Wednesday
Another gray day on Newhope and in Du Chang in particular, the grayish light shone through the large windows in one of the villa's seemingly countless comfortable sitting rooms. There was a fire in the hearth surrounded by two identical plush couches facing one another and several chairs with end tables designed to hold a cup of tea and a half read book. The room seemed to exude comfort. And even as Simon was lead into it by armed guards and saw his clearly uncomfortable parents sitting stiffly on a dark red velvet couch, he couldn't help but feel slightly more relaxed for being in such a comforting environment. River must have felt the same, he reasoned, she was sound asleep, looking peaceful and perfect, curled up in an overstuffed leather armchair.
"What's this?" Simon asked cautiously. "Family story time?"
"Don't be sarcastic," Gabriel snapped. "We have something very important to discuss with you."
"By discuss I suppose you mean that you'll tell me what you think and expect me to sit quietly and nod my head in shame," Simon said, easing himself carefully down on the other couch, facing his parents.
"This is very serious Simon," Regan said. "We are very serious."
"I never thought any of this was a joke," The boy assured them honestly.
"We've talked it over," his mother continued, "Your father, your godfather and I and . . . we don't want you to get hurt dear."
"Good," Simon said, looking at his mother suspiciously, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "I don't want to get hurt."
"What your mother is trying to say, son," Gabriel said, in a kinder voice than he'd used with Simon for years, since before River's letters. "Is that we think you need to turn yourself in."
"What?" Simon said, exasperated. "Are you totally insane?"
"This is something we want you to do of your own volition," Regan said. "We know it would be hard for you but --"
"You're both out of your minds," Simon said, staring at his parents with horror. "Don't you understand what will happen if they get us?"
"They?"
"The Alliance," Simon said. "They'll send her back to be tortured and . . ." The memory of the guards screams on Ariel started to resonate in his ears again. "And I don't think I'd fare much better."
"Simon, sweetheart," his mother said in an unquestionably loving motherly tone, a tone that he'd never been able to say no to growing up, a tone that melted his heart. "I know that this is hard for you but, please, think clearly about what's really best for the whole family."
"Please, son," his father added. "It would be so much better for everyone if you would just turn yourself in. Can't you find it within yourself to do the right thing?"
Simon starred at his parents, dumbfounded, heartbroken, and absolutely speechless.
* * *
"Wish I had mittens," Kaylee said, blowing into her bare cupped hands before shoving them deep into the pockets of her raincoat.
"It's not so cold out," Book said. The pair was strolling along the shop fronts of Du Chang's tourist district, not far from the Governor's villa. They had an hour to burn until they meet Zoë and hopped on the train back to Sweet Well.
"Yeah," the girl said. "I guess I'm just jittery. Every little thing seems big."
"I see," Book said wisely. "You're far more content worrying about your cold hands, which you know will be fine, then venturing to worry over what the Captain is doing?"
"Just thinking of it makes me sick to my stomach," Kaylee admitted. "My tummy was so tied up in knots this morning that I couldn't even eat breakfast."
"Is that a subtle hint that you would like to stop in one of these quaint little coffee shops?"
"Well, no," Kaylee said, looking in at the warm surroundings and seeing people holding steaming mugs as they chatted cheerfully without a care in the world. "But, ya know, it'd be kinda nice. Still, we gots sandwiches if we're hungry and . . ."
"And a little treat that provided a pleasant distraction would do neither of us harm," Book asserted, placing his hand on her back and gently guiding her into one of the shops. Kaylee offered no resistance.
The place was busy, almost crowded, and delightfully bright and warm after the dim coolness of outside.
"I'll get a table," Book said, "Why don't you get the drinks?"
"What you want?" Kaylee called as the preacher headed into the mass of people, soon to be lost.
"Green tea, if they have it. If not, black does just fine."
"What about a muffin?" Kaylee persisted, halting Book in his tracks. "Or a roll?"
"If they have fresh hard rolls," the older man said, and then, thinking twice, amended, "No, just tea."
Kaylee dutifully retrieved green tea for the good shepherd, and she ordered him a hard roll, which he'd obviously wanted one but, with saintly self-control, declined. She got a croissant for herself, so light and fluffy that she couldn't help but giggle in anticipation, and a cup of warm milk with honey, to settle her stomach. Best of all, there were small packets of strawberry preserves and lumps of butter. It was the brightest and most cheerful breakfast Kaylee could imagine. It was almost impossible to believe that something bad could happen after a breakfast like this.
When Kaylee reached the table, her beaming smile slipped a little. Book had found them a small nook by a window. He was staring out into the grayness of the morning looking introspective and distant. Kaylee hated to interrupt him. But after a second's hesitation she realized that she could not stand there holding a heavy tray forever. Eventually, she was going to have to sit down, better sooner than later. And if she had to disturb him, she might as well do it properly.
"Hey, there, Shepherd," She said, drawing his attention away from the window and his thoughts. "Ready for breakfast? They had green tea."
"And hard roll's apparently," Book said, standing politely as she set the tray on the table. He only sat when she did.
"Yeah, thought you might like one. Ain't every day we get real bread and butter."
"True enough, I suppose," Book chuckled. "Thank you."
"Well, your welcome," she said simply before taking the first sip of her sweet, warm, wholesome milk.
They ate in silence for a minute. After a bit, Kaylee said, "Were you prayin'?"
"What?"
"When I came up you were lookin' out the window all thoughtful and such . . ."
"Yes," Book admitted. "I was."
"What for?"
The old man sighed. "I'm not sure."
"Don't recall?"
"No," Book said tentatively. "It's just . . . I prayed for protection, for the Captain and for all of us. I just . . . I don't know what form that protection will take."
"How do you mean?"
"In my mind, it's a struggle," the shepherd confessed. "I want the captain to be successful in his mission, and indeed, I've even helped him to that end. But, what if this is where Simon and River are supposed to be? How arrogant are we, in our small ship, scraping by from job to job, to assume we can do better for them then their own, considerably well off, family?"
Kaylee pressed her lips together and nodded sadly. "Do you think God'd mind too much if I prayed those selfish prayers?" Kaylee asked. "I mean, you're a shepherd, you gotta think those kinda things. But I'm just a girl, you think if I prayed that we get Simon and River back safe, he'd listen? That way you could pray whatever you had to and know that someone, at least, was prayin' for them to come back ta us."
Book chuckled, "Pray away, sweetheart," Book chuckled. "I'm sure God is more inclined to answer the heartfelt prayers of a sweet young girl over the overly critical introspections of an old man anyways."
* * *
Zoë stepped closer to the red velvet rope separating her from one of the restricted hallways. "What's down there?" she said loudly.
"Ah," The tour guide said, forcing a too-big smile. "That leads to a series of meeting rooms."
"Can we see them?" Zoë asked, reaching out to unhook the cord.
"No!" the guide snapped. At the beginning of the tour their pretty guide had looked prim and composed; every one of her blond hair's perfectly quaffed into a neat bun, her red uniform pressed and perfect. But now, after nearly endless harassment form an oh-so-innocent Zoë, the poor woman seemed to be frazzled beyond the point of reorganization. The smile she'd held on to so tenaciously for the first half-hour of the tour was now thin and forced. The hands with the beautiful and perfect nails which had been so expressive and so quick to point to areas of interest were now balled into fists, the nails digging into the woman's poor palms. Mal didn't quite know how, but even the uniform seemed effected by Zoë's continual and inane question-asking and total disregard for all civilized rules of tour-taking. It looked wrinkled and the colors seemed to have faded, but that was, perhaps, because the guide's shoulders were sagging with exhaustion.
"Why not?" The firstmate asked innocently. Mal and Jayne had to try very hard not to burst into laughter.
"Because it's off limits."
Zoë's deep brown eyes widened with amazement. "Is there a meeting going on down there?" she asked, apparently more interested than before. "Something important, with the governor and great captains of industry and such?"
"It's off limits," the guide said firmly. "Now, if you would just follow me . . ."
"But," Zoë persisted. "There ain't no reason not to go down there is there? Unless, unless those aren't really meeting rooms."
For a very brief second Mal thought he'd have to save his firstmate from strangulation by an enraged tour guide. But the woman somehow found her composure. "Miss, please, there is a lot to see yet."
"Really?" Zoë asked, clearly thrilled with the prospect. "We gonna see some rich stuff?"
"If you'll please just follow me," the guide said, her voice trembling. She was smiling at Zoë, and at the group in general, yet it was clear that her teeth were clenched.
Zoë did as she was told, like an over-eager child. Mal and Jayne followed, lagging to the back of the group. No one noticed them, which was a testament to how good Zoë could be at attracting attention to herself, for Jayne was fairly noticeable in any crowd.
"I'm kinda worried about leaving Zoë to the mercies of this tour guide," Mal told his mercenary softly. "Seems like she's at the edge, any minute she could snap."
"Hell yeah," Jayne grunted. "Zoë and that tour guide, that's a fight I'd pay to see."
Mal glared up at the other man, but didn't comment. "Come on," he said softly, unhooking the velvet rope and sliding into the hallway. "We ain't no tourists. We didn't come here for fun. We got a job to do."
"Right," Jayne said a little bitterly, following his captain as they started to sneak down the hall towards the guest suites where, according to Inara, Simon and River were being kept. "We gotta go rescue the doctor, a task what gets less fun every time I do it."
"Really?" Mal asked. "For some reason, to me, each time it seems more thrilling."
"Don't it bother you that the kid keeps gettin' nabbed?" Jayne snorted. "He's more trouble than he's worth."
"There are lots of reasons for you to take that comment back, Jayne," Mal said, his voice still light and the majority of his focus still on slinking down the empty hallway unnoticed. "In fact, I can't think of a single reason for you to be talking at all at this juncture."
"I think you like him better 'n me," Jayne said gruffly.
Mal stopped and, for a second, was totally dumbfounded. He turned to Jayne and looked the brute right in the eyes. "You really just say what I just heard?"
Jayne hesitated. After a second he cleared his throat and said, in a very gruff voice, "No."
"I didn't think so," Mal said with a cool nod, before he turned and continued to creep down the hallway.
* * *
"Hey!" Wash said amicably to the guard standing outside the service entrance to the governor's villa.
"State your business," the very stiff guard said.
"Ah," Wash fumbled, padding the pockets of his raincoat with his right hand as his left was occupied with carrying a tool chest. "Got a work order here for a shuttle."
"We don't send out work orders," the guard said, a note of condensation in his voice. "We have internal maintenance."
"Really?" Wash asked his eyebrows shooting up in feigned amazement. "'Cause, you know, that's what I thought, but the guy, my boss, you know, he was like, 'No, Gov.'s Villa' and so . . ." he finally found the work order. "Here," he said, handing the man a thin, magnetized data chip.
The guard looked at Wash's outstretched hand and the chip in it skeptically.
"Come on," Wash said, pleaded, "It's cold out here. If I'm not supposed to be here, I'm supposed to be someplace else. I don't got a reader so . . ."
"Right," the guard said gruffly, snatching the chip from Wash's hand and turning to enter the guard house where he could read it. Wash stepped to follow before the man turned and glared at the pilot. "You say out here," he ordered coldly.
"Out here," Wash said, as the guard went in and the door closed. "Out here with the cold and the wind. I can stay out here, out here is just great."
After a minute, the guard came out again, "Everything seems to be in order," he grumbled. "Apparently you were called in to fix the shuttle of a companion who is visiting the governor."
"Ah," the pilot chuckled, "That explains it. Our shop has this agreement with the Companion's Guild, extremely profitable, getting more by the year, let me tell you. I am surprised though. I always figured the governor wouldn't be the type to call a companion, you know, real family man."
"You will wait here for a guard to escort you to the shuttle," was the guards answer.
"Can I wait in the guard house?" Wash asked meekly, eyeing the warm structure.
"When you've finished with your repairs you will signal a guard and you will be escorted back here."
"Great," Wash said, nodding, "Just great."
The guard didn't say anything, he just offered the pilot one last glare and turned back to his post.
"So here I wait," Wash muttered switching his tool box from his left hand to his right so he could put that poor, frozen appendage in the relatively unproductive pocket of his raincoat. "Standing in the damp cold, I wait."
* * *
Bester sat in his office at his desk with the door opened and tinkered with a pile of fried transmitters. The guard and the housekeeping staff used them to send orders and keep in touch while working in the various parts of the large villa, and they had a tendency to drop them and break them. The pile had been building up on his desk for months and, because transmitters were easier to replace than they were to fix, he'd just kept on replacing them. But now that the damned sprained back had him in a wheel chair for up to three weeks and he had to do something.
As he was rewiring what felt like the thousandth blown audio circuit, a noise in the hallway distracted him. It was not a loud noise, nor an unusual one, but he dearly longed to be distracted. Putting the transmitter down, he wheeled closer to the door and listened.
There were voices, two men talking, coming closer. The voices were hushed and the words were clipped; these men didn't want to be heard. Bester wheeled himself closer still. Leaning forward as much as his sprained back would let him, he eavesdropped.
"Ain't like . . ." A gruff voice said so softly that Bester could only pick up a word here or there. " . . . . any idea . . . them fay wu . . . "
"Well then . . ." another voice said, a voice that, for some reason, Bester thought he should know. Maybe it was one of the guards he'd gotten drunk with one night, or perhaps the sanitary engineer who always swept his office, or that clerk that sent out performance reviews . . . but none of those seemed quite right. He kept listening.
" . . . gonna have ta . . . 'till we . . ."
" . . . the guards . . . and ask what the . . . doin' here."
"We'll just . . . that we got . . . from the tour . . . tryin' ta find . . . back."
"Mao niao, Mal . . ." the gruff voice said. " . . .ain't never . . . work."
Mal! That was it, Bester realized, that was the voice. Malcolm Reynolds, the bastard captain that had tossed him aside in favor of the local slut who, admittedly, was really hot and seemed to know her grav thrust from her power coupling, so Bester couldn't even really hold a grudge. Still, the opportunity to dump this lame-ass government job and pick up some work with a little zing in it was too good to pass up.
Bester swung his wheel chair out into the middle of the hall and scooted after the voices. He found Mal, and another larger man he'd never met before. Perhaps Zoë's replacement, Bester thought, although Zoë was hot and this ape-man was, to put it succinctly, not.
"Hey Mal!" Bester said excitedly, as soon as his old captain was in view.
But Reynolds hadn't expected anyone to sneak up on him, and he certainly didn't expect anyone to know his name. He pivoted quickly, before Bester even finished his phrase, reaching for his handgun, an action which, under normal circumstances, would have made Bester very nervous. But the villa had a very strict no-gun policy, so the mechanic knew before Mal did that the revolver wasn't there. When Mal's hand hit his hip, he was forced to realize he didn't even have a holster.
"Mal, Mal," Bester said, jovially. "Don't cha remember me?"
"Want I should kill him?" the ape-man asked, stepping forward with an eager gleam in his eye.
"Gei ji ren zhi fan shi gaung liang!" Mal spat. "Bester, that you?"
"Yeah!" the mechanic said excitedly, wheeling his chair a little closer "You remember me?"
"Seein' you and little Kaylee humpin' in the middle of my engine room is an image that was, regrettably, burned into my mind," Mal said, his tone not quite friendly.
"He did Kaylee?" the ape-man asked, his beady eyes widening with the thought.
"Jayne, shut-up." Mal snapped to the larger man. Turning to Bester, he said. "What the di yu happened to you?"
"Got a job here," Bester explained excitedly. "Top maintenance man. Good pay, you know, but ah, I could be convinced to leave it if . . ."
"Sorry," Mal said quickly. He was getting tetchy, Bester could tell, his eyes kept darting back and forth, looking for someone he didn't want to see. "Kaylee's workin' out just great and, as I believe we've discussed, I don't need two mechanics."
"Sides, he couldn't do the job anyways," Jayne said, "Ship's a maze of stairs, he'd never get out a the cargo bay in that."
"What?" Bester asked, "The chair? This is like a week's gig, tops, you know. Fell out of a ceiling, sprained my back. Then the dai dai gan mei yong yi sheng godson of the governor here, all he does is help me to the bed, you know. My back's broke and all he can do is help me to bed!"
"Mei young yi sheng?" Mal asked. "I don't suppose you'd be talkin' 'bout Dr. Simon Tam?"
"Yeah,
I guess," Bester said, not really liking the gleam in Mal's
eyes, like the cargo was on board and all that was left was to get paid.
"Tam or Tram or somethin', we ain't supposed to be talkin'
'bout them."
"I don't suppose you
know where they are right now, though, do you?"
Mal asked.
"I could get in trouble . . ." Bester started, hoping to maybe, manipulate Mal into a more gracious position.
"Lot less trouble than you'd get in if I got my hand's on you," Jayne said fiercely. "How fast you think one a them wheel chairs go 'fore it hit that far wall down there?"
"I would be curious to find out," Mal said casually. "You see, we wouldn't be askin' 'cept this is a matter of some personal importance to us. As stupid-fucking-useless as he can sometimes be, Simon is our doctor and we want him back. Don't we Jayne?"
"Yeah, right," Jayne muttered. "Do we ever."
"Come on Mal," Bester begged. "It's boring as hell here. Take me with you."
"There's plenty a ships could use decent mechanics," Mal said. "If you can't find one, that ain't my fault. However, if I can't find Simon, then that is you're fault. And I have a feelin' Jayne here really is itching to know how fast one of these here wheelchairs can go."
"Bet 'cha ten credits that I can get it to three kph 'fore it hits the wall."
"Fay hwah," Mal spat. "Couldn't get it over one."
"Fine," Bester grumbled. "They're in the east sitting room."
"And how do we get there?"
"Take a right at the end of this hall. It's 'bout thirty yards down, on the right. Big wooden doors."
"How we know he's not leadin' us wrong?" Jayne asked. "Maybe we should give this here chair a test run, make sure."
"Nah," Mal said gregariously patting the mechanic on his tattooed cheek. "Bester here's an old friend. He knows how important staying on good terms with old friends is."
"Right," Jayne grunted, putting his rifle over his shoulder.
"Well," Mal said crisply. "You've been most helpful. We're in your debt. Jayne, come on." He started walking quickly in the direction Bester had recommended. Jayne started to follow, but after a step, hesitated and turned.
"So you really do it with Kaylee?" He asked quietly, so Mal couldn't hear.
Bester nodded, more than a little intimidated by the large man with a girl's name.
"Was she good?" Jayne asked. "You know, zai i-tsz good?"
"Hell yeah," Bester chuckled, remembering the way she'd moaned, and he'd moaned.
"Jayne!" Mal snapped, a little too loudly, as he waved insistently Jayne to follow.
"Thanks," Jayne said quickly to Bester before jogging to follow his captain around the corner.
Bester watched, a tad resentful for a second, then shrugged as much as his sprained back would allow. "That ship's still full of freaks."
To be continued . . .