“I never saw you doing that.”
“Why would you think I’d let you? I kept the syringe hidden away and made sure there was no one around whenever I used it. But I knew it wasn’t going to last forever. The drugs were becoming increasingly ineffective. I was getting headaches, dizzy spells, weird blurry patches in my vision. They came and went, but they were getting more frequent. Next, I knew, I would start fainting. That’s the usual pathology of Kiehl’s. My kidneys would begin to pack up, I’d fall prey to infections… In short, I wouldn’t be able to keep hiding it anymore. People would notice. Simon especially. He was the one I was most worried about—him and his doctor’s eye. There was that one occasion I almost blurted out the truth to him, and countless others where I bit my tongue in time. It might have been good just to tell someone on the ship, and I knew I could compel Simon to physician–patient privilege so it wouldn’t go any further.”
“Or there was me,” said Mal. “You could’ve trusted me. I’d’ve kept it a secret.”
“If you’d known, Mal, everyone would have known.”
“I wouldn’t have told a soul,” he protested.
“You wouldn’t have had to. Your behavior would have done it for you. You’d have been different around me. You’d have been solicitous, sulky, mournful, overprotective—and the others would have noticed. I don’t mean that as an insult. You just wouldn’t have been able to help yourself.”
Mal thought she was correct about that. Didn’t make her right, though.
“I had to go,” Inara said. “That’s all there is to it. I couldn’t stay on Serenity. I’d have been a burden to the rest of you, and a liability. I only wish you and I had parted on better terms. That was my greatest regret about leaving the way I did. I wish I’d been honest with you. But I couldn’t. I did what I thought was best, and if that hurt you, I’m deeply sorry.”
“You reckon—you reckon quittin’ the ship without explaining fully why was the way to go about it? Letting me think it was ’cause of something I’d done, or hadn’t done? That was best?”
All at once, Inara let out a hiss of pain. A spasm passed through her, making her arch her back and writhe beneath the covers. Several of the machines integrated into the medical bed start making soft pings and bleeps.
“Inara? Inara!”
“It’s… It’s okay,” she replied through clenched teeth. “Just give it… a moment. The bed’s… responding. There.” Her body relaxed. She sagged back onto the mattress. “That’s better.” She raised an arm, showing him the tube that was feeding through a cannula into a vein. “Analgesic’s kicking in. Rén cí de fó zŭ, what a relief. Normally it’s okay, the pain isn’t too bad, but once in a while I get these acute attacks.”
“Inara…”
“Mal, please. Those big, sad eyes. I’m fine, really.”
“You ain’t fine. You’re dying!” The anger was back, fiercer than before, unstemmable. He was furious. Not with Inara. With himself. With fate. With this godawful disease that was eating away at Inara, killing her by inches.
“And that’s all right,” she said. “Everyone dies. It’s my time, is all.”
“No. No, I’m not takin’ any of this Buddhist lè sè.”
Her eyes blazed. A flash of the old Inara. “Don’t you call my religion ‘garbage,’ Mal. Don’t you dare.”
He bowed his head, contrite. “Yeah. Sorry,” he mumbled.
Her voice softened. “Sometimes you just have to accept there’s nothing you can do. Things are what they are. Raging at them, fighting them—it’s pointless.”
“Raging and fighting’s what I do. What I’ve always done.”
“I know, and I’m asking you to be different now, Mal. For my sake, and for yours.”
5
They talked for another five minutes or so. Mal updated her on the crew’s latest exploits.
“Platinum’s hard to come by,” he said. “So are jobs.”
“No change there, then.”
Inara was clearly getting tired, however. Speaking was becoming more of a strain for her.
“Mal…” she said eventually. “I’ve done bad things.”
“No, Inara. No, you ain’t.”
“Why I left House Madrassa. Fiddler’s Green. That client of mine letting slip about the offensive the Independents were planning at their base at Fiddler’s Green. I thought it was right I should let the authorities know. Thought it’d prevent a massacre.”
“Yeah. You’ve told me this.”
“Didn’t mean for it turn out how it did. The Alliance bombardment. The entire base destroyed. All those people. Those noncombatants. When I finally confessed to you about it, you were so mad.”
“I know, but this ain’t the time to start judgin’ yourself.”
“When death is hanging over you? If not then, when?”
“You need to think of the good you’ve done,” Mal said, “not the mistakes you’ve made. You need to think of what you’ve meant to people, how you’ve changed ’em for the better.”
“That include you?”
“Me most of all. Not that I’d admit that to anyone.”
“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. I’ll take it to the grave.”
In the end, she could barely keep her eyes open.
“Regrets, Mal.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “You just sleep.”
“You and I… We could have…”
“I know, Inara. I know.”
She said a few more words, but they were so slurred he couldn’t make them out. Then her eyelids fluttered shut and she sank into slumber.
He stayed at her bedside for another half-hour, watching her sleep. Then he stood and strode out of the room. He wanted to hit something. Didn’t much mind what. There was a sculpture on a pedestal in the corridor outside, a three-dimensional patchwork of what appeared to be pieces of recycled metal. He wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look like. A cat on stilts? A drunk giraffe? Regardless, he was sorely tempted to pick it up and throw it onto the floor. Stamp on it. Turn it back into scrap.
“Please don’t,” said Stanislaw L’Amour, walking up behind him.
“Huh?” said Mal.
“That’s an original Oscar Navarre. Verrry expensive. You were thinking of doing something bad to it.”
“Was not.”
“You wouldn’t be the first. Navarre’s a controversial artist. Some reckon his work is genius, others reckon…”
“They could have knocked up something like it in their own toolshed in an afternoon.”
“Exactly. Doesn’t stop his sculptures fetching exorbitant prices at auction. This one’s called Old Paint. Kind of a visual pun. It’s a horse, you see, made out of paint cans.”
“Ohhh. A horse. Yeah, I can sorta see that, now you say so.”
L’Amour fixed him with a sympathetic look. “I get it, Mal. About Inara. I feel the same as you. We both love her. We hate what’s happening to her. Makes you want to lash out at the world. But what good will it do? Come and have a drink instead. I have a bottle of Jīnsè De Mèngxiăng downstairs. Best single malt you’ll ever taste.”
“Don’t much fancy drinkin’.”
* * *
Six generous measures of whisky later, Mal found that his anger had transmuted into dejection. That magic of booze. The alchemy of alcohol.
“You’re sure there ain’t nothin’ can be done for her?” he said to L’Amour. They were sitting in a belvedere—“summerhouse” wasn’t nearly grand enough a word for it—atop a rise some five hundred yards from the house. Nearby, the lake shimmered in the low afternoon sunshine. Now and then a golden-orange fish rose to the surface, creating small rings of ripples.
“Trust me, I’ve had just about every specialist in the ’verse take a look at her,” L’Amour replied. “They all say the same. Kiehl’s myeloma is, not to put too fine a point on it, a death sentence. It affects the production of plasma cells in the bone marrow, turning them against the body.
Basically, it poisons you slowly from the inside out with your own blood. Most myelomas are curable these days—the wonders of modern medicine—but Kiehl’s is one of the exceptions. It’s a pernicious little bugger.”
“I just wish Inara’d try and fight it. It’s like she’s simply layin’ back and letting it run its course.”
The billionaire arched an eyebrow. “You honestly think that’s the case? Mal, listen. Inara has been battling the disease every step of the way since she got here. I’ve never seen a woman more determined to live. It’s only recently that she’s resigned herself to the inevitable.”
“Why’d she come to you in the first place?”
“Yes, what have I got going for me, other than my immense charm and vast wealth?”
“Didn’t mean no offence.”
“None taken, Mal. I’m just teasing. You’re asking why, of all people, did Inara choose Stanislaw L’Amour to help look after her and be with her in her final days. Why not someone else? You, even?”
Mal shrugged his shoulders. “Not necessarily me. Ain’t as if a Firefly captain can compete with, you know, this.” He swept an arm to indicate their surroundings. “But House Madrassa took her back in, even after everything that had happened—Fiddler’s Green, her breaching the Companion confidentiality vows, all of that. Surprising, but they did. She could have stayed there, couldn’t she?”
“There was still a residue of resentment among her fellow Companions,” L’Amour said. “It wasn’t comfortable for her at all. Inara needed to be somewhere where there’d be no unspoken criticism, no atmosphere of self-righteousness. She knew she could get that from me. As soon as she waved me, I dropped everything and went to fetch her.”
“And I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong. But…”
“Mal.” L’Amour patted his arm. “I know what you mean to her, and she to you. Inara’s told me more than once. Who knows how it would have gone if things were different. The main thing is, you’ve visited her now. You’ve had a chance to say your goodbyes. What I hope is that the two of you have reconciled. That you’ve both gotten some kind of closure.”
* * *
In the transfer pod on the way back to Serenity, Mal broke down and sobbed. He howled. He hammered his fists against his thighs, hard enough to leave bruises.
By the time the pod reached the landing pad he had dried his eyes and regained his composure. He stepped out, game face back on, seemingly ready to cope with whatever life threw at him. Captain Malcolm Reynolds. The man who didn’t back down. The man whom nothing could break.
He was braced for a barrage of questions from the crew. He was expecting them to ask how Inara was. Did she have any messages for them? Might they be able to see her at a later date? Was there really no chance of her getting better?
What he wasn’t expecting…
Was a faint, flickering ray of hope.
6
While Mal was over at Stanislaw L’Amour’s house, Zoë waved Serenity’s other erstwhile crewmember, Shepherd Derrial Book, to deliver the news about Inara.
Nowadays Book lived on Haven, one of Deadwood’s moons, bringing the Word of God to a small colony there. He’d said that his experiences while consorting with Serenity’s crew were beginning to erode his faith. He’d also said that he feared his somewhat dubious past might catch up with him, putting them all in undue danger. On Haven he could keep a low profile, far from the strife and violence that seemed to dog the ship whenever she went, and see if he could start to hear once more the still, small voice of the Lord within him.
“That is just awful,” Book said to Zoë. “Poor Inara. I shall pray for her.”
“Can’t hurt,” Zoë said. Although if God’s listening and in a mood to dole out miracles, He’d better damn well hurry, she thought of adding, but didn’t.
“I shall pray for all of us, too. Often it’s harder to be the friend of someone dying than the actual person who’s dying. You have to carry the weight of knowing you’re not going to see them again after they’re gone.”
“But you also have the consolation of knowing they’ll be looking down on you from heaven, of course. Don’t you?”
“That’s the general idea. Not without reason, however, is death known as ‘the great mystery.’”
“Sounds almost like doubting, Shepherd.”
Book sighed. “Questioning one’s beliefs, Zoë, isn’t the same as undermining them. It’s more like putting them to the test, to see how they hold up. More than ever that’s the case when somebody one has grown to love and admire is in the last stages of life—and long before their time, what’s more. Inara has cancer, did you say?”
“Yeah. The nasty kind.”
“I’m not so sure there’s a good kind of cancer.”
“You know what I mean. Kiehl’s myeloma, it’s called. I looked it up on the Cortex. It’s completely incurable.”
“Hmmm.” A faraway look came over Book’s wise, distinguished features.
“What’s that face for?” Zoë said.
“Completely incurable, you say?”
“According to all the sources I’ve found. According to Simon, too. He says Kiehl’s is, and I quote, ‘one of the most insidious and aggressive cancers around.’ You can treat it but you can’t beat it.”
“That may not necessarily be the case,” said Book carefully.
Zoë felt something stir in her heart, as delicate and tremulous as a butterfly. “Shepherd, please, please do not go claiming this thing is fixable if it isn’t. That wouldn’t be fair.”
“Zoë, I am loath to give you false hope. However…”
“However…?”
Book paused, then said, “There is someone. A doctor. An oncologist. I recall reading about him not so long ago. He’s considered something of a maverick in his field. He has conducted research into the more virulent forms of cancer, and supposedly he has had some success. It’s even been asserted that he has developed a universal therapy for the cancers which have so far defeated medical science.”
“Kiehl’s myeloma included?”
“That I don’t know, but if ‘universal therapy’ lives up to its billing, then one would assume so.”
“Who is he, this doctor?”
“His name is… Oh, what is it again?” Book frowned, clearly racking his brains. “Age. My memory isn’t what it was. Esau Weng! That’s it. Dr. Esau Weng.”
“And where can we find this Dr. Esau Weng?”
“That’s the trouble. Dr. Weng hasn’t been seen in a while. There are rumors about him. It’s said he’s been carrying out trials of his cure illegally, contravening Alliance Medical Association rules. In fact, I heard he’d been jailed for it.”
“Jailed?”
“I don’t know the details. I believe there are strict protocols about when you can and can’t test a vaccine, antidote or suchlike on living humans. It sounds like Dr. Weng flouted them and has paid the penalty.”
“How long a sentence would he be serving for that?”
“Hard to say. I guess it’d depend on whether the people involved were willing to be experimented on or not. If they were willing, and all he did was commit a breach of medical etiquette, then not that long.”
“So he may even be out by now,” said Zoë.
“Who knows?” said Book. “It’s also perfectly possible that Dr. Weng is just some charlatan who has no idea what he’s doing and he posed a serious risk to the health of his test subjects.”
“But you reckon he’s worth checking out?”
“I reckon you can do worse than to inquire into him, at least.”
Zoë smiled. The butterfly in her heart, though still a tiny, fragile creature, was dancing around. Book hadn’t brought her a miracle, but he’d provided something that was close.
“Shepherd, thank you. Sincerely.”
“You’re welcome, Zoë. Give my fondest regards to your husband and the rest of the crew, and let me know how it goes with Weng. And when you’re next in the Blue Sun sys
tem, if you’re ever close to Haven…”
“We’ll be sure to drop by.”
“I would like that—provided, of course, that it’s a social call and not some dire emergency.”
“Dire emergency? Us?”
They both chuckled, and Zoë cut the connection.
Straight away she got on the Cortex to look up Dr. Esau Weng. The information she initially uncovered served to confirm the facts about him that Book had already supplied. Oncologist. Researching seemingly incurable cancers at a private laboratory, funded by grants from various charitable institutions. Regarded by the medical establishment as a fringe practitioner, his methods unorthodox, borderline irresponsible.
Then, yes, a prosecution and a jail term.
Life sentence, without parole.
Reading this, Zoë’s eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. If they could have gone any higher, they would have when she found out where Weng was doing time.
7
“Say that again,” said Mal.
Zoë had intercepted him just as he reached Serenity, in order to tell him about her conversation with Shepherd Book and the data she had gleaned on Dr. Weng from the Cortex.
“Atata,” she said.
“Atata, as in the prison planet Atata?”
“Is there another one?”
“No, I just… Atata?”
“You can keep asking me, won’t change the answer,” said Zoë. “All the sources say that’s where Weng is. Atata.”
“Dà xiàng bào zhà shì de lā dù zi,” breathed Mal. “Ice world hellhole like that ain’t hardly the sort of place you’d expect a doctor to fetch up. Hardened criminals, yeah, but not a nerdy lab-coat type. Not unless he’s some kinda sick, depraved monster. Is that it? Was he, I don’t know, carvin’ up babies or something?”
“No mention anywhere of anything heinous like that. Only the charge of unlawful experimentation.”
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