“That is correct, yes.”
“And where is he?”
“To the best of my knowledge and belief, he is a fugitive somewhere in the world, having escaped the local lockup.”
“How did he escape?” said the shorter of the two.
“He had help. I don’t know more that that; it doesn’t fall within the purview of my investigation.”
They looked at each other. “We aren’t going to kill you,” said the thinner one.
“Then I’ll be equally polite,” said Kit.
“Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“The Seagull was on a heading for New Hall. They have a day’s start, but they aren’t fast.”
“You could have reported that yesterday.”
“Not my job,” said Kit.
The thinner one nodded. “When you make your final report, see to it a copy comes to Special Operations. Mark it ‘Attention Headwater.’ ”
“All right.”
The two of them nodded and walked out of the room, and Kit started breathing again. However, he didn’t move for a good five minutes, just in case. But they were well and truly gone; the only thing left would be carnage downstairs. He wished there were a way to walk past it without seeing it. For one thing, he didn’t relish deciding if he were obligated to put it in his report.
He used the comm equipment at the desk to arrange for transport.
“Sit over there,” he told Zoë. “I’ll get to you in a minute.”
“I’m fine,” she said, but he barely heard her; he was already concentrating on Jayne, who lay on the table, face down and sleeping; the bleeding had stopped for the moment.
Simon prepared his tools, then made his first examination. Pulse all right, blood pressure good—and there it was: he could see the exit wound in the trapezius. He studied the entry point, looked at the angle, and decided the bullet hadn’t done any bouncing around, which was good.
“I think he’ll be fine,” he said aloud.
“You going to fix him, doctor?” asked Mal.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Simon might have replied, but he was too busy, and the question was too stupid to deserve an answer anyway.
Chapter 17
My Own Kind of Truth
In a moment of relative lucidity, he realized he’d been shot again. That he was back in Serenity’s med bay again. He tried to put together the events of the last few hours, days, but he couldn’t make things fit, and it was too much effort to try. Shortly after that, things went fuzzy again.
Some indeterminate time later, he saw the doctor’s face peering at him. He tried to ask if he was going to live, but he couldn’t make his mouth work right. “You’re back on Serenity,” said the doctor, as if that had been his question.
“Where else would I be,” he tried to say, but it wouldn’t come out right. Not that it mattered.
Zoë’s voice came through the speaker. “Captain wants everyone in the dining room.”
Kaylee, leaning against the port battery casing, stared at the box. It was a technology that hadn’t changed in hundreds of years: a thin membrane set to vibrating by the motion of electrons through insulated wires. Power requirements: almost nil. Control. It was all about control, about fine tuning, about precision. It was the same sort of precision control, in a different way, that let Wash do what he did. And the Captain do what he did.
Big things, turned into small things, then moved and turned back into big things.
She stared at the speaker.
“Kaylee?”
“I’ll be there,” she said. Her voice sounded odd in her ears.
The speaker went dead. “I have to be there,” she told the empty engine room. “It’s my job to keep Serenity running.”
Sometimes it seemed it was just a matter of keeping her balance. Too far in one direction and she would see anything; would just sit there for the rest of her life like the cat-tails in a still-life. Too far in another direction, and it would all rush in on her at once so that she would burst and become nother. Too far in another direction, and she would become nonexistent. Too far in another direction, and they would find her and take her back. Too far in another direction…
The problem was there were too many directions, and you had to stay balanced among all of them. It was like dance; if you could find the balance point, you could do anything.
That was the beauty of flying. She would have to ask Wash he how did it, how he made it like a dance. The way Kaylee made Serenity dance. The way Simon danced with his hands, when he was operating. The way Mal danced between disaster and triumph. The way Zoe danced around between Mal’s orders and Mal’s wishes. The way Jayne…
Jayne.
Jayne was the only one who didn’t dance.
He had no balance. That’s why he did all of those things, he couldn’t find his balance point.
She got up, then, and walked to the Med Bay. Simon looked up and said, “What is it, River?” but she ignored him. She went over to Jayne, who had was looking upward with fractured shards of consciousness coming and going like his breath; wrung out, shot full of drugs and holes with his life flowing through tubes and his spirit spreading through the ship like the ghost locked up in the hold.
She stared down into Jayne’s half-open eyes. “Boxing is just like ballet,” she told him, “except there’s no music and they hit each other.”
Then, satisfied, she turned and went back to her room.
She walked away from the speaker and took another glance at Sakarya. He was well secured to the stairway with steel cuffs. There was nothing within nine feet of him. He looked back at her; his eyes were dead things.
“Food, water, and toilet break in an hour,” she told him. Then she turned back to the speaker, punched a button and said, “Wash, surveillance check.”
“We’re good,” he said. “Dining room?”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’ll be there as soon as I’m sure nothing is coming to eat us.”
She looked at the prisoner again, wondering why she didn’t hate him; wondering if there was something that had died, somewhere along the road.
Someone said, “So, did you think it was a good operation?” Zoë recognized her own voice, and wished to hell she could take the words back.
“Quite professional,” he said. “Do you actually care what I think?”
“Evidently.”
He nodded a little. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, I mean, why was it important to ruin me?”
“We were much too late for that, Colonel.”
“Glad to have given you the opening for the line, but you know it doesn’t answer the question.”
“Yes it does,” she said, and turned and headed up the stairway, hearing her boots clank loudly in the wide, empty space of the hold.
“River,” he told his sister patiently, “we need to get to the dining room.” He wanted to ask her what she had meant when she spoke to Jayne, but he was afraid she might tell him.
“It’s not that far,” she said reassuringly, but made no move to get up from her bed.
“Mal is expecting us to be there.”
She gave him a look he couldn’t interpret. “Yes. He’s going to ask questions, and he’ll want answers, only the answers he wants won’t be there.”