Disclaimer: These are not my characters, and not my worlds. I just get to play in them for my own amusement and glory.

A note to the powers that be, get Serenity flying again, we all miss her greatly.

That being said…

A duet in three parts….A cantos of ghosts

By Badger

“Memory is like a gorram razor; it cuts, causes pain, and then leaves no trace….”

A widow somewhere in the verse…

The Sung-Lim household, Leman Province, the planet Wo-han, 8 years ago.

Sarah Lim stirred the pot of rice soup once more, covered it and then banked the fire in the stove. She would have loved to have one of those new induction cookers, with the computer to watch and time her food, but like her momma always said, “No use wishing for something that your hands can’t earn.” She frowns slightly at the memory of her momma’s voice and moved to the kitchen window.

“Erin! Breakfast soon, best you wash up and come in”

Erin Sung stood up from his work in the yard and wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He was a tall man with an all too ready smile and a pension for surprises. Sarah loved him for his boyish energy, his gentle laugh, and the way he doted on his son all the while pretending to be hard with him.

He clapped the dust off his hands and crossed the small yard slapping the dust off his trousers.

“The boy up yet?”

“Not yet Erin, he was working so hard at his studies last night he is straight exhausted.”

Erin opened the screen door and slowly walked through the pest field; the screen buzzed as he crossed the threshold and for a moment bathed him in an aura of golden sparks. Sarah loved watching him come through the door field, and sometimes she wished he would just stand a moment in it, so that she could stare at him, outlined in light and beautiful.

“Well I can’t be doing his chores for him; boy needs to keep up his responsibilities.”

“He will Erin, he is just a little boy after all, he’ll be up in a bit bu shr?”

Erin scratched his chin and looked around the small kitchen; Sarah could see his mind working, concocting some surprise that might delight her or her son. He loved little Alvin almost as much as she did, but he wanted the best for his son, wanted him to grow up strong and self sufficient.

“You poke at him? Sometimes you got to rustle him a bit before he comes to.”

“I shook him twice, he just curled up into a ball and I hadn’t the heart to try to wake him any further.”

Erin strode into the sitting room and to the base of the second story stairs. He called up them twice, then clapped his hands loudly and called up again. He waited a moment, and when there was no answer he smiled evilly.

“Guess I have no choice then do I,” and the grin became devilish, “tried all the polite ways of rousing him.” He turned and quietly sat down at the small piano at the base of the stairs. Sarah waved her hands trying to stop him her words coming out clipped and rushed.

“No Erin don’t….you know how upset that makes him…can’t we let him rise on his own... let him sleep another hour and I will wake him up straightaway.”

“You coddle him too much Sarah,” Erin said folding the small keyboard cover back into the piano. “He ain’t a piece of Pwau-li that is going to shatter at the next harsh tap. Besides, after the initial row, I think he likes that I do this, lets him show off to us.’ He cracked his long fingers and placed them on the keys, then he hesitated and his voice grew tender and a little sad.

“We can’t keep him a boy forever Sarah, he wants to go.”

She nodded her head in spite of the new weight she felt in her heart, and Erin began to play. The first notes he plays softly, making anyone who was listening to the music have to concentrate to hear it. Sarah recognized the tune after a while; it was a hymn, something that the Shepherd had taught Erin. Something very old, from Earth that was.

It was beautiful played softly, kind of sad and sweet, and Erin kept it that way for a time, slow, sad and regal. Suddenly he stopped short, and struck the keys sharply, pressing the sustain pedal all the way to the floor. He is making the music shout, Sarah thought.

He made every note sound up the stairs and around the room as he snapped the keys. He played the piece faster and faster, never finishing it, stopping short each time and restarting it at the beginning.

The fifth time through, Erin jumped up from the piano and went to stand over by Sarah, his face alight with mischief. The last strains of music faded from the room and there was a period of silence that lasted perhaps three heartbeats.

The silence was split by a cry that came from above them, a cry of frustration and desperation. It was followed by a crash and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Sarah started up the stairs, but Erin put his hand on her arm. Another cry sounded, and then the rumble of feet across the floor. Erin pulled Sarah away from the stairs as the small blur of their son bolted them in a whirlwind of blue flannel and dark tousled hair

Sarah was always amazed at how quickly her son could move when he had to. The boy crossed the room in a flash and sat down on the piano bench with a crash.

Alvin Sung clawed at the piano like a drowning man trying to grasp at his last breath of air. His face was knit with confusion and his eyes were puffy and red with sleep. His hands were the only things that seemed to move with confidence; they crawled across the keys as if they had a life of their own.

The first notes Alvin struck were ugly, discordant, but as soon as he found his place at the keys they changed instantly taking becoming smooth and beautiful. His hands blurred across the keys, making the one small piano sound like six. Sarah could feel a warm rush of pride swell up from her belly.

He played the same piece that Erin did, although Alvin embellished the tune and added improvisations, making the music come alive. Sarah could practically see it dancing and skipping before them. Erin’s face had become almost all smile and Sarah could feel the warm ache of her own grin crease her face.

The music quickly changed, becoming raucous and joyous, not something for a chapel Sarah thought, something for a faire or a festival. She pictured spinning in the arms of her husband during a summer evening to this music, pictured streamers and lemonade, and laughing under the stars.

Erin was clapping in time to the tune now, and Sarah joined in. Alvin took the tune around once more and ended it in a flourish of elegant notes.

He turned away from the piano slowly, pale and panting. He smiled weakly at his parents rubbing his hands as if to massage the blood back into them.

“You left it unfinished pa…”he said in a breathy whisper. “Left it undone, you know I hate it when you leave it unfinished, it hurts.

“Well Alvin," and Sarah couldn’t help notice how Erin was trying to keep the laughter out of his voice. “Seems to me I wouldn’t have had to have played my favorite go to meet music so poorly if you were up at a decent hour. I could have gotten you to play it for me, after you had done all your chores that is.”

The boys face once again knit with confusion, and then his dark eyes popped open wide.

“Chores!...I overslept and forgot my chores! I’m sorry Pa, I will get on them right away, I’m sorry.” He bolted up from the piano, almost knocking the bench over in the process.

“Easy Alvin,” Erin held up his hands to calm the boy, “I’d say a performance like that deserves a little of your mothers congee before you start your work. Although I don’t think Shepherd Chime would appreciate her hymn turned into a dance hall ditty.” Alvin blushed slightly, and then started up the stairs.

“All I am asking son is that you be finished and have the sled loaded by noon. We have to be in town by one dong ma?”

“Why Pa? What’s in town at one?” Erin smiled warmly at his son.

“A surprise Alvin, you go now, go do what I say.” The boy vanished up the stairs and Sarah turned on her husband.

“Now look what you did Erin, he is going to be so excited he probably won’t even touch his food.”

“Oh he’ll eat Sarah love, my boy maybe a bit scattered and eager, but he ain’t in no way stupid. He knows that chores with a bowl of your congee shoring him up is a damn sight better than chores and an empty stomach. Come to think of it, any man with a brain and a gut would know that.”

He put his arm around her shoulders, and she feels everything change all around her. This is where she was supposed to be, in a house she built, with a man that loved her and a son that was the Lord’s gift to music. But it was changing, her boy would be going away, and her safe feeling evaporated like smoke.

“I don’t want him to go Erin,” and the words shoot up from her heart, she tries to keep her fear out of her voice, but it comes out anyway making it shaky and weak. “He’s just a little boy, why can’t he stay for a couple more years before we send him away? Besides what do we know about this new academy anyway, no one in town has heard a thing about it?’ Erin embraces his wife and holds her tight against his chest.

“We’ve been through this before Sarah,” and his voice is calm and deep, “this cad is the best place for him. He will get the kind of training that will turn his talent into the thing that will take the verse by storm. Even with our take from the farm and your salary, we couldn’t afford to pay for a cad like this. If he makes the enrollment he will get the training that will help him write his own ticket.”

She wants to say something, but she can’t think of what to say. She can feel her tears warm and wet soak into his shirt.

“Talent like his isn’t for grubbing crops or cutting lumber Sarah, talent like his is for making people listen and take notice.” She pulls away from him and rubs at her eyes.

“Well you don’t tell him until you get to town, you hear Erin. You don’t tell him. Let me have my little boy for one more morning, let me be his momma for one more day.” She collapses into him and cries openly, he hushes her stroking her dark hair and trying to sooth her with his voice. Then he leads her back into the warm kitchen, smelling of garlic, and chilies. Her kitchen, where she could just be a mama, and Alvin would just be her son, her very own beautiful son.

Sarah knew Erin would not cry, and he didn’t, not one tear left his eye as he helped his son with his bags on to the shuttle that grey morning two weeks later.

Erin Sang was the example of a supportive father, making sure that Alvin had a credit chip, telling him he loved him and telling him not to be afraid. Not like his mother who could barely speak past her tears,

Erin smiled, and waved goodbye to his only son from the pad of the small port in Sawton. He waved and he smiled until the shuttle was just a tiny dot in the sky.

Then he cried like his heart was breaking, he wailed and crumpled like a man who had lost his best friend. Sarah caught him and rocked him, rocked him like a small child, rocked him like he was her own special gift, a gift she had just sent alone out into the verse.

The tapping of a baton on a podium

He shuts his eyes tight against the light that floods into his head, but it comes crashing in all the same. The promise that he made to himself that he would not cry out, would not give them the satisfaction again fades like mist as the first needles bore into his temple. An all too familiar agony starts as heat in his head and then explodes into a clawed thing that seems to chew up his very being.

“The subject will repeat the pattern” the voice is calm and flat, he opens his eyes and everything is white, cold and far too bright. Figures sit above him, peering curiously down through a domed glass ceiling, the voice comes from a well dressed man who is causing the pain.

“He will repeat the pattern” the voice is more insistent this time, and something metal pushes its way into his mouth. Bitter nausea floods him and he gags around the vile thing resting on his tongue. He wants to claw into his head, wants to pull the pain out and let it free. He tries to lift his arms but there are heavy things, metal things attached to his hands.

“Perhaps he does not understand,” the second voice is female; he likes this voice more than the first. In the past the female voice has kept the pain away for a time, but he knows it can bring the pain back just as easily as the male voice.

“He understands, he just does not comprehend” the pain increases and he shrieks around the thing in his mouth. He wants to curl into a ball, but his body won’t do what he wants, it never does. It does what the music tells it to do, and the music starts it to move all on its own. The room goes very white as his legs and arms whip out of control, and he loses a11 sense of time.

Then the pain is gone and it is over, the room is still cold and far too bright, but the pain is gone. He is wet and sticky, covered in cold red blood that is not his own. He takes a step and his foot lands in a sticky puddle. A deep horror fills him and he looks up at the figures above him. Hey stand and applaud, their blue hands clapping silently, their passionless smiles beaming down at him.

“Excellent, you see, he performs perfectly. Lets do it again, reset the room and this time add more inputs.” He tries to run, but his legs don’t work, and there is no place to run to. A door appears where there wasn’t one a moment before and the room fills will fearful people. They try to scramble back through the door, their eyes fearful, their movements desperate, but The door closes back into the wall leaving no trace.

The pain returns, smashing into him, his head filling with the heat and unstoppable light. He tries to run from the people, tries to scream, to warn them, but the music starts and again his body begins to move by itself.

“The subject will repeat the pattern…”

He wakes with a start as the shuttle rumbles up the dirt road, and he looks around quickly to see where he is. The shuttle’s cabin is dark smells of incense, ozone and slightly of vomit. The driver does not even look up from his controls as he drives, just keeps his hand on the joysticks and his head down.

He has cried as he slept, and his face and hair is wet with sweat and tears. He takes one of the loud man’s shirts from a small pack and wipes his face dry. This was no way to look, no way to appear if he was to blend in. He had to get the music to stop, had to end the piece before it repeated, had to finish it.

He breathes deeply, closes his eyes and blindly searches in his pocket for his pill case. The tablets weren’t lasting as long as they had before. They told him he would build a tolerance to them, the last one had lasted less than two days.

He opened the small metal box and stared at the two diamond shaped tablets inside it. Just two left, he thinks, just two and the music would return too loud for him to ignore, just two and he would be helpless, helpless and alone. They would catch him then, catch him and cut into him again. They would make him play their horrible music again, and they would only let him use instruments that screamed.

He carefully took a tablet and placed it in his mouth then he closed the case and put it back into his pocket. The two would have to do, he would have to concentrate, not let the music overwhelm him, make the tablet last until he could end the music forever. The woman, he had traced her tune, saw how it played, knew he was where he needed to be to hear her. She was the key; all he had to do was get the tune out of her.

As he returned the case, his hand brushed the handle of the dagger in his pocket. It was small, made of sharpened ceramic, all natural the man said, no metal at all. Course it would do no good against a gun, the dealer laughed, then again it wouldn’t have to.

He let the tablet dissolve on his tongue and the world fired into sharp and clear focus. He became aware of his breathing, the stale smell of the shuttle even the heartbeat of the driver. The fear left him, as did the need and the panic; all that was left was the plan. He would find the lady, and she would help him finish the music, then they would never catch him, then he could go home.

The driver looked up just then, sneering into the mirror, Aristos and their perversions he thought. Just as long as the junk he was taking didn’t make him throw up or anything. At least this one wasn’t taking a fall with a doxy in the back of his shuttle.

Alvin smiled, and let himself look into the driver as the shuttled rounded a small curve to stop at a large manor house lit with warm circles of light. Whimsical topiary frolicked on by the stairs to the main gate, and the smell of night jasmine floated into the shuttle. Alvin thought it was the most beautiful building he had ever seen.

“The temple of Ishtar your grace” the driver said sarcastically as he slammed his hand down on the meter. Alvin knew he had wanted to let the meter run a little longer, but he figured that the Aristo he had in back would just grouse about it, and maybe even report him to the constables.

Alvin could see the driver’s history in the sound of his voice. He could see the man’s bitterness and hopelessness in the way that he sat in the seat refusing to meet Alvin’s eyes. He could see something else as well, he could see the reason for that bitterness, and the reason he had no other choice than to drive land shuttles for soddened Aristos looking for a quick thrill.

He saw the bullet, a single round fired from a single gun during a single war. A bullet that did what all the others had failed to do. He saw it fly, and bury itself in the driver’s leg, shattering his knee on a battlefield at New Tashkent. He saw the man fall, his future stolen from him in a single moment.

“Your grace,” the driver said impatiently, “isn’t this where you wanted to stop?” Alvin quickly pulled the roll of allies he withdrew from the credit chip before he tossed it away, and began to peel bills off of it.

He handed easily six times the fare to the driver and then pocketed the roll and opened the shuttles hatch. The driver took the money casually, not saying a word until he started to count it. Alvin could see the man’s posture change as surprise caught him.

“You want I should wait here your grace” and there was the slightest air of calculation in the driver’s voice. Aristo’s usually tipped this well after a game of slap the peasant, or after they had smoked enough twist weed to kill a horse, not at the beginning of the night. Usually they were stingy as hell at the beginning of the night.

“No not at all, but if you are the one that comes to pick me up when the cortex call comes I will pay you the same fair.”

“Thank you your grace” the smile the driver had was genuine this time, “and not that I am complaining, but...”

“You earned that you did sir,” Alvin kept his tone measured and mannered, an Aristo never lets a lesser excite him.

“How ya figure that?”

The tune in the man was soft, not weak mind you, just soft like it was half forgotten. Alvin could not use it, but there was no harm in playing a little of it for the driver to hear.

“Well that’s easy corporal; you held the line didn’t you? Held it for six until sixty, held it until pegs and regret were the only things that held you up. Not at all an easy feat, facing down two divisions with just a sidearm and some rocks to throw. That kind of honor deserves more than that little sum.” Alvin stepped out of the shuttle and slammed the hatch.

“But I need the rest of my roll for inside.” Alvin winked at him like a true friend, like someone who understood, like a comrade in arms. The driver smiled back bewildered, and then the boy was headed for the stairs all eager strides and nervous laughter.

The driver sat in his shuttle for a long while, his hand clenched around the bills. No knew what he had done in the war, only those who had fought along side and died with him ever had an idea of how he had lost his leg. Not one of the other drivers, or his drinking mats knew about how they held against the purple bellies until the only things they had were hand guns and rocks. He ran his hand over the plastic and metal monstrosity that the Alliance surgeon had the nerve to call a leg. How did this boy know him, how did this boy know about New Tashkent and the stand they made there?

Had to be someone’s boy the driver thinks, and he tries to pictures the boy’s face, tries to match it to the memory of one of his comrades. Someone who told the boy stories of New Tashkent, how cold it was, how scared they were, and how much of an honor it was to wear a brown coat and fight the good fight.

He powered the shuttle’s fans up and skimmed down the road; it was time to get a drink, time to quietly toast the ghosts of long gone comrades. To his surprise he wipes a tear away with hand. Most of all it was time to toast the father of a son, a son who remembered the stories and set old ghost to rest.