Chapter G. Bad Connections - *Characters and world belong to Mr. Whedon, mistakes and folly my own. - Kaylee closed the door of Shuttle Two. She pulled her gold and red blanket around her shoulders; it was one of Inara’s last gifts. She had trailed it behind her from the engine room, knowing the shuttles were always cooler than the ship, especially when shut down. She was glad for the layer. It always warmed her. Pulling a crate over to the console, she keyed up the cortex screen. Pressed in the numbers and characters Inara had left and in moments, was looking straight at her. “Ni hao,” she said, then Inara’s face changed rapidly, moving from smooth planes to a smile that made her eyes crinkle and dance at once. “Hey you,” was all of her extended greeting. Kaylee managed to reply the same back. “Well, how are you?” Inara prompted. “How are plans going for your birthday? I hope Mal is doing the right thing and landing on a decent world somewhere, so you can get a real meal, maybe go dancing.” “I don’t know, ‘Nara, but I’m fine. How are you? Ping an? That’s a real pretty necklace you got on.” “Do you like it? I stole it from Sheydra,” she said, leaning into the screen and whispering confidentially. “No, not you ‘Nara.” “Truly. You all rubbed off on me, I guess. “Oh ‘Nara,” Kaylee started to cry. “I’ve done a horrible thing. And I don’t know how to fix it, neither, what with Simon being gone and the Captain so upset all the time, talking ‘bout things he ain’t meaning. He don’t listen, like he... But, I don’t deserve a thing. ‘Cept to be shipped off home. Or to jail. For being a thief. A liar and thief, thievin’ from friends and trepassin’ on what I know to be private.” “Kaylee, mei-mei, you couldn’t possibly have done anything so wrong. What’s got you so worked up? Did Mal say—” “And,” she hiccupped, “and I went and let Ledah on board, and now she’s here for good.” Inara’s eyes narrowed. “And Zoe’s mad about it, same as the Cap’n were, least, ‘til he heard her story,” “Heard her story?” Inara repeated. “...and let her stay, but if anything goes wrong, it’s all gonna be—” “Kaylee. Kaylee, honey, I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on. Why don’t you start with Ledah, tell me why she’s on Serenity?” “It started cuz Simon, left, and I was getting’ lonesome. Tryin’ not to think of it and all, but with you being gone, and the Cap so—well, then Simon takin’ off, with River. All round my birthday. And she walks like you, she kinda reminded me of you, you know, a real lady. And she liked Serenity, and—” But Inara caught up with what Kaylee was relaying, and interrupted her. “Wait a moment, what do you mean Simon left? Left the ship?” “Kaylee.” Mal’s voice echoed around the shuttle’s metal walls. She was still sniffling, but she went scrambling for the comm. link in the cockpit of the shuffle. “ “Yeah, Cap?” “I need you to get the preacher and meet me in the infirmary, ok?” “Captain?” Mal’s reassurances did not work well with her. She jammed the comm.. back in place, and ran back into the shuttle. “’Nara I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.” “Kaylee, wait. Wait—” And Inara was left talking to a frozen photo. She immediately called up the line again, but no one was at any of Serenity’s screens. Or no one wanted to talk to her. She took a breath to figure out what she wanted to say, then recorded her message and sent it in one. “Serenity, this is Inara. What the hell is going on?” - - Zoe turned to a patient Wash. “Got nothing.” “Simon’s not about to send his signal bouncing ‘cross the ‘verse, honey. Even for your ‘stone-colder than you, little one’ look.” “My what?” “You’re gonna have to give it a bit of time. He might’ve gotten the message already and just’s looking for a way to hail us back.” “I don’t like this.” Wash turned his head a bit at Zoe. Tried to gauge what she meant, but she was staring out into the stars. Slightly confused; beginning, at the edges, to be annoyed, he answered quickly: “Neither do I.” “Boy’s in trouble.” “We’ll find help,” he said in one sighing breath, turning back to the controls. “We always do.” He would make the case for aid, make it loudly and clearly when the time came, and he was stung by the thought she did not trust in his support. If she meant to suggest that. It was too hard to tell anything, except that she was upset, and he did not see how they could do anything until they heard from a doc or touched down on Milagros. They could not fly any faster; he knew that. Zoe was reflecting on how the odds played out in the ‘verse. Sick little ones were a star’s reach beyond long-shot, and they had twelve hours of nothing before they could even cut through the clouds of Milagros. She stayed silent, and she stayed by Wash’s side. - - At the third beep, indicating yet another incoming wave, Simon brushed the cortex screen in a few hurried motions, setting it to automatically bounce all live waves to Elias’s cabin. His head was tied up in rhythm patterns and rhymes of Kaylee—which, having rejected shady and baby, found very few to work with—and he paid the screen little attention. So he did not notice that his quick fingers had selected all waves, not just live ones, to be rerouted. And Simon assumed any non-emergency would come to the clinic in person in the morning. If by chance it was an emergency, there would be a banging on the door, soon enough. Or Eliot would wave him back. Of course, he failed to note, as well, that that in muting the sound there was no chance he would notice a waiting wave. But the screen went satisfyingly black and silent, and he returned to his own work, with the chaos of his own thoughts the only bar to success. - - Daniel would not climb onto the patient’s seat in the infirmary, gripping his mother’s green dress tightly and burying his face further and further in the folds. Kaylee and Ledah managed to talk and coax him up on the second bunk, along the wall. Mal had found Book before Kaylee, spit out his own version of the news in short sentences, pacing his way to the infirmary. Book had stopped in the galley, and brought two cups of hot, sweet tea with him, holding them out to both Ledah and Daniel. Mal had rummaged through the cabinets, but none of the medicines there matched what Ledah had with her. The boy had fallen asleep, curled up between his mother and Kaylee, both seated on the wall’s bunk, the tea having soothed him some. Or perhaps he had just run out of energy to do anything, Mal reflected ominously. Ledah was still stroking his hair; he waited a few minutes. When she said nothing, he asked, cold, from across the room: “You planning on getting to explainin’ any time soon?” “I told you,” she said. “My boy is sick.” “No. You told Zoe something about your boy being ill. I’ve heard nothing from you, nor neither have these two, I’m thinking. Kaylee?” He asked, and she wordlessly shook her head. A relief to him, that she had not lied in that matter. “And you, preacher?” “I’d be interested to hear the whole story, myself, Captain. While doubtless brave, I am not sure why someone would leave a town with an established clinic, take to the stars with such a sick—” “They wouldn’t help me. Elias. Said there was nothing to do; I know there is. Core worlds don’t face this problem, ever, it’s been eliminated.” Mal’s weariness took over one more small part of him. Now there was not only a sick little one, but also a deluded mother to deal with. To explain unfairness and futility and death to. “Core’s got a whole host of things you’ll never yet find on the rim. Just ‘cuz it ain’t a problem on Osiris, don’t mean it can be helped, out—” “Don’t patronize me, Captain. I’ve read about this. I’ve done nothing but study the disease for a year. There are vaccines against it. When they fail, as with Danny, then there are treatments. Long and intensive, but they work. And can be found, all over the Rim. Doctors that know of them, clinics and hospitals that administer them. More here than in on the central planets, where so few catch it to begin with.” This was better, at least. Anger, he could handle. Fights, he could win. Or had a chance to, he amended. “Still not clear, then, on why you’re on my boat. Sure as hell ain’t a clinic—” “The only doctor I could get to was Elias.” Ledah spoke slowly, her words clicking one by one, adding to her story. “He wouldn’t help me. My father-in-law has him in his pocket.” “But that ain’t—why would your family be against getting Danny help?” Kaylee asked, too loudly. She immediately rubbed the boy’s back in apology, but he was sleeping desperately, Mal thought. With no desire to wake anytime soon. He had seen soldiers sleep like that, but to watch the little one’s face and shoulders so angled, so bent, was jarring. Ledah paused a while before answering Kaylee’s question. Book moved forward, sensing she needed support or comfort. “Your story needs telling, and to help you, we have to know—” “You want to revise any of that shiny settler-start-anew tale we got over shimmer wine?” Mal cut in. Ledah picked at her nails. She was subdued for the first time; her fear had given her clarity, defiant strength. It dissipated in the fact of her lies. “I thought, I thought if I told you—I didn’t see how it mattered, and I had to get on—” “Why, we’re still not clear on.” “Because you had a doctor. Everyone said. Kaylee pointed him out—he was a chance. One I didn’t have. In Westfield. One we didn’t have.” Mal conceded the point with a nod. They had been stupid, letting Simon out, helping. Stupider still to let him stay. “Well he ain’t here now. So’s we got some thinkin’ to do, but before we get to that, you want to tell us flat out what’s going on? So we know what we’re up against. What you brought down on us?” “I didn’t mean too—” Mal has no patience now. “Don’t matter. Point is, you’re here, and I got feelin’ others want you elsewhere. That means trouble, and trouble for me and mine, now, same as yours. How’s your husband gonna—” “He’s dead. Captain. He’s the reason—he died while I was having Danny. Accident, racing up to get back. His father blames me. Hates me, for it. And takes it out on Danny. Elias works for him, so wouldn’t help. I came here looking for a doctor, not caring half a coin where you took me. So long as I had a chance to see someone else, someone that might do, or tell me something to do. But there’s nothing here, either.” The room was quiet. Kaylee kept brushing the boy’s back, as though she could rid him of the virus as she would tangles from her hair. Book and Mal fell silent; Mal’s constant shifting conscience realigning itself to a new reality. Book wanted to close his eyes, ignore one more instance of pointless cruelty, misplaced faith, and earned-despair. Having long ago learning doing so provided little relief for him, and none for those around him, he instead took one of Ledah’s medical vials and quietly studied it, playing over contacts he had once held in this sector and the likelihoods of constant addresses, suppliers, fidelity. Knowing what he had amounted to nothing, and wondering how far belief could get him, in this part of the ‘verse. “Well,” Mal eventually had to say. “As you doubtless figured, our medic’s on Aramis. Helping your doc. Now, and for a number of reasons, the doc’s a bit cortex-shy, so he ain’t likely to pop back in a reply to the wave we just sent ‘em. Sounds like this Elias won’t be much inclined to either. But Simon’s resourceful. He’ll figure something out, get a hold of us. Maybe give us the medical know-how we need. ‘Til then, Kaylee, I want you figuring out where’s we can go on Milagros. Talk to the contacts if needs be, or get Zoe to. They should know of a decent clinic; gotta be one somewhere on the world.” He paused to make certain Ledah was following. “We’ve got business at the main spaceport and along some of the outlying townships, so we’re gonna have to spend a full day there, sorting things out. Santo’s much better established. They’d have help, but we ain’t gonna see it for at least three days. And I’m thinking that might be three too many.” Ledah nodded. “He usually calms down, once he takes the medicines. Stops coughing, stops shaking. So, it ebbs and flows for a while. Slow descent, but always worse...” “Right,” Mal said, neither needing nor wanting her to continue. “So then we find what we can on Milagros, make it work. Kaylee’s job that is, but I’m sure the Shepherd here won’t mind standing by, if you’d like the company.” Ledah did not answer either way, but with a hand Mal sent Kaylee to research and excused himself. Ledah looked distant when she turned to Book. “You know what he said? The family’s shepherd. After Charlie... after the accident? He said I was a witch, of some sort. That I had bewitched Charlie into marrying me, and traded his life in exchange for my child’s. That I was cursed in this world and the next. As was my son.” Her voice never changed pitch. She stated the words as though they were a recitation from long ago. So much a part of her memory that she could not forget them or feel them afresh. “He was wrong to say so,” was all Book could pull together at the moment. Ledah came back into focus quickly, though, almost whipping around to meet his eye squarely. “Yes, I know. But,” and she turned back to Danny, “it is times, nights, like this. Where I begin to wonder, maybe he was right. Maybe this is my fault. A husband dead and a son dying. It makes more sense,” she said to Book, again. “On nights like these. There is something to that.” The two sit in silence, then, watching Danny breathe. - - Fidgeting was never something Inara would do, and she had cured herself, she said, of pacing. But sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair again, waiting patiently for the next thing to happen, be it related to students, Sheydra, or a certain ship, felt horribly constraining. And then, in the mirror, she saw and heard her mother again. “A lady is known by the way she wears pearls.” Weary, and worried, and something else she would not acknowledge, Inara could not pull herself out of the memory. - “She understands that they illuminate her skin, bring light to her face. A true lady wears only the finest ones, perfectly matched, evenly toned.” “What if she’s poor?” Inara had asked. She had also been sulking, she remembered, at being forced to come in as night fell. At having to sit by her mother, rather than play among the gardens outside. “A poor lady wears none, rather than garish ones,” she continued, undisturbed. “A newly rich lady won’t know; she’ll wear too many or too few. Of the wrong color or shape or length. Of course, there are always some women of style. They know how to pull eccentric strands. Ones you would never think to wear. But they always do so with grace, you see.” “How do they know, and no one else does?” “It is something you grow up with, Inara. While you learn about these things, other girls have to learn other things.” “I’d rather learn other things,” Inara mumbled under her breath. “Mumbling is unattractive, dear. It shows a bad temper. And suggests cowardice.” “I’d rather learn something ELSE.” Inara replied, with force. “Like what?” her mother said, turning around to face her, hands falling into folds at her lap. Her attention warm and wholly. Inara shrunk back from it. “How to cook,” she answered finally, trying to be defiant, but keep her eyes on the rug and her hands ground into her skirts. “How to cook?” Ms. Serra’s eyebrows went up. “It’s useful.” Inara replied. “It is.” She waited. “How to fly.” Inara continued. “In the stars. Not just around cities. And not just anything, one of the fast ships. That go between stars.” “Few ships truly go between stars, my dear. It would take a life-time just to get to the next one.” “Between the worlds then. And how to fight. Like those girls at the festival. And how to beat the drum. And how to dance and flip fans. So that I catch them.” “That’s quite a list. Could you write it down for me? In order of what you’d like to learn first or most. I’ll see what I can do.” “Oh.” There was a gentle pause. “Perhaps cooking would not be a bad thing to start with.” “No other girl in school can cook.” Inara sounded unsure, at the moment, about her first suggestion. If the girls around her chose not to cook, there was likely a reason to avoid it. “No other girl is you.” Inara’s mother regarded her for a moment, and turned back to her mirror. “Still, Inara. You are nearly ten. You’ll have pearls of your own in a few years. And it is never a bad thing, to learn to be beautiful. Beauty brings power, and power is a great lever.” “Lever?” “Yes, child, what are you learning in that school? A lever is something that moves something else. Something else far bigger thing. Power will get you to walk between stars farther and faster than any ship’s license, if properly handled. Now, to be useful has its own beauty. Never let be said I thought otherwise. But it is one you can pick up in many places. However... to have an eye for beauty; that is something that takes many years and much learning.” She turned back to her mirror, spoke slower. “Not everyone is given such time or enough examples. So the universe drags slowly, awe-struck at high art, without ever understanding how it works or came to fit, piece by piece, together. When Inara did not say anything, her mother continued, “Wearing pearls is, after all, about showing that you recognize a work of art and nature. This suggests training of the eye. You must wear them with restraint, which is training of the appetites. And you must always wear them with your head up, so their light can illuminate. This means the lady takes the time to maintain her skin, has taught her body to move with grace and her soul to stand as rooted adamantine in the gusting winds of time. None of those virtues are to be taken lightly, are they, dear? Since in the end, after we die, after whole worlds turn to dust, still art endures.” - Inara stopped her hands. Moved away from the table, a few steps. Considered. Then with sharp, efficient bundling, she cleared everything off the top. Struggling a bit, she picked it up, carried it in hops and quick-starts, to the other side of the room. Barely avoiding her toes, she placed it down, in the back of a dark corner, where her mother, her house-mistress and even her training-house-self would have tsked at it. What did she care now, she thought. She had dressed in the dark, in greenish light and warning reds, during firefights, sky-chases, crash landings. In minutes, for being unwittingly late, with nothing but a cold cup of water and will. Her time on Serenity, one could say, had been useful. - - “Ni hao, Simon.” “Elias. You’re back.” “And not needed, it seems. What happened to all my patients? They’re all resting peacefully. I thought for sure I’d be wanted here.” Simon rubbed the bridge of his nose. “They didn’t need anything, really, except more time. No magic.” Elias checked over the last of the patients, speaking softly to the older woman, Simon noticed, before reading over the chart he had left hanging at the foot of her spare metal frame bed. Something he never would have done, at the hospital. In Capital City. “So,” Simon stretched out. “Lake didn’t work for you?” He asked the question lightly, not sure, anymore, how to talk to Elias. Aside from Kaylee, he had not spoken to anyone his age, let alone his occupation, for near on a year. He seemed to have forgotten the cadence, the rules of what was acceptable and what taboo. Or rewritten them. Elias was wry, however, not offended. “Yeah, well, got boring, I guess.” “R&R, a lake, a girl?” Simon hit the right note with his joking sarcasm and Elias was happy to roll with the opening. For once, Simon thought in passing, a conversation that goes right. “Sadly, it seems, Miss Lucia was not captivated by my mountain retreat, and retreated herself back to ‘civilization’ as she called it. I was, as you can imagine, somewhat confused as to what she referred, but she took my off-handed remarks about her hometown... wrong. So, we parted ways.” “I sent a few waves, your way.” “Yeah?” Elias was casual. “Didn’t catch ‘em there. I’m going to bed. It’s a long-ass walk down that hill. Even down hill. I’ll check the waves when I get up. Emergency’ll just show up, anyway.” “That’s what I thought,” Simon had sat down by this point, leaned back in his chair. Flicked a pen against a file. “Still writing to that girl?” He almost fell off the chair. “Girl?” “All right. Whatever, man. When I get up we can go down to Miss Gan’s, get you that cake you need.” Simon waved without looking up, and Elias picked up his pack, headed into the halls. Simon smiled, even if he still had nothing on paper. At least there was still some people in the ‘verse he could talk to. - - Translations: Ping an: safe and sound / well / without mishap Ni hao: Hello. mei-mei: little sister, term of endearment - - - - Note: A longer bit of prose since I did not post Sunday. The story keeps growing in my head, but my writing time does not. Thank you, kind ones, for your previous comments, which keep me posting. - - Next time- Chapter H: Milagros, where Jayne's got ties from way back. And Elias has those waves to answer. Peace not pax -- intopaper.