Serenity touched the ground with barely a nudge, then settled like a cat.
“Want her to sleep, Mal?”
“Same as before. Save some fuel. I don’t expect to be off world for a while, yet.”
“Then you’ve decided, sir?” said Zoë.
“I’ve decided I at least want to know more. We’ll stay here and get some sleep until morning, and see if they come back. If they do, take us up again.”
“Mal, why don’t we do some checking on this guy? I can at least see what’s public on the Cortex.”
“No, there’s no point… yes there is. Good idea. Do that.”
What am I afraid I’ll find out? he wondered.
The next morning, when Simon thought he was the only one awake, Zoë came walking through the dining room, a distracted look on her face.
He said, “Are we taking off soon?” Zoë stopped and looked at him. He continued, “We seem to have gone up, then back down. I’m wondering—”
“I don’t know. We learned something, but I don’t know what effect it will have on the Captain’s decision.”
“Learned something? You mean, in the last few minutes?”
“Last night. Wash did some checking on the Cortex.”
“Oh. What did we learn?”
“We learned that Sakarya is a right bastard.”
“Sakarya?”
“The guy we delivered the lumber for.”
“Oh. What difference does that make? I mean, we’ve worked for plenty of right bastards before.”
“Not on this level. He owns everything on this side of the mountain, and runs it like a slave camp. They dig the bauxite, send it away for processing, and move the topsoil to his farms. He’s making money hand over fist from the mines here, and slave-labor on the farms. Most of the kids work on the farms.”
“Kids?”
“Ages eight and up. Sometimes younger, if they’re big.”
“Aren’t there laws against that?”
“Supposedly. Anyway, it isn’t pretty. In Yuva, where he lives, we don’t see the worst of it. I don’t think we want to.”
“I still don’t see—”
“Neither do I. There’s something more, and I haven’t figured out what it is.”
“Something more?”
“The Captain is, well, it’s like something’s bitten him. It isn’t just being here, there’s something else. Something he saw on the Cortex.”
“Didn’t you—?”
“He quashed it after he looked at it.”
“You could—”
“Yes, but I won’t.”
“What did you mean about being here?”
“This world. Hera.”
“What is it… Oh. Yes. This is where it is, isn’t it?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Serenity Valley. It’s here, isn’t it?”
“Other side of the world.”
He nodded. “Is that affecting the Captain? I mean, being here again?”
“This is the second time we’ve been here since the war. It didn’t seem to bother him much the first time.”
“That’s something I’m never going to understand. I mean, what it must have been like.”
“No, you never will.”
“What about you? I mean, does it affect you to be back here?”
“Are you a trauma specialist, or a psychiatrist, doctor?”
“Just curious.”
“Can you be curious about something else?”
“Yes. Are we going to be out of here before the feds show up looking for River?”
“Has the Captain ever failed to see that River was safe since you signed on?”
“No. But the Captain hasn’t been himself lately.”
“As long as he hasn’t become Jayne, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“It’s hard not to worry.”
“How has she been?”
They always asked that, and he never knew how to answer. How has she been? Compared with what? Ten years ago? Ten minutes ago? Did they want to know if she was recovering, or just if she were about to do something crazy?
“There haven’t been any, uh, incidents. But she says things that I can’t follow, but that I’m sure make a sort of sense to her. It’s like trying to crack a code.”
“That’s been going on for a while.”
“More since we landed here. She talks about ghosts, and maps.”
Zoë nodded. “If she’s looking for ghosts, she came to the right world.”
“I imagine. But when she talks about ghosts, I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense.”
“No, ghosts don’t make sense. What’s your point?”
“Shepherd Book told me about a time she tore his Bible apart. Literally. Ripped pages out of it, because it didn’t make sense.”
“And?”
“And how do you rip apart the Bible because it doesn’t make sense, but still believe in ghosts?”
Zoë leaned against the table, folded her arms, and studied him. “Doctor, aren’t you asking too much, when you expect her to be consistent?”
He sighed. How to explain? He’d been more and more getting the feeling that, in her own way, she was consistent. But Zoë wasn’t someone who responded well to people having feelings about things.
“I think she’s using ‘ghost’ as a metaphor,” he said at last.
“A metaphor for what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe something she’s afraid of.”
“So, what is she afraid of?”
“Being caught and sent back.”
Zoë nodded.
“And,” said Simon, “I think she’s afraid I’ll resent her.”
“Do you?”
“Are you a soldier, or a psychiatrist?”
“Just curious. Do you resent her?”
“No…”
“I heard a ‘but’ there.”
“I’m afraid someday I might.”
“Let someday take care of itself, doctor. We have to worry about today.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
“Well nuts,” she said to the empty engine room. “We never cleared atmo; how am I supposed to know if this works?”
Serenity was back on the ground, and seemed as disappointed about it as Kaylee. Serenity wanted to fly; she enjoyed flying. Sitting on the ground was something she had to do once in a while to get the wherewithal she needed to swim through the black.
Kaylee sighed.
She re-checked her work on the I-grav, and it seemed fine. What kept going through her mind was what would happen if she’d made some silly mistake: the first sign would be a shimmy, and then Wash would notice that he was having trouble getting lift, and then the grav-boot would just quit, and then…
Wash was a good enough pilot to give them a good landing on jets alone; she was sure of it.
But it wasn’t about crashing and dying; Serenity would never do that. It was about all the little things that, if she got them wrong, might leave Serenity where she was now, on the ground; might leave her consigned to the scrap heap, and all of them without a home. The Captain took care of the crew, but without the ship, there was no crew to take care of; and that meant, suddenly, she was no more. They were all nowhere.
She hated these times when they were just sitting, giving her too much time to think.
She re-checked her work on the I-grav one more time.
Sometimes she dreamed that they were staring at her, from the inside. Sometimes she dreamed that they were walking around inside of her, poking her with needles. Sometimes she dreamed that Serenity was inside of her mind, which was inside of the Academy, which was inside of her mind. When that happened, she became confused.