les Miserables and the return of Castle and planning for my trip to Europe and planning for college all got in the way.
And just for the record? I will never be okay about Gavroche. Never.
