What Begins with an Apple, Part 5b

To stay or not to stay, that is the question.

"How do you know they were after River?"

Ip paused and considered. "I—well, I guess I don't. But why would they be after me?"

The Operative considered. It was clear the Blue Hands had not expected to encounter Ip Neumann with River Tam, for had they known his identity, they would not have sent an operative with such antecedents. It was unclear where the Blue Hand man's loyalties would lie when the chips were down. With Blue Sun, his trainers and handlers? With Ip, his friend? The Operative fully intended to research the complete history of Bill Borjigin: his life before his recruitment as a Blue Hand operative, and what could be discovered of his activities since entering the corporate sphere. If Borjigin survived the fall-out from the debacle on Beaumonde, he would face many professional obstacles. (The Operative knew a thing or two about survival and recovery in the aftermath of a secret retrieval operation gone pear-shaped.) There was no doubt that Borjigin would face some serious challenges, and it remained to be seen what the mettle of the man was. He might very well crack at the first hard knock. And no matter what Borjigin told or didn't tell his handlers about the encounter on Beaumonde, the Blue Hands now had the means to identify Ip Neumann and his connection with River Tam. It was possible they would make some of the connections he himself had made, if they looked in the right direction. The Operative felt the pressure was on to hasten the process that he had set in motion a few months ago on 尘球 Chén Qiú when he first placed Ip Neumann into contact with Malcolm Reynolds.

He kept these thoughts to himself. It was best not to reveal what he knew. It would be far better for Ip to make the realizations himself. He took a different tack. "So, you're thinking of getting off the ship at Bernadette," he remarked, side-stepping Ip's question. "Is that your next port of call?"

"Yes. Well, first we have to drop off a shipment on—" Ip cut himself off and gaped a moment, as if considering whether he had already revealed too much. "—Another place," he continued, "but yes, then it's on to Bernadette."

"And you want to go home."

"Yes."

"Because home is safer."

"Safer?" Ip gave the point careful consideration. "My parents live on Bernadette. My family. My friends. I grew up there, went to school there. Went to university there, got my first job there. It's home."

"Your first job, working for Blue Sun."

"Well, yes, working for Blue Sun. But not…"

Ip was starting to get the point. The Operative worked at him, gently, a very light touch.

"Blue Sun. The same corporation that just sent a hit man to kill you."

"They weren't after me—"

"You know that? You're certain of it?" Might as well get him in the right frame of mind for his new reality.

Ip was silent.

"If you return to live on Bernadette, stay with your parents, resume your old contacts—how do you know they won't come after you again?"

"Bill said he wouldn't—"

"Bill said?" the Operative echoed. It was a delicate balance. He'd selected Ip for his naiveté, his manipulability, as well as his particular knowledge. But Ip was no good to him if the Blue Hands killed him first. "Why do you trust what Bill says?"

"I don't—"

"Is Bill in charge? When Bill reports back to his superiors that he let you and River escape, what do you think they will do?" Ip stayed silent, thinking, as the Operative continued with his carefully calibrated line of leading questions. "Do you think they will say, 'Good call, Bill, we trust your judgment'? Do you not think they will try again? Send someone else? Someone who won't be distracted by old ties of friendship?" The Operative paused.

Ip contemplated him for a moment through the cortex screen, then gave a little shake of his head.

"If you stay on Bernadette," the Operative cautioned, "seek employment there, and resume your old habits, I believe you are simply making it easier for them to track you down. It's one of the first places they will look."

Ip looked alarmed. "Perhaps we shouldn't even go to Bernadette. I should tell the Captain—"

"No, no, Ip," the Operative chuckled. "That, I think, is a stroke of genius. They will hardly expect you to be heading straight for Bernadette directly after this attack. Your Captain is an expert in sideways thinking, I do believe."

"You mean, they won't expect it."

"Oh no, they won't expect it. So go ahead. Visit your family. Visit the university and talk to your professor. Get re-charged. But don't stay—and don't give them advanced notice of your arrival. Your best bet is to keep moving. Until there is no longer a reason for these operatives to try to track you down."

. . .

Mal knew that Ip would talk, but he didn't expect it to happen so quickly. He also didn't expect that Ip would talk it out with someone off the ship. Mal didn't expect that Ip would turn to his friend the Buddhist monk. Brother Khan-Ale-Cal or whatever the man's name really was.

But so it was. Ip asked River's permission to use the cortex on the bridge in privacy, and spent a good thirty minutes or more talking it out with the man. So Mal didn't hear the full version of what Ip had to say about the events that transpired in the alley at Dunsmuir University. But whatever was said apparently comforted Ip. He lost his blank stare, and was able to speak again—not quite his normal self, but close enough that Mal no longer feared he'd become the hollow shell he'd mentioned.

It bothered Mal that Ip had mentioned the incident to anyone outside the crew of Serenity.

. . .

The talk with Brother Chan 'eil Cail had helped, but Ip still felt that panic and hysteria weren't far from the surface, even so. His friend did not have full information. Although it went against his natural inclination (which was to speak openly, without holding back), Ip had taken the Captain's threats seriously, and he was acutely conscious of what he had not told. He'd left out a lot of the details about Bill, he hadn't divulged the ship's destination, and he hadn't mentioned anything that Simon had told him about River's experiences at a government-sponsored academy, the one that was apparently funded or otherwise supported by Blue Sun Corporation. It was this Academy that apparently wanted River back, and wanted her back so much as to be willing to try all kinds of methods—criminal "wanted" bulletins, missing persons reports—to discover her whereabouts. It was also this same Academy that apparently sent the Blue Hands operatives to retrieve her. Operatives who were willing to kill witnesses or anyone else who stood in their way.

He couldn't imagine that such actions were legal, and it didn't mesh with the picture of Blue Sun Corporation that he thought he knew. Were there corrupt divisions within Blue Sun? The corporation was gargantuan, and he would not be surprised if the left hand of Blue Sun had no idea what the right hand was doing…much less the pinky toenail being aware of the actions of the gallbladder. (It occurred to him that the absurd comparison reflected his near-hysterical state of mind). How far did the cancer extend within the body of Blue Sun? How extensive was the corruption?

Talking about it had given him a superficial calmness, but it hadn't really made the issue go away. Intrigued by the tales his friend the Buddhist monk had hinted at when he first met him three months ago on 尘球 Chén Qiú, Ip had wanted more than anything to board this ship, Serenity, and learn about the Captain's visit to Miranda. He'd thought a single journey would be enough to interview the witness, incorporate the gleanings from that interview into his research, and—if he was lucky—provide him with the kind of clue that would let him break the case as to what had really happened on Miranda. But it had not been so simple.

The Captain wouldn't talk. The crew wouldn't talk. They all knew something about it, that much was clear. The Captain had as good as said it: they had all been to Miranda.

They had all been to Miranda. The Captain was born and raised on Shadow. To meet with people who could give him first-hand accounts of these places had been his dream ever since he first became aware of the pivotal position these two worlds occupied in the field of terraformology.

Now he was faced with a dilemma, and he was more uncertain than ever.

On the one hand, staying on Serenity gave him the opportunity to do some research of great potential importance. The pay was very irregular, and occasionally he wondered how he could possibly describe this interlude on his resumé in a way that would satisfy a future employer. "I took a not-entirely-voluntary leave-of-absence from my profession, and extended it beyond reason." An unbiased observer would probably advise him to abandon the project now and seek out a steady tenure-track position with better job security. Yet the lure of a breakthrough on Miranda and Shadow was a strong one. Publishing the key to either one of those disasters would make the career of any terraformologist.

On the other hand, staying on Serenity had just very nearly gotten him killed. While he had eventually become aware that not all of the Captain's business dealings were strictly legal, it still didn't explain why the ship and its crew had attracted so much negative attention on Beaumonde. Besides the encounter with the Blue Hands, there was Simon's implication as a "person of interest" in the supposed abduction of his sister; the attempted sabotage of the ship; and the assault on the Captain and Zoe.

He would have to be crazy to want to stay aboard. And yet, he had never felt so comfortable, so at home. These people felt like family, and in Simon and River, he had found some very good friends. He enjoyed his frequent conversations with Simon about all kinds of aspects of science. Simon's interests were focused on medical sciences, of course, but he was always up for intellectual conversation. A person of sharp, sarcastic wit, Simon was nonetheless a man with a deep-seated need to help people, as evidenced by the care he always showed for his sister. He was a good man.

River—well, she was just about the most fascinating person Ip had ever met. He knew that she was not, strictly speaking, "normal." But for Ip "normal" had always had a rather fluid definition. His whole life had been lived amongst people who defied classification in "normal" categories—from his highly intellectual professor mother to the over-the-top gregariousness of his father's side of the family, not to mention his own sister Keiko, who had permanently skewed Ip's idea of what "creative thinking" entailed. Ip had grown up believing that some degree of oddness was to be expected of all people, and that if a person appeared to be normal, it was simply that he or she hadn't yet revealed what their oddity was. The way River's mind worked was a subject of wonder to Ip. "Genius" was a word that was tossed around easily to describe many intelligent people who didn't truly deserve the label, and Ip had developed a distaste for the word. But River's genius was of the Renaissance variety: wide-ranging knowledge, profound depth, sharp wit, and labyrinthine thought processes, all moving at the speed of light. Ip had found her mental processes to be intriguing right from the start, albeit a bit disconcerting. The better he got to know her, the more he felt that getting to know her well would be the journey of a lifetime.

This made it all the more distressing to see how off-balance River seemed in the aftermath of the attack on Beaumonde. He didn't know how or why it had affected River this way, and honestly, the prospect of imminent death had precluded his making much in the way of observations. But whatever had happened there had had a clear negative impact on River's mental status. Ip's upbringing had made him familiar with wildly creative imaginations, and he knew that such minds often sat at a saddle point, an unstable equilibrium. Sometimes only a slight perturbation was enough to set such a mind spiraling out of control. River seemed to be struggling to control her own thought processes in the aftermath of Beaumonde. She was having difficulty expressing herself clearly, and he could tell that she was frustrated with this state of affairs. He wished he had the key that could bring her back to her point of equilibrium.

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glossary

尘球 Chén Qiú [name of a world]

A/N: Last chapter before the action heats up. And what does the Operative mean about "the process he set in motion months ago"? Your speculations (and reviews) are welcome.