“What stopped you?”
“The knowledge that Mr. O’Bannon doesn’t have any mercy. If I went back, he and I would find ourselves exactly where we were before, at a complete impasse, with the threat of torture and death hanging over me. You’re aware of the circumstances of my departure, I take it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then you know that Mr. O’Bannon is dying and I cannot heal him.”
“Maybe you could have pretended to try.”
“Hoodwinked him, you mean? Led him on until the final moment? That did occur to me, but it would have been an incredibly difficult trick to pull off. I’d already told him several times that his cancer was incurable, at least with the very limited facilities at my disposal. Do you think he’d believe me if I showed up again, promising I could treat him after all? It would never have worked. He’d have seen through it in an instant. And while we’re on the subject of cancer …”
Weng turned to Mal.
“This friend of yours. One can only infer that she has contracted one of the more virulent forms of the disease. Why else would you have gone to such lengths to seek me out?”
“It’s Kiehl’s myeloma,” Mal said.
“Oh my. That is serious indeed. The poor thing.”
“But you’ve got the knowhow to save her, right? Your tech’ll do the trick, yeah?”
Weng looked down at his hands. “Well now…”
“Come on, Doc,” Mal cajoled. “This ain’t the time for modesty. You can cook up a batch of your little viruses and Inara’ll be right as rain in no time. Yeah?”
Sheepishly Weng said, “This runs counter to my own interests, but I feel I must be honest. I can’t promise to be able to cure her. In fact, I’d say the chances of success are close to zero.”
53
Mal was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Nah. I don’t believe you.”
“Whether you believe me or not, Mr. Reynolds,” said Weng, “it’s the truth. I could claim otherwise. Perhaps I ought to. You’re my ticket out of here, after all, and why would I jeopardize that? But the fact is, my artificial immunomodulatory microorganisms haven’t proved to be the panacea that I thought they would. Let me explain.”
“I think you’d better,” said Mal tersely.
“The ambition of my research was to create a means of promoting cellular regrowth.”
“We know that.”
“Do you? Yes, you must do. The end product would, I hoped, be markedly improved treatments for a whole host of illnesses, not just cancers. The artificial immunomodulatory microorganisms—I call them ‘AIMs’ for short—could be programmed to attend to the specific ailment. A failing organ? They could rebuild it. A broken bone? They could act as both scaffold and cement, enabling it to heal at a far faster rate than nature normally allows. Infinitely variable remedial medicine that can be tailored to suit any need—that was the aim of AIMs.”
“But…?”
“I had some successes with laboratory tests on live specimens. I had some failures too. Fine-tuning the AIMs proved incredibly hard. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they didn’t. And sometimes they worked far too well, overloading the test subject’s innate growth and healing processes and causing egregious mutations and deformities. I would say that I was several years away from getting the process absolutely right. But that didn’t prevent the Alliance from taking an interest. One day, a man came calling at my lab on Greenleaf. A man wearing blue gloves.”
Simon stiffened. Mal and Zoë looked grave.
“Blue gloves?” Simon said. “A bit like surgical gloves?”
Weng registered their reactions. “I see you’ve met him.”
“I have,” Simon said, “or someone like him at any rate. Couple of them, in fact.”
“And from what Simon’s told us,” Zoë said, “these ain’t people to be messed with.”
“I had that impression too,” said Weng. “It was odd, because he never gave his name, this fellow, nor did he once take off those gloves. And he had this eerie politeness about him, and a voice that was flat, almost monotonous, as if normal human interaction didn’t come naturally to him. He told me he was a contractor for the Union of Allied Planets and that his superiors had taken an interest in me. He didn’t specify who his superiors actually were, but I could make an educated guess. Either someone high up in government or someone in the Blue Sun Corporation.”
“Like there’s much of a difference,” said Mal.
“Well, quite. Those two entities are so inextricably linked, they might as well be the same thing. The color of his gloves, though, minds me to think it was the latter. And he offered me funding. Funding like you would not believe. Up until then I had been scraping by on charitable grants, and now, all of a sudden, these large sums of money were being waved under my nose. Remarkably large sums. So large that I could buy all the state-of-the-art equipment I needed, hire assistants, and more.”
“What would a blue-gloved man want with an advanced medical treatment?” Simon mused. “What would be the benefit to him and his bosses?”
“I asked him the very same thing,” said Weng. “Obviously my thought was that Blue Sun wished to monetize my AIMs. The funding would, I assumed, have strings attached. Blue Sun would take out a lien on my patents, maybe even own them outright if I wasn’t careful. But I didn’t dedicate half my life to this research only to see the results become someone else’s property. My intention was always that AIMs should be free to all.”
“Idealistic of you,” said Mal. “You tellin’ us you wouldn’t want to make a single credit out of your virus things?”
Weng shrugged. “Perhaps a small consideration. A nominal fee per usage. Enough to keep me comfortable, but it was never about becoming wealthy. It was always about helping people. I assumed this nameless blue-gloved man would admit that his superiors, whoever they were, wished to buy me out and profit from my work, and I was all set to tell him where to stick his money. His actual reply was worse. He talked calmly about ‘applications’ for AIMs. I asked what sort, half knowing the answer already. ‘Military applications,’ he said.”
“I don’t see how AIMs would work in a military context,” said Zoë.
“I think I do,” said Simon. “Speed up wound recovery time. Get injured troops back out onto the battlefield far sooner.”
“More than that,” said Weng. “The AIMs could, in theory, be adapted to enhance the skeletomuscular system, reduce fatigue, boost stamina, thicken skin—making soldiers who are tougher, hardier, and much harder to kill.”
“Mr. Blue Gloves told you that?” said Mal.
“In so many words, yes. He was fairly frank about his superiors’ motives. He told me he was giving me a chance to do something incredible, to change the face of warfare for all time. From the way he spoke, it was as though this was some splendid opportunity that I’d be a fool to pass up. But it seems I am a fool, because I flatly refused. We all remember the war. Death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. A rift in civilization. Anything that furthered the goals of warmongers and that might even make a similar conflict more likely in future, I wanted nothing to do with. I was adamant that AIMs would not be used for that purpose, not if I had my druthers.”
“I bet your visitor wasn’t happy about that,” said Zoë.
“He was not. Oh, he tried to hide his frustration. He smiled at me—a lips-only smile, not a shred of warmth in it—and he suggested I think about his offer for a while, sit with it, mull it over. Maybe, in time, I’d come to see that what he was proposing would be for the benefit of the whole ’verse, but also, more to the point, my benefit.”
“A threat if ever I heard one.”
“Absolutely,” said Weng. “And so, as soon as that he left my lab, do you know what I did?”
“Set fire to it,” said Mal.
“You’re damn right I did. You know about that too?”
“I know the place burned down, and it’s said you were responsible.”
“It seemed like the best option. I destroyed it all—my notes, my files, my lab apparatus, my AIMs samples—so that there’d be nothing anyone else could get their hands on. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, believe you me. All those long years of work, gone up in smoke. But I realized that Blue Sun or the Alliance or whoever it was would never leave me alone otherwise. They’d keep hounding, harassing. This way, there was nothing left of the entire AIMs project. Not a trace except the basic concept in my head. There was no way I could recreate the viruses from memory alone. Not without access to a whole raft of data and materials that no longer existed.”
“Really?” said Simon.
“It’d be like trying to retrace the steps of a very long and complicated journey without a map. You’d never stop off at all the exact same spots you did the first time. You’d likely lose your way and maybe wind up at a different destination altogether. And that’s what I told the Feds when they bashed down my apartment door at three o’clock the next morning and arrested me. I said there’d be no point them trying to force me to give them AIMs, whether with bribery or beatings or whatever. They could stick me in a laboratory with everything I needed and I still wouldn’t be able to get back to where I was before. Too much development had gone on, too many happy accidents, all that convoluted evolution—it couldn’t be repeated. In hindsight, what I should have done is hightailed it to some far-flung Rim planet as soon as I set fire to the lab. Call me naïve, but I thought that if I stayed put and had a chance to argue my case, I’d be able to convince the authorities to drop the matter and then I could simply get on with my life.”
“Yeah, that was kinda naïve,” Zoë said.
Weng acknowledged this with a brisk chuckle. “Instead, they put me on trial. I was accused of violating medical ethics and essentially being some sort of mad scientist who was carrying out vivisection and other horrendous practices. It was abundantly clear what the Feds were up to. They thought I was bluffing and they were trying to intimidate me into capitulating. And when it became apparent that I wouldn’t capitulate—because I couldn’t—the trial became about teaching me a lesson instead. Verdict: guilty. Sentence: life, on Atata. And here I am.”
Mal sighed heavily. His shoulders slumped. “So that’s it, huh?” He sounded defeated, utterly despondent. “After all this, we’re no better off than we were before. We’ve risked so much, been through so much, and we may as well not have bothered.”
“I’m sorry,” said Weng. “Sincerely I am.”
“Ain’t your fault, Doc,” Mal said, but not without an edge of resentment in his voice.
“And we’ll still take you with us when our ship comes,” Simon chipped in, “if you were worried about that.” He looked at Mal, seeking confirmation.
Mal nodded, albeit grudgingly.
“It’s the least we can do,” Zoë said. “You got a raw deal from the Feds. We can even up that injustice if nothing else.”
“That’s good of you,” said Weng. “I appreciate it. And, in a spirit of full disclosure, I should tell you that, in truth, I was lying my ass off to the Alliance about AIMs.”
Mal canted his head to one side. “What’s that? What did you just say?”
“I didn’t destroy everything. I did keep one sample of the virus.”
“You did?”
“Don’t get excited. I already told you I was years away from getting the process absolutely right. But I do have a functioning AIMs prototype. It’s safely stored in a vessel that provides a perfect growth medium.”
“Well, where? Where is it? Can we get to it? Maybe we can use it.”
Weng pointed at himself. “It’s right here.”
54
“Before I burned down my lab,” Weng said, “I took the step of injecting myself with an inert specimen of AIMs. The latest iteration of the virus, and the most responsive and promising version I’d yet developed. It’s flowing through my bloodstream right now. It’s like a passenger inside me, and my body is keeping it alive. Within me the AIMs live, die, replicate, while having no effect whatever on my physiology.”
“I thought you didn’t want anyone else getting their hands on the stuff,” said Zoë.
“I wanted to make sure no one else could reproduce AIMs. Hence the lab fire. I couldn’t let go of my dream completely, however. I felt that at some later date, after all the fuss had died down, I might be able to start anew, and this way I’d at least have something to work with. All I’d need to do is draw some of my blood, isolate the AIMs within, and perhaps, with luck, I could pick up more or less where I left off.”
“So you were bluffing the Alliance,” said Simon.
“To some extent, yes,” Weng said with a twinkle in his eye. “Call it an insurance policy. Of course, I couldn’t have predicted where I would end up. Really, I was sure the trial would collapse and I, an innocent man, would be allowed to walk free. I might serve time for arson, perhaps, but nothing more serious. That naïveté of mine again.”
“And you didn’t think of using the AIMs inside you as a bargaining chip?” Zoë asked. “To get your sentence nullified? Blue Sun could have arranged that, if they’d known.”
“But then I’d have been back where I started, wouldn’t I? Forced to give the corporation what they wanted, what I didn’t want to give them. Besides, I was in a state of shock. My head was reeling as they whisked me out of court. Next thing I knew, I was on a transport ship and it was too late to do anything about anything.”
“Does this mean that we could extract some AIMs from you,” said Mal, “and maybe use them on Inara after all?” His expression was that of someone trying desperately not to get their hopes up.
Weng gave a noncommittal nod. “The version of AIMs inside me is generic. You could call it a template, a blank slate. There is just the remotest possibility that it can be programmed to counteract the effects of Kiehl’s. But, to reiterate what I said not so long ago, the chances of success are close to zero.”
“‘Close to zero’ ain’t the same as zero.”
“There’s no faulting your grasp of math, Mr. Reynolds. With access to a high-spec med computer, I could interface with the viruses and turn them into dedicated microscopic heat-seeking missiles that would eradicate the rogue blood plasma cells in your lady friend’s body and ensure that her bone marrow does not produce any more. I’m not saying with any certainty that it’d work.”
“But it might.”
“But it just might. Dr. Tam, does your ship’s infirmary have a med computer?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as advanced as you need, Dr. Weng. She’s a Firefly, and a pretty old one at that.”
“I thought as much. Few ships carry an above-basic level of healthcare technology aboard, especially not Fireflies.”
“However,” Simon went on, “where Inara’s being looked after right now, the equipment is top notch, as I understand it. Isn’t that right, Mal?”
“And whatever other pieces of newtech you could wish for, we have a rich friend who can easily get hold of them,” said Mal. “No matter what it costs.”
“Then,” said Weng, “that’s what we’ll do. But I must state once more for the record that the odds of—”
“Yeah, Doc, okay, we get it,” Mal said, waving a hand. “Between slim and nothing. Thing is, me and my crew have bucked those odds before, and we can do it again.”
“We have?” said Zoë. “Usually we just seem to get ourselves into trouble and get out of it again by the skin of our teeth.”
“Same thing, ain’t it?”
“I guess.”
“All we have to do, for now,” said Mal, “is sit tight and wait for Serenity to come looking for us.”
“And how are the people on your ship going to find us?” Weng asked. “Seeing as you don’t have your transceiver anymore…”
“A Firefly in low atmo makes one hell of a ruckus. We’re not too far from CU #23. When they come in for a flyby, we’ll hear ’em. Then we can signal ’
em.”
“How?”
“The old-fashioned way. Like castaways on a desert island. Set a distress fire. Plenty of smoke. They’ll spot it and come to investigate.”
“That would seem to be a fairly tenuous method of attracting their attention,” Weng opined.
“It’ll work,” Mal said. “It has to.”
“And they are coming? You know that for sure?”
“Oh yeah.” Mal set his jaw firmly. “You can count on it.”
“And we know who else is coming,” said Zoë. “Regulators.”
“My goodness!” exclaimed Weng, with a jump of fright. “You really ought to have mentioned that a bit sooner. You have Regulators on your heels?” He went to the cave entrance, bent down and peered anxiously out.
“We don’t know it for certain,” Mal said, shooting Zoë a look.
“But it’s likely,” she said. She told Weng how they had stolen a Slugger from Hellfreeze and left it in the woods after it broke down on them. “Chances are Mr. O’Bannon will be wanting it back—and wanting us dead too, I should imagine—and he’ll have made moves in that direction, siccing his pet bullies on us.”
“Our tracks are clear as day,” said Weng. “They lead right to my front door. How far behind you do you reckon the Regulators are?”
“Not sure. A few hours maybe.”
“Assuming they’re comin’ at all,” Mal said.
“Oh, if I know Mr. O’Bannon, they’re definitely coming,” Weng said. “The only question is how soon.”
55
The two Alliance corvettes were definitely coming. The only question was: “how soon?”
The long-range scanner screen on the control console showed River that the ships’ spiraling search pattern was bringing them ever closer to Serenity’s current position. If they continued on the same course, at the same rate, then by her estimate it would be little more than an hour before they came within visual scan range. The wreck of the freighter was just too obvious a hiding place for them not to check it out.
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