Firefly--Life Signs

by James Lovegrove

  “What?” said the bear.

  “Who in tarnation are you?” said Jayne. He still had a hand clamped over his forearm, to try to stem the blood flow from the savaging he had received. “You’re no grizzly, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Of course I’m not a grizzly,” said the bear. “But as far as those wolves were concerned, I might as well have been. To them, I looked like a bear. More importantly, I smelled like a bear. Wolves are afraid of bears, you see, and the mere presence of one is enough to send them running. Most of them, at any rate. That big wolf, for instance, was made of sterner stuff. I’ll wager anything it was the dominant male, the pack leader.”

  “No, wait, just hold on a second,” said Zoë, with a touch of impatience. “I get that you’re not a real bear. You’re just some guy covered in a bearskin.”

  “Obviously.”

  “But who are you?”

  “I could ask the five of you the same question,” the bear retorted. “Escapees from Hellfreeze would be my guess. You aren’t any of Mr. O’Bannon’s Regulators that I recognize. I wouldn’t have intervened if you were. You apparently have decided to try surviving outside the confines of Correctional Unit #23, and if that’s case, then I applaud your choice, but I counsel caution. It’s far from easy, living off the land—especially land as inhospitable and ungiving as this. I don’t recommend it.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  “And you still haven’t thanked me for helping you out of the jam you were in just now.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Meadowlark brightly.

  “You’re welcome, young lady,” said the bear, with a nod of its shaggy head.

  “You can’t be some native mountain man,” Simon said. “Atata doesn’t have any of those.”

  “How very astute of you.”

  “But what does that leave?”

  Mal piped up. “Come on, people,” he said. A slow, incredulous smile was spreading across his face. “Ain’t you worked it out yet?”

  “Huh?” said Jayne. “Worked out what?”

  “There’s only one person this can be.”

  “My God…” Zoë breathed, cottoning on.

  Jayne still looked nonplussed.

  “Think about it,” Mal said. “He knows about the Regulators. Means there’s every chance he’s from Hellfreeze himself. And that means…”

  “It can’t be,” said Simon.

  “It’s gotta be,” said Mal. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Dr. Esau Weng.”

  51

  The man drew back the scalp of the grizzly which shrouded his own head like a cowl.

  Beneath were the features familiar to Mal from the picture of the oncologist that he had found on the Cortex. His hair was longer and even wilder now, and a thick, unkempt growth of beard covered his cheeks and chin. He looked a lot thinner, too. But here were the same deep-set eyes, the same intelligent but somewhat unworldly expression.

  This was unquestionably him. Dr. Esau Weng, in the flesh.

  “You have me at a disadvantage,” Weng said. “You know me, but I have no idea who you are.”

  “We,” said Mal, “are the folks who’ve risked their necks to find you.”

  “You were looking for me?” Dr. Weng adopted a defensive posture, as if getting ready to run. “So Mr. O’Bannon sent you. You are Regulators after all. Oh, Lord!”

  “No,” said Mal quickly. He held his hands out in a pacifying gesture. “I mean, yes, we’ve been looking for you, but no, we ain’t Regulators. No stars with an ‘R’ on them under these thermal togs. Honest, we’re friendlies, and we’ve come to take you off Atata.”

  Weng did a double-take. “Say that again?”

  “Please believe me. We’ve traveled a long way and gone through a hell of a lot to get here. I’m having a hard time acceptin’ that we’ve actually succeeded. I hoped we would. I prayed we would. It’s just… Anyways, here you are. Holy crap! I am so pleased to see you, Doc, that I could just about kiss you.”

  “Take me off Atata?” said Weng. “Do you mean it?”

  “Never meant anything so sincerely in all my born days.”

  A tentative smile appeared on Weng’s face. Then a thought seemed to occur to him. He looked at Mal askance. “How do I know this isn’t a trick? How do I know you’re not lying and you’re just going to lull me into a false sense of security, then grab me and drag me back to Hellfreeze?”

  “Because I have a transceiver in my pants which I can use to call in my ship. No, wait, I don’t.”

  “Yeah, you smashed it all to pieces, Mal, remember?” said Jayne. “Not one of your smarter moves.”

  “Okay, then you’ll just have to trust me,” said Mal to Weng. “We do have a ship somewhere up there, and I can’t signal to her right this moment, but her crew will come looking for us sooner or later, I guarantee it. I’m not a convict. We none of us are. Well, she is.” He pointed at Meadowlark. “Only, she isn’t really. More like a victim of the Alliance, same as you.”

  “You… have landed on Atata… with the express intent of liberating me?” Weng spoke slowly, as though he was still having difficulty taking all of this on board.

  “Sure have.”

  “And you’re definitely not inmates of Hellfreeze?”

  “Do we look it?”

  “Somewhat.” Weng gestured at Jayne with one bearpaw-swathed hand. “Him definitely.”

  “Hey, why’s everyone keep going on like that about me?” said Jayne. “First it’s Meadowlark tellin’ me I could be a murderer. Now you. Is it the goatee? Can’t be the face. My momma always said I’ve got a nice face.”

  “But why?” said Weng. “That’s what’s puzzling me. Why have you—a bunch of complete strangers—come for me? Who am I to you?”

  “You, Doc,” said Mal, “are the best chance we have of saving the woman I… the woman I need to save.”

  “I see.”

  “You and your targeted artificial immuno… whatsits.”

  “Immunomodulatory microorganisms,” said Simon.

  “Her name is Inara Serra and she’s dying,” Mal said. “Cancer. But you are going to fix her. And now, while I’m enjoyin’ this moment of triumph and vindication, I am going to pause, turn to my shipmates and give them a look, like this.”

  Mal aimed a big, gloating grin at Zoë, Jayne and Simon.

  “And I am going to dance a jig, like this.”

  He shuffled up and down on the spot for several moments.

  “And I am going to tell them ‘I told you so,’ like this. I told you so.”

  Zoë rolled her eyes. “Sir, you are never more insufferable than when you’re being smug.”

  “Don’t care. We got to Dr. Weng. Inara’s gonna be okay. You can say what you like, but in spite of everything, against all the odds, we have pulled it off. We have chalked up a big, fat win!”

  “Reluctant as I am to rain on your parade…” Weng began, but before he could finish the remark, Jayne let out a soft moan and sank to his knees. Next instant, he keeled over sideways into the snow.

  “Jayne?” said Zoë, crouching beside him. She patted his face. “Jayne?” She shook her head. “Out cold.”

  “Shock. Blood loss,” said Simon.

  “Anything you can do?”

  Simon knelt beside Jayne and grabbed a couple of handfuls of snow, which he used to scrub the wound as best he could. He packed more snow over the wound—the cold would help inhibit the blood flow—then unfurled the muffler from his face and bound it tightly around the arm as a makeshift bandage and compress.

  “That should hold him for now,” he said when he was finished, “but we need to get him patched up properly. I don’t have any medical supplies on me.”

  “I may have a few useful items in my cave,” said Weng. “It isn’t far from here.”

  “You have a cave?” said Mal.

  “I’m a bear,” Weng said, indicating the pelt he was wearing. “Naturally I have a cave.”

 
; 52

  They offloaded the food cans from the travois quickly and strapped in Jayne in their place. Those wolves might return for a second try at any moment. Mal and Zoë dragged him, with Dr. Weng leading the way. Simon tramped along behind them, and Meadowlark a little behind him, each of them carrying a few food cans. Simon kept directing looks over his shoulder at her, as though trying to gauge her mood. Meadowlark steadfastly refused to meet his gaze.

  It was a journey of about two miles to the cave, mostly uphill. As Weng guided them through the forest, he pointed out various animal traps he had set. Here, a snare fashioned from braided ivy stems, the loop dangling a few inches off the ground; there, a deadfall trap made out of a log balanced at an angle atop a twig that served as a trigger.

  “Rabbits and squirrels is what I catch, mostly,” he said. “One time, I got a marmot. Another time, this terrafreak thing that was maybe a marten or a weasel—some sort of mustelid, anyway. It wasn’t pretty to look at but it was surprisingly tasty.”

  The forest thinned, petering out altogether as the group reached a long, low crag. They walked parallel to the crag for several hundred yards, until they arrived at the cave. Its entrance was a horizontal slit approximately three feet high. They crawled through this aperture on hands and knees, and almost immediately were able to straighten up and stand. Mal and Zoë leaned back out and hauled in the travois, with Jayne still on it.

  The cave interior was roughly dome-shaped, with a fissure crossing the ceiling and a couple of small alcove-like depressions inset into its granite walls. The remnants of a wood fire smoldered in the center of the floor, giving off a faint orange glow and a strong resinous odor. A skein of smoke filtered up from the embers into the fissure, which evidently extended all the way to the surface above, forming a natural chimney. The narrowness of the entrance kept the worst of the cold out. A dense nest of pine fronds banked up against one wall clearly served as a bed. The place was homely. You might even call it cozy.

  Weng shrugged his way out of the bear pelt and stuffed it in one of the alcoves.

  “Phew,” he said. “That thing has saved my life on more than one occasion, but good God, does it smell something awful. I can put up with it but only because it serves a purpose. While I have it on, wolves are apt to leave me alone, and so are other bears. It used to belong to the former occupant of this cave.”

  “You kill the grizzly yourself?” Mal asked.

  “Me? Oh dear heavens, no. I’d never have been able to. No, what happened was that I stumbled across the cave on… I think it was my third night after leaving Hellfreeze. Blizzard conditions, and I was half frozen, in the early stages of hypothermia, and I knew if I didn’t find shelter I would die. It didn’t even occur to me there might be a bear in here. You can imagine how terrified I was when I spotted the animal at the far end, curled up asleep—or so I thought. Turned out, on closer inspection, it was stone cold dead. It had probably died while hibernating, of natural causes. Of course, I was obliged to skin it and dismember it before it began to rot. Once the pelt had dried out, I put it on for warmth. It wasn’t until later that I discovered its wolf-repelling qualities, a happy by-product. I came across a lone wolf while I was out laying traps, and it took one look at me and ran. That was how I knew.”

  He waved a hand self-effacingly.

  “But listen to me, rambling on. You can tell I haven’t had company for quite some while. Let’s take a look at this fellow’s arm. You.” Weng was addressing Simon. “You’re clearly some kind of physician, judging by the way you dealt with the wound out there. More to the point, you were comfortable using the phrase immunomodulatory microorganisms.”

  “Yes, I am a doctor. Simon’s the name.” Judiciously, Simon didn’t add his surname. Weng might have heard of Dr. Tam, fugitive from the Alliance, and even though Weng was surely no fan of the Feds, Simon didn’t want to give the man any reason to mistrust him. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “What’s your specialty?”

  “I am… I was a trauma surgeon.”

  “‘Was’? What happened?”

  “Long story. My life has taken some interesting turns since.”

  “So it would seem,” Weng remarked. “Anyway, your friend here… Jayne? Is that his name? Perhaps I can help you with him.”

  Weng and Simon knelt down either side of Jayne. Simon carefully peeled back the muffler from his forearm and wiped away the blood-pinkened remnants of snow, to reveal a gory mess. Glimpses of exposed bone gleaming in the daylight that seeped in through the cave entrance, through mangled muscle and shredded skin.

  Together the two medics examined the injuries, dispassionately discussing them. Meadowlark looked on over Simon’s shoulder with a hand to her mouth, seeming both appalled and fascinated by the blood and the ripped flesh. Meanwhile, Mal and Zoë fetched faggots of wood from a stack in a corner and got the fire going again, bringing renewed warmth to the cave.

  “The hand itself is intact,” Weng said, “but there’s significant damage to the extensor tendons. He may never regain the use of it.”

  “That’s the hand he does his favorite thing with,” Simon said.

  Weng raised an eyebrow.

  “Pull a trigger,” Simon explained.

  “Ah. Well, absent proper surgical intervention, it’ll be as good as paralyzed, or at best be left with severely impaired function. With regard to the tissue laceration, that’s extensive too. No bone fracture, though, which is a blessing. I have a basic first-aid kit, containing surgical needle and thread among other things. It comes courtesy of Mr. O’Bannon. One of the few items I took with me when I left Hellfreeze. However, I reckon any attempt to suture this wound would be a mistake. Don’t you agree?”

  Simon nodded. “I do. The light in here is poor, and we could cause permanent damage if we don’t do the job exactly right. Not to mention there’s the likelihood of introducing infection.”

  “I don’t see, then, that there’s any choice but to bind the wound up again, as you did before,” said Weng. “After that, we should get this man to a proper medical facility at the earliest possible opportunity. He needs operating on, under full sterile conditions, if we’re to save the arm, and indeed possibly his life. I don’t suppose your ship has an infirmary?”

  “It does. Not a great one, but good enough.”

  “And how soon do you think it’ll be coming to collect us?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Soon would be good, as far as Jayne is concerned.”

  “Huh? Whazzat?” Jayne stirred, coming round from unconsciousness. “Soon would be good for what?”

  “Your arm, Jayne,” said Simon. “We can’t do anything for it at the moment but keep it bound up. It needs operating on, though.”

  Jayne looked at his wound and winced. “Okay. Just do what you haveta.”

  Weng fetched the first-aid kit and passed Simon a tube of antiseptic gel and a roll of conforming bandage. “I have a feeling it would be better if you were to treat him, rather than me. You are friends, after all.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” said Jayne.

  “But you’re less likely to lash out at him in response to pain than at a stranger, Jayne, surely.”

  “You simply ain’t got the measure of our relationship, Dr. Weng.”

  “Well, even so…”

  “It’s okay,” said Simon to Weng. “I’ll manage. I’m used to him. I warn you, though, Jayne, it isn’t going to be pleasant.”

  “Ah, just get on with it, willya?”

  The big mercenary grimaced and hissed as Simon smeared antiseptic gel over the grisly wound. He called Simon’s professional qualifications into question, and also his parentage and his sexual prowess. There was at least no lashing out, though.

  When Simon had finished applying the bandage, Jayne surveyed his handiwork. “Not bad. And now,” he added, “if nobody minds, I think I’m gonna lay here and just… you know…”

  He drifted off into unconsciousness again.

>   By this time, Mal had unlidded a couple of the food cans, using the opener borrowed from Simon, and was heating them on the fire. One contained baked beans, the other hotdogs. The combined smells filled the cave and set some very hungry stomachs rumbling.

  They ate using their fingers and passing the cans around. They were all grateful for the sustenance but Weng, in particular, was rhapsodic.

  “Fresh meat has been hard to come by these past few days,” he said. “The local wildlife seems to have become wise to my traps. I’ve been subsisting on my supplies of jerky and the occasional edible root. This is a treat. A banquet!”

  After the meal, Mal formally introduced himself to Weng, and Zoë and Meadowlark did likewise. Weng told them it was a pleasure to make their acquaintance and expressed how grateful he was that they would be taking him off-planet. Mal, in return, thanked him for coming to their aid in the woods.

  “Don’t mention it,” said Weng. “I saw some people in trouble. The instinct to help out our fellow humans is strong in all of us— strong enough to override any natural caution I might have felt.”

  “Still, you needn’t have, Doc, and you did. We owe you.”

  “You’re getting me out of a very bleak situation. I’d say the debt is going to be amply repaid.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Dr. Weng,” said Zoë, “but you seem to have held up pretty well out here on your own. I wouldn’t have pegged somebody like you as the wilderness type.”

  “Somebody like me, Miss Alleyne? You mean a soft-handed lab jockey who’s never done anything more strenuous than polish a test tube?” Weng chuckled. “You might be right. It’s remarkable, though, what one can accomplish when one has to. I’ve endured the cold and the deprivation this long simply because the only alternative is dying and I have no wish to do that. Admittedly it’s been hard. Thanks to my poor diet, my digestion is in ruins and two of my back teeth are loose and in danger of falling out. There have been days when I’ve gotten so sick I could hardly move. There have been a fair few emotional lows, as well. A fair few dark nights of the soul. More than once, I’ve thought about ending it all. I even considered making my way back to Hellfreeze and throwing myself on Mr. O’Bannon’s mercy—that’s how desperate it got.”