Firefly--Life Signs

by James Lovegrove

  “Okay, then I am,” Zoë said. “How long do you reckon it’ll be before I know?”

  “Whether he wants you as a Regulator? Hard to say. A day, maybe a couple of days.”

  It would have to do. The sooner Zoë joined the Regulators, the sooner she could start probing them about Dr. Weng. Already she was beginning to think that Dr. Weng and Mr. O’Bannon must have had some close interaction. This was based on the latter’s references to “a reliable source” and “expert opinion” with regard to his cancer. Who better fit that description than an oncologist?

  Zoë’s eye fell on the jars of homebrewed liquor once more. This gave her an idea.

  She nudged Annie’s arm.

  “I’m pretty parched after all that jawing,” she said. “You don’t suppose…”

  Annie followed the direction of her gaze. “Want to try the local firewater, huh?”

  “It allowed?”

  “Only as long as I join you. It’s not for non-Regulators. No alcohol for anyone but us folks with the stars ’n’ Rs on our chests, in case it makes people get rowdy.”

  “Want to? Drink, I mean, not get rowdy.”

  Ornery Annie considered it a moment, then said, “Yeah. I could do with a drink. And you seem like good drinking company.”

  She snatched up a jar of the rust-colored liquor. “My cell’s that one. Come on in. Let’s you and me get ourselves a little pie-eyed, shall we?”

  33

  The liquor managed to taste both sweet and sour at the same time.

  “What the hell is this made of?” Zoë asked, choking on her first sip. “Cough syrup laced with battery acid?”

  “Not far off,” said Ornery Annie. “Hard candy and sauerkraut are the main ingredients. We use breadcrumbs for the yeast. Wrap the mixture in a sock and leave it to ferment, then squeeze it out to strain it, and wah-lah! Chateau Prison Hooch.”

  “Delicious.” Zoë took another sip, then handed the jar back to Annie. Her throat burned and her eyes were watering.

  “Ah, you get used to it,” the other woman said, knocking back a huge swig.

  As the level of liquid in the jar went down, the two of them fell to reminiscing about the war. About fighting for, and failing to win, independence from the Alliance. They swapped tales of hardship and heroism. Camaraderie in the trenches. The brothers- and sisters-in-arms they had known; the ones who’d made it and the ones who hadn’t.

  Then Annie brought up the subject of her two kids. Stevie and Billie were their names. They would be nine and eleven years old by now. She missed them like mad. Didn’t miss her ex-wife anywhere near as much. Bitch had taken the rugrats with her when she left. Refused Annie visiting rights. Called her an unfit parent and had a restraining order put on her. Annie had broken the restraining order countless times, trying just to get a glimpse of her little ones. She was the one who’d carried them inside her, after all. She had a right to be with them, care for them, raise them. Just because she liked to party a bit, just because she had a wild streak, didn’t mean she wasn’t a good role model. Well, okay, maybe it did a bit. But she loved them still.

  She’d never meant to hit Georgia, her ex. Never meant to beat her black and blue. Never meant for her to end up on a ventilator, barely alive. She’d just got so frustrated, is all. And now she wasn’t ever going to see the children again, not until they were fully grown. Like, in their thirties. They would barely remember her. What would she be to them by then, after all? Practically a stranger, and also the person who’d damaged their other mother so badly she couldn’t walk without a cane.

  “It’s all so unfair,” Annie lamented. “So ruttin’ unfair.” By this stage the jar was half empty, and most of the booze was inside her. Zoë, by contrast, had kept her intake to a minimum, confining herself to small sips while still making it look as though she was not holding back. She wasn’t sober by any stretch of the imagination. Her head felt lightly tethered to her body, bobbing around like a kite on a string, and there was a mistiness at the edges of her vision. But she was nowhere near as far gone as her companion.

  “You got a partner, Zoë?” Annie asked.

  “Yes. A husband.”

  “Miss him?”

  “Every time we’re apart, it’s like I’ve lost a part of myself.” Zoë wasn’t pretending. This came from the heart. Being separated from Wash for even just a day or two always left her feeling disoriented and off-kilter. She would think about him constantly and fret because she wasn’t there to protect him. “Him and me, together, we can handle anything.”

  “What’s he gonna do, knowing he ain’t gonna see you again for decades?”

  Now Zoë had to pretend once more. She had to imagine, theoretically, how Wash would cope if she was sent to jail for most of the rest of her natural life. She was pretty sure she knew the answer.

  “He’ll have fallen to pieces. Thrown himself into his work just so’s he doesn’t have to think about it. He’s a pilot, and he loves flying almost as much as he loves me. He’ll just shoot around the Black, from one world to the next, racking up the space miles, and everywhere he goes he’ll see something, something that reminds him of me, and he’ll need to move on.”

  “You don’t worry he’ll find hisself another lady?”

  “After this?” Zoë said, sounding mock-offended. She ran a hand up and down herself like a sales rep showing off the goods. “Who could compare?”

  “You make a good point,” said Annie. “I feel I should apologize for Mr. O’Bannon, by the way. That remark he made about you being easy on the eye. Not that you aren’t. I mean, you’re gorgeous. But it wasn’t appropriate.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve had worse.”

  “It’s just the way he is. He may be sick as all get-out, but he’s still got an eye for a pretty face. You should have seen him in his prime, Zoë. Not much more’n half a year ago, he was handsome and strong. Everyone admired him. He’d walk around the place, and you’d see people just gravitate towards him. He had whatchemacall—charisma. Had it by the bucket-load. He swaggered. Us Regulators, we were there beside him all the time, just in case. Kinda like bodyguards. But we weren’t really necessary. More a show of strength than anything. If there was a dispute between inmates, Mr. O’Bannon would arbitrate, and we’d make sure his decision was abided by. He still does this, as and when, and so do we. Folks come visit him in his cell to petition him. He hears them out, makes a judgment, and we see that they stick by it. Wisdom of Solomon, he has. But it’s gettin’ harder and harder for him, the more he sickens. He can’t concentrate for nearly as long. He sleeps a lot. It’s a regular tragedy, watching him fade away, day by day.”

  Zoë thought of Inara and nodded with genuine sympathy. “I know how you feel. I have a friend who’s in much the same state. Cancer, too. Haven’t seen her in awhile, but just knowing how she’s suffering, how she’s slowly sinking…”

  Zoë was not one for crying, but she was close to it now. Fighting back the tears, she held out a hand for the liquor jar.

  “I just wish there was something could be done for her,” she said as she tipped a little more of the firewater down her throat. Maybe she was pretty drunk, because the taste of the stuff didn’t seem nearly so bad anymore. “She’s got all these specialists, they’ve been treating her, but none of ’em’s been able to help. Doctors, huh? All that training, all that money they charge you, and at the end of it, when you really need them, you just get a shrug and a ‘sorry.’”

  “Yeah. Doctors,” said Annie morosely.

  “You had a bad experience with one? Sounds like it.”

  “Not me personally, but…”

  Zoë handed back the jar, and Annie took a long pull, wiping her mouth on her shirtcuff. The Regulator had begun slurring her words and swaying a little, and her eyes were glassy and pink.

  “Look,” Annie said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this…”

  ***

  Half an hour later, Zoë traipsed through Correctional Unit #23, tryi
ng to locate the cells she was sharing with Mal, Simon and Jayne. It wasn’t easy. The building was confusing: rows of cells, more rows of cells. She must have crossed the central hall a dozen times. The main lights had been switched off, too, to be replaced by dim red nightlights, and the inmates were settling down to sleep. Everything was crimson and empty and echoing.

  It mightn’t have been so bad if she’d been completely sober. She was just glad she hadn’t swallowed as much Chateau Prison Hooch as Ornery Annie had. By the time Zoë left her, the Regulator had passed out, and she would doubtless be nursing a monster hangover when she woke up.

  Eventually, more by luck than judgment, Zoë found her way to where she was going. Simon and Jayne were together in one of the two adjacent cells, sitting on the floor while Mal lay unconscious in the lower bunk.

  “Hey, Zoë,” said Jayne. “Been having fun with your new gal pal?”

  “Not in the way you’re thinking,” Zoë said.

  “How do you know how I was thinking?”

  “Because I know you, Jayne, and I know how your sordid little mind works.”

  “Don’t bother me none if that’s what you’re into. ’Sides, look at the Doc here. He’s been busy hooking up. Why not you? When the cat’s away, and all that.”

  “Please stop talking.”

  Zoë turned her attention to Mal. His face seemed to have been replaced with a heap of overripe plums. She had done that to him. She felt remorse, which her state of mild inebriation did nothing to dull.

  “He gonna be okay?” she asked Simon.

  “I reckon so,” Simon said. “What with you and those two inmates, he took quite a beating.”

  “The man’s strong. He can handle it. Main thing is, I think it’s been worth it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, while I was ‘having fun with my new gal pal’”—Zoë fixed Jayne with a wry glance—“I was actually ferreting out information.”

  “And?” said Simon.

  “And I think I know where he is.”

  She didn’t say who “he” was. She didn’t have to. Both Simon and Jayne knew who she meant.

  34

  Just then, someone in a nearby cell called out, “Hey! The new guys! Keep it down in there, will you? Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  “Sorry,” Simon replied.

  “Whatever you’re talking about, it can wait till morning.”

  Zoë, Simon and Jayne continued their conversation with their voices lowered to just above a whisper.

  “So you know where Weng is?” said Jayne.

  “To be more accurate,” Zoë said, “I know where he isn’t.”

  “Which is?” Simon asked.

  “He isn’t in Hellfreeze. He’s gone. Lit out a few weeks back.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll get to that in a moment. Weng got sent to Atata about a year ago. Soon as he arrived in Correctional Unit #23 and they found out he was a doctor, Mr. O’Bannon took him under his wing. He knew how valuable Weng was: a doctor, to look after inmates who got sick. Precious as gold, and having a medical man in his pocket would further cement his authority. Is there some water, by the way? I could do with it.”

  Simon fetched a cup, filled it from the sink faucet, and handed it to her.

  Zoë drank the lot in a single gulp, followed by a second cupful. The first rule of boozing: rehydrate or suffer the consequences.

  “Weng went along with it,” she said. “Sounds like he’s no fool. He knew he was better off inside Mr. O’Bannon’s inner circle than outside it. People came to him with their ailments and he did what he could for them with the resources available. Bit like you and us on Serenity, Simon. Everything was fine and dandy, until the day Mr. O’Bannon himself got sick. Seriously sick.”

  “Who did you get all this from?” said Simon. “That Regulator, Annie?”

  “None other. That’s what the drinking was all about. She had way more than me, and it lowered her defenses.”

  “And Mr. O’Bannon’s sick?”

  “There’s the irony of it all. He has cancer.”

  “Huh,” said Jayne.

  “What sort?” Simon inquired.

  “Pancreatic.”

  Simon winced. “Well, that isn’t necessarily terminal. Not like Kiehl’s myeloma, say. Gene therapy can hold back metastasis and reverse tumor development.”

  “Nothing like that is available here on Atata,” Zoë said. “But still, once Dr. Weng diagnosed what was wrong with Mr. O’Bannon, Mr. O’Bannon got it into his head that Dr. Weng could cure him. He became fixated on it. Dr. Weng was going to be his savior.”

  “Not a chance. Unless, that is, Weng’s artificial immunomodulatory microorganisms could do the trick.”

  “The impression I get is that Weng never once mentioned his cancer-killing viruses. He was an oncologist, people knew that much, but not, it seems, that he was researching radical new treatments. He must’ve kept quiet about that.”

  “Even after Mr. O’Bannon got cancer?” said Jayne. “Ask me, that’d be just the right time to bring it up. ‘Hey, guy who runs the joint and makes sure I have a cushy ride. You know you’re dying? So happens I got just the thing.’”

  “Not much use if you don’t have the equipment you need,” Simon said. “If I understand it right, we’re talking about an incredibly complex and delicate process which requires the very latest med tech. It’d be the same as if Weng had said, ‘I’m going to give you a million credits, only first I have to get ahold of a printing press, paper, ink, and the engraving plates. Any idea where I can find all those?’ No, all he could do would be to provide palliative care for Mr. O’Bannon, and under the circumstances it’d be extremely limited.”

  “The point is,” Zoë said, “Mr. O’Bannon was desperate for Dr. Weng to fix his cancer, and Dr. Weng couldn’t. He told him he couldn’t, several times, but Mr. O’Bannon either wouldn’t listen or refused to accept it. I guess, when you’re staring death in the face, it’s hard to stay reasonable. He started threatening Weng. Told him if he carried on being so obstinate, he was going to have his Regulators torture him. It’d start with beating the hell out of him, and graduate from there to cutting and lopping.”

  “To which notion Weng did not take a liking,” said Jayne.

  “Weng did not, and so Weng did the sensible thing and hightailed it.”

  “I don’t blame him,” Simon said. “He was in an impossible predicament.”

  “Way Annie tells it, Weng was here one evening, and not here the following morning. He snuck out of Hellfreeze during the night and headed for the hills. Literally. There’s a mountain range to the north, maybe thirty, forty klicks. They’re called the Great White Mountains. Weng made off towards them.”

  “He just walked out? You can do that?”

  “CU #23 has locks on its external doors, but they only come into effect when the entire unit is put in lockdown remotely. Otherwise they’re not needed. You’ve seen for yourself what it’s like out there. That said, it has been known for people to leave. Annie told me there’s been a couple of instances lately when somebody’s disappeared, presumably to try their chances elsewhere. She’s not sure why they would, given that Hellfreezers have it better than most on Atata, thanks to Mr. O’Bannon. She thinks maybe it’s a suicide thing. They’ve had enough, they’re know they’re liable to die on this world anyway, so they just decide to bring the date forward. For most, though, the conditions out there are a good enough reason to stay put. That and the wildlife.”

  “Wildlife?” said Jayne. “You mean like that weird-ass opossum thing we saw this afternoon?”

  “Worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “You know how terraforming works, don’t you?” Simon said.

  “Sure I do,” said Jayne. “But,” he added brightly, “maybe you oughta explain it to me like I don’t.”

  “Every world is seeded with the full suite of life form potential. If the terraforming doesn’t go to plan, as
here, the result can be an ecosystem—vegetation and weather and such—that’s still viable, just not necessarily human-habitable. That includes all the relevant fauna, everything from insects to the higher-order mammals. They’ll all be congruent with the climate, so in Atata’s case that’ll be Arctic-adapted animals.”

  “And of course,” said Zoë, “there’ll be apex predators among them. Wolves and grizzlies and such, or maybe terrafreak versions of those.”

  “Ugh,” said Jayne. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “And Weng still decided he’d rather face those beasts, and all that snow, than Mr. O’Bannon.”

  “If the alternative was beatings and torture, wouldn’t you?”

  “But how do they know he was going towards these Great White Mountains?”

  “Because Mr. O’Bannon sent out a couple of his Regulators after him,” Zoë replied. “Weng had left a clear trail in the snow and they followed it. The Regulators would catch up to him and drag him back by the scruff of the neck, that was the general idea. He had a head start, but they had a Slugger. Trouble was, a snowstorm set in. Soon Weng’s tracks were covered over and the Regulators had to give up. They almost didn’t make it back to #23, the snowstorm was so bad. As it was, they came home empty-handed and Mr. O’Bannon wasn’t best pleased about that. You know that Regulator who’s missing an ear? The giant? He was one of them. He used to have the standard matching pair of ears. Punishment for failure.”

  “Nice,” said Simon.

  “The other Regulator had several of his fingers removed, but he ain’t around anymore because the wound got infected and he died of sepsis.”

  “Nicer.”

  “So this is why nobody’s allowed to talk about Dr. Weng now,” said Jayne. “Mr. O’Bannon won’t have him mentioned.”

  “According to Annie, it’s not some order Mr. O’Bannon has given; it’s a voluntary thing,” said Zoë. “The inmates are doing it as a mark of respect. Everyone has decided collectively to forget Dr. Weng ever existed, and they get angry if they’re ever reminded.”

  “They’re acting like it’s Weng who’s responsible for Mr. O’Bannon dyin’, not the cancer.”