SACRIFICE
When I got off the ship, I could not believe it. I will never forget the sight. We had landed in a field of lush grass that was an almost blindingly intense green. To my left, the grass sloped down and faded out to a long beach of white sand that lined the planet's largest ocean. Gentle waves rolled up the beach, begging you to throw off your clothes and dive in. To my right, the grass gradually turned into forest and gentle hills rose up in the distance, promising hours of entertaining rambles. Everything was growing—it sounds crazy, but I could almost feel the fertility of the land through my boots.
I had never seen anything terraform so well. All terraformed planets have their quirks, of course, some more lethal than others. But I had read the reports—this place had no toxic gases, no tectonic hot spots, no extreme weather swings. On the contrary, the planet was set apart by the mildness of its weather and the regularity of its gentle rainfall.
Even when we first began our terraforming operations, I had wondered if it would be possible to reserve a planet on the Rim, to create a place where my family and friends could come in order to get back to Nature. The Core planets are magnificent, of course—I have homes on three of them—but no grand estate can replace the yearning to experience the outdoors, the real outdoors, not a crowded park (and even the most exclusive are so crowded these days) that has been meticulously landscaped and is riddled with security sensors.
And then, to get off the ship and see exactly what I had in my mind's eye, right there in front of me—well, it took me about half a second to recover my breath and decide that I had found my dream. I turned to my cousin. "Reginald," I said. "Let's keep this one."
—from Pfalzenhoffer: Jewel on the Rim by Thurston Pfalzenhoffer. Published by Planetary Publications, an imprint of Blue Sun Press.
It was the logical thing to do. Smith wanted them to get along in a hurry because the cargo'd be liable to spoilage, but Inara had a three-day job. It was only two days to Glory of God from Pfalzenhoffer, so take two days there, a day to unload and load, and two days back—they'd be back in five days. And on a place like Pfalzenhoffer, where the cream of the Core went to get relaxed, a woman like Inara would have no trouble at all filling those extra days, and that lucratively.
So there shouldn't have been a huge fit and fuss about leaving her behind, but of course there was, and Mal was tetchy about it. He had made some mistakes, sure—he probably shouldn't have brought up her leaving Serenity for good again, seeing as she seemed to have dropped that notion on her own. It wouldn't have hurt nothing if he'd kept his mouth shut. No, it wouldn't have.
But her mulishness about seeing this particular client had agitated him to no end. He had heard her talking to the fellow in her shuttle—she was laughing and yapping with this fellow like they were old friends. "I know you, Inara dear," Mal had hear the huang chong say. "You're always taking care of everyone else—why not let me take care of you for a couple of days." He had been a regular of hers back on Sihnon, so this was going to be like some kind of reunion. Yup, a reunion. They'd be reuniting his yin jing with her….
"Well, Sir," said Zoe, snapping Mal out of his reverie. "Looks like Rairty's moved up in the world."
"It's Smith now," said Mal, with a laugh. "You think he couldn't of done better than Smith? It's not much of an alias."
They were on the catwalk overlooking the cargo hold, where Mal had been standing since Inara's shuttle left. As Zoe walked on her way to the cockpit, Mal followed.
"Can you imagine what would happen if the authorities found out who the respectaful Andrew Smith really is?" asked Mal.
"Don't even joke about that," said Zoe as she stepped onto the bridge. "The number of purplebellies that man killed, they'd chop him to bits if they knew he was living on Pfalzenhoffer."
"Knew who was living on Pfluffenutter?" asked Wash, as Zoe put her hand on his shoulder. He turned for the kiss, then looked back out the cockpit window. "Pretty ugly name for such a pretty place, ain't it?"
Mal looked out the window, too. There was no question, Pfalzenhoffer was indeed a marvel. Aside from the occasional mansion or stable—containing horses each of which no doubt cost more than Serenity herself—nothing broke the endless green of the forest. Roads had been prohibited to preserve the landscape, so travel was only by air or on horseback. Lucky for them, travel planetside tended to be unmonitored, all part of the back-to-Nature mentality. The tricky bit with Pfalzenhoffer was getting permission to come visit at all. If it hadn't been for Inara's client….
"Smith!" said Mal. "You were asking about this Smith fellow we're going to go meet. We haven't worked with him before, but Zoe and I, we know him."
"Or we knew of him," said Zoe. "From the war."
"He was an Independent, a big leader," Mal continued. "Went by the name of Rairty. He ran an outfit of commandoes, some of the most daring sorts about. A great trouble to the Alliance. Famed far and wide for their dash and dander."
"They had no fear!" said Zoe, and they both started to laugh.
"OK," said Wash. "Why is that funny?"
"They had no fear, sweetcakes," said Zoe, leaning forward and moving her hand down his chest, "because they never sober. Or at least that was the rumor."
"Party Rairty!" exclaimed Mal. "I never did learn his first name. But he was a legend, for many reasons, not all of them the sort of thing his mother would be proud of. He was the real thing, though, his group did some serious damage. Not the kind the Alliance is liable to forgive."
"They had a motto, something like, 'We may be hammered, but we'll hammer you'," said Zoe. "Or maybe it was, 'We may be slammed, but we'll slam you.' No one ever knew, exactly, and that includes Rairty's men. We came across a few once and tried to ask them…."
"But they had been busy living up to their creed, whatever it was, and they weren't sober enough to tell us!" said Mal. "And now Rairty's here, living on Pfalzenhoffer of all places, all respectaful and proper…."
"Except for that smuggling thing he does," finished Wash as they flew over a clearing. "There he is!"
***
Rairty stood with his men before his shuttle, watching the Reynolds' ship land in the isolated clearing. To call him respectaful was a bit of an exaggeration: He was wealthier now, to be sure, and he had gone to great lengths to conceal his past, taking on the identity of a dead man whose name, irritatingly, actually was Smith. It had helped that Rarity had never been a public sort of leader with his face plastered everywhere—even among the Independents, most had never seen him and only knew him by nickname. That's what made units like his effective—big word of mouth, but no one knows who you are. Just like the Reavers.
Nowadays, he owned a club on the beach, but his real business on Pfalzenhoffer was to supply the wealthy with illegal recreational drugs. Not everybody who came to the "Jewel of the Rim" wanted to spend their free time walking in the dirt, listening to birds chirp, and slapping around in some stupid canoe. Not everybody by a long shot.
The whole simple-life crapola that sold the uberrich on Pfalzenhoffer worked to Rairty's advantage nonetheless: A lot of people sent their wayward lads and lassies there on the theory that getting them away from the bad crowd would straighten them out. Of course, the bad crowd was everywhere you chose to look, provided you chose to look. And rich kids never, ever had their luggage searched.
Rairty knew enough about Sergeant-turned-Captain Reynolds to know that he would never agree to run drops—not that the piece of crap landing in front of him would be good for that kind of job anyway. No, Reynolds' ship was strictly a Rim-runner. Which was fine—life on Pfalzenhoffer wasn't all about blowing your mind. Rairty was looking to branch out, and with any luck, this crew would be the ticket.
"Malcolm Reynolds?" he said.
"None other," Reynolds replied. "You must be Andrew Smith."
Of course Rairty already knew what his contact looked like—and it wasn't like Reynolds was living under someone else's name now, or had grown a beard and dyed it gray, or wore glasses made with plain-glass lenses, or had deliberately gained an extra 50 pounds. Rairty looked at Reynolds, then looked at his own pot belly and sighed. People had always said that his kind of life would age a man. And in a funny way, they were right.
Rairty might enjoy himself, but he did his gorram homework. That was one reason he'd survived the war, as well as its aftermath. Another was his ability to pick the right man for the job, to figure out who would best play what role—and who could be culled, if need be. Looking at Reynolds and his second—a beautiful woman, but obviously ex-military—both standing ramrod straight, giving his men the hairy eyeball despite their expensive clothing, Rairty knew he'd made the right choice.
"Load the ship!" Rairty snapped to his men. "Reynolds, let's talk."
The two of them stood alongside Rairty's ship as he ran through his speech. It was a delicate job. It was going to take care, diplomacy, smarts. The cargo was fragile and had to be handled properly, both ways. But the take was worth it—and it could become a lucrative, semi-regular gig, for the right ship.
Then came the showstopper. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the globe. He had taken his time choosing it from what was left in cold storage, and he could see the reaction on Reynolds' face.
"An orange!" said Reynolds.
Perfect. "No, take a close look at it," said Rairty, handing it to him.
"It's—it's like an orange," said Reynolds, a slight edge of amazement creeping into his voice. "But it's not."
Good, he was stumped. Rairty explained what a tangelo was, and what a variety of large, fine citrus fruits Reynolds was going to be picking up. He took the tangelo back—he would give it to Reynolds later, but he wanted him to think he might not get to keep it.
"But this is the best part," said Rairty. He pulled the blue cloth out of his other pocket, and rubbed the tangelo with it. Then he showed the cloth to Reynolds. Still blue.
Of course Reynolds didn't get it—he never lived in the Core, much less in a place like Pfalzenhoffer. The showman in Rairty was disappointed, but the businessman soldiered on, explaining how fruit sold on Pfalzenhoffer had to be grown hydroponically—it quadrupled the cost, but people here were too gorram fancy to each fruit irrigated by graywater and fertilized by sewage and manure, the way most fruit on the Rim was grown. This fruit was grown that way too, but unlike most people the farmers on Glory of God were careful and disciplined about sterilization. A contamination wipe wouldn't show anything that would set off the law. With the right forged documents and unblemished produce, Rairty could supply the estates and restaurants of Pfalzenhoffer with "hydroponic" fruit at hydroponic prices.
Reynolds seemed to understand. He was supposed to be reasonably bright, if a bit too pious and earnest. He was smart enough to ask about the documentation, pointing out that he'd need some to have an explanation for his cargo if he got stopped on the way back to Pfalzenhoffer. But as he was handing the forgeries over, Rairty noticed one of Reynolds' men. A big fellow with a beard, he didn't stand like a military man—he held himself like a thug, like someone who would enjoy a good brawl because he'd win it. Rairty noticed that he was wearing a T-shirt with a silhouette of a naked woman on it: bad. Then, the big fellow put his hand to his nose and lurched forward, blowing out a white wad of snot on to the grass before wiping his hand on his pants. Bad, bad, bad.
"Do you know why I picked you?" Rairty asked Reynolds.
"We share a certain background," said Reynolds, quietly.
"Well for me, that's actually a risk," Rairty replied, no less quietly. "But you did have a certain reputation back then, sort of the opposite of mine, and I haven't forgotten it. The moon is named Glory of God, and that's not just by accident. Hang on a second."
He walked over to Wolf, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him over to Reynolds. Wolf looked apprehensive, like thought he might be in for some ball-busting. He thought right.
"This is Wolf," said Rairty. "Wolf, this is Reynolds. Wolf's a good man, he landed on Glory of God to make a repair and saw an opportunity."
The expression on Wolf's face changed to flat-out resentment, but Rairty had a point to make to Reynolds and could patch things up with Wolf later. He continued.
"Wolf realized how disciplined these people are, how important it is to them—being so religious and all—to grow their food clean, so that their bodies are pure and do not offend the Lord. And Wolf realized that these people are off the beaten track and need to trade, need to grow something that people on other planets would want to buy, so that they can get the equipment and supplies they need that they can't make themselves. So, Wolf, tell Mr. Reynolds here what you suggested."
"That place is a desert," said Wolf. "It'd grow easy and people would buy it—that stuff is really hot right now."
"Yes, yes," said Rairty. "All valid points. But you haven't told Mr. Reynolds exactly what crop you suggested the nice God-fearing people grow, have you?"
Wolf looked down, irritated. "Peyote," he said.
Of course that was a bust too—there was no way that Reynolds would know what peyote was, it wasn't like he ran with the kind of crowd that could afford the latest in retro non-synthetics. So Rairty had to explain things again, and again Reynolds seemed to get the point pretty quickly and promised to at least make sure no one wore clothes with pictures of naked people on them while planetside.
Surprisingly, Wolf piped up. "They're real isolated, you know—the closest planet to them is this one, and the whole point of Pfalzenhoffer is that it's far from everything. So a lot of the outsiders they deal with are either smugglers or, you know, would-be raider types, so like with us, they were real suspicious to begin with. But they'll warm to you if you behave yourself. Just give them a little time."
Very professional of him, Rairty thought. Wolf deserved a nice, long bender.
The loading was finished, and Rairty gave the tangelo and the instructions to Reynolds. Reynolds showed the fruit to the sexy one—maybe he wasn't that righteous—but wouldn't let the big one touch it, promising to give him a slice when they got on the ship. The cargo doors closed, and Reynolds' ship rose up and flew off into the setting sun for Glory of God.
It was a little hard to communicate with this Reynolds fellow, Rairty mused, but if things worked out, the effort would be worth it. So what if Reynolds didn't fit in with Rairty's crew? He knew Reynolds would work on Glory of God: He'd have a lot in common with those people. He was a religious nut, too.
_____________
TRANSLATIONS:
Note: I figured I should provide these both because I use some non-traditional Firefly terms and because some family members who aren't obsessively into Firefly are going to be reading this. Since you could fit my knowledge of Chinese, Persian, Latin and Arabic into a thimble and still have room for your thumb, most of these come from on-line dictionaries or from Ying's delightful Firefly Pinyinary.
huang chong: Chinese, "locust"
yin jing: Chinese, "penis"
