ALONG CAME A ZHI ZHU -Chapter SIX

By BlueHandTwoByTwo (LarryL)

“Let me get this straight: you woke me up in the middle of the night to talk about rutting spiders?” Rutherford asked.

“Green Nile Zhi Zhu’s in particular,” Zoe nodded.

Rutherford’s face never changed. “I see. I do believe I’ve heard of that particular species but I have no personal experience with them so I don’t imagine I can be of much help.”

“Uh-huh,” Zoe remarked with a sigh. She turned and addressed Book, who was standing behind her. “Book, our ship’s a little heavy. We’re burning too much fuel. I want you to go to the cargo hold, find the most expensive piece of art, and flush it right out that hatch.”

“You’re the boss,” Book tipped his head and turned to leave.

“Wait!” the voice called out from the monitor. Book stopped in the doorway, looked to Zoe who motioned for him to wait. Rutherford took a deep breath, then said, “Green Niles are highly illegal in eighty-five systems and outright banned in thirty more. Transporting them across the Intergalactic Grid is punishable by very hefty fines and even jail time if you’re caught. You flush anything that belongs to me out your airlock and I will call the authorities. Your flying junk heap-of-a-ship will be confiscated and every single one of you will be bound by law. You don’t scare me for a second, little lady. I call your bluff.” He smiled wide, showing off an unsettling collection of rotted, yellow teeth.

“Is that how you want to play?” Zoe asked, not the least bit intimidated. “Okay, Rutherford, try this on for size: we got Alliance on our tail right now so I don’t even bat an eyelash over your little threat to call the gorram Parcel Patrol. And just for your information, aside from your eight-legged contraband, we’re also harboring two, very well-known fugitives at the moment. As soon as the Alliance boards us and finds out who we’re carrying, they’re going to impound our ship and everything on it. They’ll comb through our manifest logs and what do you think they’ll find? Why, it’ll be your name on every single box we have in our cargo hold which immediately places you on their radar as a “Person of Interest”. I imagine you’ll be up to your ass in Alliance officers in less than six hours from now. So if that’s what you want, fine. Keep playing hardball with me. But if you don’t, then I need some cooperation and I need it now. Are we clear?”

Rutherford crossed his arms and sat back with a frown. He’d been trumped. “My apologies for being rude. Clearly, I under-estimated you. What would you like to know?”

“Your spider got loose on our ship and I’ve got a very sick crew. What I want to know is, what can we do to stop the infection?”

“Normally, I’d answer ‘blow up your ship’ but that doesn’t help either of us, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Zoe replied.

Rutherford went silent for a moment while he thought. “How many have been exposed?”

“Six, including our captain.”

“Then I do believe this is your lucky day. One does not trade in Green Nile Zhi Zhu’s without having a good supply of Drapomine close at hand. You never know when you might need it. There is some on board your ship. Packed in one of my crates sitting in your cargo hold.” He thought about this, then added, “Imagine if that had been the one you jettisoned?”

“Where is it? Which crate?” Zoe implored, trying to hide the desperation in her voice.

“I believe it’s the one marked ‘kitchen’. Either that or ‘freezer’. I’m not sure which.”

“Thank you,” Zoe said and started to get up out of her seat. “I appreciate your---”

Rutherford sternly wagged a finger and said, “Not so fast. Not so fast. There’s two things I need to tell you before you run off, my dear. First, Drapomine isn’t cheap. I expect to be reimbursed for any amount that you use.”

“I’m sure the captain won’t have any problem with that. What’s the second thing?”

“Be very careful looking through my crates. You’re carrying more than one Green Nile.”

Zoe’s heart froze. She sat bolt upright in her seat. “Exactly how many do we have?”

A pause, then Rutherford gave an answer that made her flesh crawl. “Close to forty.”

“CLOSE?” Book shouted, suddenly standing at the screen.

Rutherford nodded. “If the six females who were pregnant haven’t yet laid their eggs, then yes, forty.”

Zoe was beside herself. “And if they did lay their eggs? How many then?”

“Hundreds.”

Zoe and Book were speechless. Time seemed to stop in that small, cramped bridge. Once Zoe caught her bearings, she looked up at the monitor and growled, “That’s why you contracted Serenity, isn’t it? You aren’t moving off-world. You wanted somebody to carry your spiders. Didn’t want to transport them yourself.”

Rutherford shook his head. “Heavens, no. Green Niles are much too dangerous. Why risk infection when I could just hire a bunch of professionals to move them for me? Besides, I’ve got a reputation to maintain. I could hardly afford to be caught hauling illegal cargo across the galaxy. Think what that would do to my credibility. I needed somebody who was---”

“Expendable,” Zoe spat.

“That wasn’t the word I was going to use, but if the shoe fits…”

“We’ll be in touch!” Zoe flicked a switch and severed the connection. She turned to Book and said, “Suit up. We’ve got to find that antidote.”

*** *** ***

Simon was sweating profusely now. His mind was becoming more erratic-jumping from subject to subject, never staying on one thing long enough to complete a full train of thought. Keeping focused was a struggle but there was something very important he had to do before it was too late. “River, come over here. Sit down,” he called out to his sister and patted the mattress next to him. River walked across the room and sat down next to her brother. He took a deep breath and began. Revealing his true feelings was not a very easy thing for him to do -never was- but now was not the time to be guarded. “I have some things I want to tell you, things I want you to know in case I…(die)…in case I don’t get to see you again. I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to say things are going to be okay, because the truth is, I’m not doing so good right now. It’s really hard for me to …” His voice trailed off and he closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them again and shook his head, trying to clear the haze.

River watched with growing concern. She reached over and put an arm around him.

Simon continued. “What I want to say is…” He turned to look her in the eye. This was proving more difficult than he’d thought. “You know how we all have particular memories that really mean a lot to us? Ones that we hold especially close to our hearts? Well, I have this one of you: I think I was ten or eleven so you must have been either five or six. Anyway, Mom and Dad were throwing one of their big, expensive dinner parties -everybody was dressed in black tie and evening gown so it must’ve been either Christmas or New Years- and there were all these strange people wandering around our house, drinking and laughing and talking. It was so loud, I remember. It was late and you were already put to bed and I was worried that all this noise was going to wake you up. Anyway, Dad got pretty drunk and started telling everyone stories like he always does and the next thing I knew, he was talking about my learning to play the piano and did everyone want a sample? So of course everyone started clapping and Mom got behind me and pushed me through the crowd and up towards the front of the room, up towards our grand piano. Now, mind you, I’d just started to play. I was lucky if I knew ‘Chopsticks’ so you can imagine my anxiety. I tried to tell Dad, “no, I don’t want to do this” but he gave me that look, I’m sure you remember the one I mean; the one that said there was absolutely-positively no way I was going to get out of this. So I sat down at the piano and stared down at the keys and everyone got quiet and waited for me to play something…and I went blank. Completely blank. I couldn’t remember which key played which note to save my life. So I’m just sitting there in this very, very uncomfortable silence, eyes closed, wishing for either a heart attack or a sudden burst of genius -anything- to escape this unspeakable humiliation, and I’m about to start crying when the most beautiful music fills the room. It’s the first note of ‘Chopsticks’! I opened my eyes and there you were, dressed in your pajamas, sitting next to me on the bench. You smiled at me, then reached up with your little finger and played that first key again and like that, it all came back to me. I was able to remember everything I’d learned so far and I went on to play a couple songs for everybody and afterwards, I just remember thinking you were like an angel sent straight from Heaven, and thank god for you; thank god for my baby sister.” Simon reached up and brushed the long, dark bangs from her eyes. “And I’ve been saying that ever since.” A tear fell from his eye. “I love you, River. I always will.” He began to sob.

River embraced him and whispered softly, “Big brothers aren’t supposed to cry.”

“You have to promise me something,” he said over the lump in his throat. He closed his eyes, breathed in the scent of her hair, and whispered, “If the Alliance shows up and it looks like there’s no way out, promise me you’ll go see Book. Okay? Go see Book.”

“Book can help me escape?” she asked, just as innocent as a child.

“Yes,” Simon nodded, tears flooding from his eyes. He didn’t want to think about what he’d asked the Shepherd to do, tried to put it out of his mind. “Just…go see Book.”

“Okay, Simon,” she nodded. “I will.”

The two of them sat there on his bunk, holding each other and crying underneath the dim light of a flickering bulb.

*** *** ***

The cargo bay’s hatch opened with a loud hiss. Book and Zoe, now dressed in protective pressure suits and wielding electrical prods- stepped through and quickly shut the door behind them. Once inside, they stopped before the mountain of crates surrounding them and reflected on the formidable task that lay ahead. The cargo hold had a much more ominous feeling to it now. No longer were these boxes full of over-priced antiques and collectible junk that a person had collected over their lifetime. They were full of spiders. Green Nile Zhi Zhu’s. At least forty of them, Rutherford had said. Deadly. Venomous.

And pregnant.

“Now I know how David must have felt going into battle against Goliath,” Book said.

Zoe turned to him and asked, “He’s the one who won, right?”

Book smiled slightly and nodded. “Indeed, he did.”

“Good,” Zoe sighed, relieved. “Just wanted to make sure.” Then she stepped forward and began the hunt for the antidote.

Book followed behind her, held up the end of his double-pronged charge prod, and said, “Of course, David never had one of these.” He touched the prod against a metal pipe and a sudden burst of yellow-white sparks lit up the room, accompanied by a loud POP! Zoe -caught off guard- spun around and shot the Shepherd a disapproving glare. “Though it’s probably just as well,” Book shrugged and lowered his weapon. “I can’t imagine standing before a congregation, delivering a Sunday morning sermon, and having to say the words: ‘electrified gonads’.”

“Book! Shut up!” Zoe hissed. “I can’t concentrate.”

“Sorry,” the Shepherd shrugged. “I tend to talk too much when I get nervous.”

“Now we’re looking for identi-tags that say either ‘kitchen’ or ‘freezer’. I think we’ll cover ground faster if we split up. I’ll take this half and you take that half.”

“Right,” Book nodded and hurried over to his half of the cargo bay.

“And Book, I don’t think I have to tell you to be careful, right?”

“No, Zoe. I do believe I understand that part.”

“All right, then.” Zoe scurried across the room to another pile of crates and began scanning their tags with a flashlight. “Let me know when you find it.”

*** *** ***

“Let me know when you find it,” the strange man’s pale and bony face instructed the Captain of the Dortmunder from over the vid-monitor. Captain Halliford frowned. Who the hell was this jack-ass? Nobody told him what to do on his own ship. He’d worked long and hard to rise up in the ranks and now this anorexic-looking carrot stick of a corpse was going to start ordering him around? Like hell! “Listen, I don’t know who you think you’re dealing with here, Mister, but this is official Alliance business. As in, what we’re doing is none of yours. So you can take your shuttle and fly it right up your bony, white ass as far as I’m concerned!”

The man on the vid-monitor was not amused. “We supersede the Alliance.”

The captain actually laughed out loud. “Nobody supersedes the Alliance.”

“I assure you, Captain Halliford, we do. And I won’t tell you again. The Firefly you are currently in route to? You may keep it and everything on board, but the girl it’s carrying belongs to us.”

The captain had heard enough. “Listen, stick man, because I won’t be telling YOU again. I take orders from only one person: Admiral Sharon R. King -my boss. And you aren’t her. So as far as I’m concerned---”

“One moment please,” the dour-faced man interrupted and turned to whisper something to his co-pilot who was sitting out of camera range. Then he sat and faced the vid-monitor for a long and awkward moment while the person next to him punched some buttons and said something in a low and muffled monotone voice. The on-camera man turned to his co-pilot again, nodded, then addressed the captain once more. “I do believe you have a phone call.”

“What?” Captain Halliford asked. Just then the control board beeped. The captain frowned. Only one person used that line. He picked it up and put the ear piece into his ear. “This is Captain Halliford….yes, Ma’am….yes, Ma’am…. I understand, Admiral.” He took the earpiece out and placed it back into the control board. The man on the vid-monitor appeared to be gloating. “Officer Meyer?”

“Yes, Sir?” the young man called out from his station.

“When these men arrive and request to dock with our ship, permission is granted. They are to accompany us to the Firefly, where they will then take possession of Ms. Tam.”

Officer Meyer stared at the captain in disbelief. “What?”

“I’m glad you see things our way, Captain. We should be arriving within the hour.”

“I can’t wait,” the Captain added, sarcastically.

The man on the monitor reached up to terminate the transmission and when he did, the captain noticed the oddest thing: Blue gloves. The strange man on the monitor had been wearing blue latex gloves.

“Who are those guys?” Officer Meyer asked.

The Captain shook his head. They had made a call and within thirty seconds, the Admiral herself was on the pipeline barking orders. That kind of power frightened him. “Trust me. People we don’t want to know.”

*** *** *** “Found it! Book, I found it!” Zoe called out, excitedly waving the beam of her flashlight across the room at him. Book dropped what he was doing and ran over to join her. She shined her light on the box, onto the identi-tag that was flashing the word ‘kitchen’.

“Good, because I wasn’t having any luck over there.”

“Help me pry this open,” she said and started tugging at the ends of the box top. He leaned over and added his grip to the other end and pulled. The seal snapped and the top loosened. “Hold on a second. Stand back,” Zoe said and pushed the Shepherd back a few feet. She lowered her prod, charged it up. “Just in case.” Then she kicked the box over with her boot. Both of them jumped back as the crate fell to the floor and spilled its contents….

Small glass test tubes -at least several dozen- fell out of the packing, rolling across the metal deck grates. Printed across their labels: ‘50 cc’s DRAPOMINE’.

“Shiny,” Zoe smiled.

“VERY shiny,” Book chimed in behind her.

“I just hope we’re not too late.” They bent down and snatched as many from the floor as their padded gloves could hold.

(to be continued)

*sorry it took so long to get this installment posted. ‘Real life’ intruded, as it is about to do again. I’m going on vacation this Friday: 9 days in Hawaii. I can’t wait! So I wanted to give you guys something that ended on a positive note before I left. Please be patient for the next installment and PLEASE leave me a comment with your thoughts so far! Thanks! ~LarryL