Elsewhere in the city of Neapolis, people were getting ready for the party. Not here. Here, in a narrow back street, underneath the bright bunting and the red-and-yellow hanging flowers, Ava Jones was running for her life.
Ava was fourteen years old and very frightened. She’d arrived in the city from the sticks less than two hours ago. This was not the exciting adventure she’d dreamed of, but a terrifying encounter with people who meant her harm. People who were chasing after her.
Big tenement blocks loomed up on either side. Dashing past, Ava had seen gateways leading into little courtyards. She’d rattled a few gates, but they were locked. No entry. Nowhere to hide. Breathless, she ran on, shoving past a group of people, laden with bags, on their way back from the market.
“Zao gao!” one shouted after her. “Watch where you’re going!”
Ava didn’t stop; she didn’t dare. Behind her the two men were gaining on her. She gulped and pushed on.
The alley led to a busy market square, full of noise and smells, and people weaving their way through. Ava heard their chatter, the squawk and grunts of livestock. Kids running round, wearing bright masks shaped to look like sharp-eyed birds and fierce beasts. The rich scent of street food cooking on open grills, infused with unfamiliar spices. Covered stalls hawking everything: food, drink, leather goods and chintzy jewelry, tiny plaster Buddhas in many colors, and intricately carved wooden crosses. All manner of folks (Neapolis had something of everything, after all); buyers and sellers (you could buy anything here, after all); happy people, sad people, people with purpose, people who were lost, people who were trying to make themselves lost. Surely there was somewhere to hide in the middle of all this confusion? Surely one frightened girl could lose herself here in all of this?
Dodging into the first line of stalls, between a man selling brightly colored shirts and a woman selling a potent poteen, Ava felt a glimmer of hope at last. She dived under the cover of a little stall selling knitted and woven goods. Turning her back, Ava began to rummage through the wares. Another customer arrived, and the stallholder became busy. Furtively, ashamed of what she’d come to, Ava selected a silver and purple shawl, rolled it up, and tucked it under her arm. She left her own old orange scarf by way of an apology.
Leaving the stall, she saw a tray of papier mâché masks, and she grabbed one that looked like an owl. Quick as she could, she melted into the crowd, wrapping the shawl around her head and slipping on the mask. She was small for her age and would look like one of the other kids. She came out at the far side of the square. There she was caught up, for a moment, by a wavering line of monks passing through the street—chanting, dancing, shaking bells. By the time she untangled herself, she had been pulled to the far side of the market square.
Ava found herself beside a group of six or seven people, standing in front of a shrine to Buddha. She inched forward to take a better look. She’d never seen anything like this before. Nobody from Ava’s town prayed to the little fat god. They were all good God-fearing Christians, with a preacher of their own who every week stood before them in the dark little wooden chapel and told them to work hard and not complain and that way the company would provide. Sisters, obey your brothers. Daughters, obey your fathers. Wives, obey your husbands. Ava used to see Aunty Eve’s eyes rolling at this point. This shrine was a little house—almost like the nativity stable—with a pointed roof that was painted red, much brighter than anything from home. Young lime trees stood on either side, each one garlanded with little flickering white lights. The shrine itself was festooned with offerings: melted candles, drooping yellow flowers that released a heavy perfume, vivid little flags and ribbons. The little fellow himself sat on a plinth to the left-hand side. He was plaster, covered in gold paint, although rather chipped and weatherworn. Ava thought she knew how he felt.
She attached herself to the group and moved closer. Behind her, right up close, she heard a man speaking. “Well, I’m damned if I find her in all this ruttin’ crush and I’m thinkin’ we ain’t gonna find her.”
“We’d better, else there’ll be hell to pay, dǒng ma?”
“Weren’t my fault she got away—”
“You were the one holdin’ her!”
“Gorram piece of niú fèn sunk her teeth in!”
Ava risked a look over her shoulder. They were here. The two men who, only half an hour ago, had grabbed her and tried to stick a needle in her arm. Ava, with more luck than perhaps she realized, had indeed bitten one, kicked the other, and made a run for it. She’d been running ever since. She turned back round quickly to face the shrine. Moving closer to the group, trying to make herself part of them, she accidentally knocked the elbow of the fellow next to her. She steeled herself for a blow, but instead he smiled, and offered her a burning taper.
“Do you want to light a candle?” he said.
“Can I?” she said.
“Sure.” He pressed the taper into her hand.
“Do I say a prayer?” she said.
“If you like.” He took a good look her. “Remember—everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Good and bad.”
Ava felt tears in her eyes. Well, she knew that already. A little awkwardly, she knelt down and reached forward to touch the taper against the wick of an unlit candle. The fire caught, and the little flame bounced up and into life. After a moment or two, Ava looked round. The men were gone. She could see no sign of them in the crowd.
“Be strong,” she whispered. “Be brave.” She clutched her stolen shawl tight and slipped away into the hinterland of the city.
* * *
Elsewhere, people were getting ready for the party. Serenity, moving purposely through the black, drew closer. In the hammock set up in the engine room, River Tam was sleeping at last, curled up like a child, her face turned to the lights sparkling on the wall. Her brother Simon—top three percent in his cohort across the Core worlds and gifted trauma surgeon (semi-retired)—began the slow process of extricating his hand from hers.
This was as delicate an operation as any Simon performed. Even the slightest movement might wake her. Sometimes he could settle her down again. Sometimes she woke screaming, and then… Well, that was not so much fun. That might mean another few hours holding her, talking to her, trying to reason with her… Simon Tam was a very tired man. In the couple of weeks since their sad visit to St. Albans, to take home the body of Private Tracey, River’s sleep had been badly disturbed. Simon had been sitting beside her for hours on end, trying to persuade her that everything was okay. You couldn’t always tell with River what the cause was, but this time, sifting through her angry, anxious words, Simon was sure that the idea of Tracey, sealed alive in his coffin, had triggered hazy recollections of River’s own cryogenic confinement. No wonder she loved the sight of the vast and endless black.
Finger by finger, his breath held, Simon detached his hand from River’s. She murmured a little, something incomprehensible (so much of what she said these days was incomprehensible), but she did not wake. When he was free, Simon stood looking at her for a little longer, heart thumping with a particularly fierce combination of love, pride, fear, grief, loyalty, and anger. He watched the quakes and tremors and twitches as whatever horrors River had seen passed through her. Slowly, these fears dissipated, and her breathing softened, and her whole body settled into peace. Silently, he blew her a kiss. She wasn’t going to wake, not for a while, and perhaps that meant that he could grab some rest now too. He left the engine room and found Kaylee hovering in the corridor outside.
“She sleepin’?”
“Mm,” said Simon, rubbing his face. Looking after River was like a never-ending night shift on an emergency ward during the party season. “Let’s hope it holds for a while.”
Kaylee smiled. She was so nice, Simon thought; so pretty… “Thank you for the loan of your hammock,” he said, hoping he sounded gallant.
Kaylee sparkled back at him, like the lights hanging up on the wall. She really was so pretty… “Fang xin,” she said. “You’re welcome.”
“River loves the sound of the engine.”
Her sweet smile faded ever so slightly. Frantically, Simon tried to work out what he’d done. Had he got it wrong again? He was grateful too, very grateful, beyond grateful, stratospherically grateful—should he have said that? He’d wanted to say something nice about her ship, because for some reason she loved this decrepit old deathtrap, but it looked like he’d gotten even that wrong…
Kaylee rallied. “Hey,” she said, taking his arm, pulling him away into the corridor, “sounds like we’re going to land on Bethel after all. You think you’ll come down this time?”
“Bethel?” Simon tried to place the name. His memory used to be so good. “I… Do I know where that is? Why we’re going there?”
“Inara has an appointment over the big weekend. And there’s a new job. Came up on the Cortex as we entered local space.”
“Oh good,” said Simon, without enthusiasm. Usually, the jobs ended with him taking bullets out of people. “More exciting criminal fun times rounded off with two hours of emergency surgery. I can’t wait.”
“It’s a nice world,” insisted Kaylee. “It’s fancy.”
Simon, who had spent almost all of his life so far on one of the richest worlds in the Alliance, sincerely doubted that. He had a strong suspicion that Bethel was going to be yet another mud-splattered, cow-infested dung heap, but he knew better now than to voice such misgivings out loud. Kaylee got hurt when he said things like that, and Simon didn’t want to hurt Kaylee.
“Well, maybe not nice,” Kaylee amended, “but fun, you know? We should go and have some fun! You know how to have fun, don’t you, Simon?”
Should he say yes? Should he go? He didn’t want to be rude to her, not again, but all he wanted right now was some sleep… “I… I… Well, River…”
“River. Sure,” she said, too brightly. “Of course. Yep.” She headed off down the corridor to the dining room. Wearily, acutely aware that once again he’d disappointed, Simon followed. Shepherd Book was there already, and—tā mā de—so was Jayne, and Mal, all at one end of the table. Simon made himself a cup of chamomile tea and went to take the seat next to the Shepherd. “Stinkin’ flowers,” Jayne muttered, as he went past with his cup, and then he seemed to recall that Simon could paralyze him and River could do whatever it was that River could now do. “Takes all sorts, I ’spose.”
Simon, drinking his tea, listened half-heartedly to their conversation.
“In the Bible,” said the Shepherd, looking dead straight at the captain, but with a twinkle in his eye, “Bethel is the place where Jacob had a vision of a ladder reaching up to heaven, with angels ascending and descending.”
“Well, I ain’t intendin’ to have no visions, Shepherd,” Mal replied, apparently unwilling to rise to the Shepherd’s bait, “heaven-sent or otherwise, neither today nor tomorrow. We’re here to do a job of work, nothing more—”
“The meaning of the name ‘Bethel’,” Shepherd Book went on, sonorously, “is the House of God—”
It was easy to be snide about chamomile tea, but it was soothing, good for relaxation, and it also helped you sleep. If Jayne Cobb cared, which Simon doubted…
“And there was I thinkin’ Bethel was the party planet,” said Kaylee, taking the seat across from Simon.
“Whores,” agreed Jayne. Yes, that would be his idea of a party. “Hundreds of ’em. That’s what I heard.” He nudged the Shepherd, hard. “That what you mean by angels?”
“Not precisely,” said the Shepherd. “There are many interpretations of the ladder, but I myself like the one where it represents a bridge between Heaven and Earth. I believe it signifies how God is always present in our lives. Or some kind of grace, at any rate.”
Simon had taken up drinking chamomile tea during his residency. Some of the other students had laughed at him too, but they’d all been drinking it by the end, including those who were already halfway to being alcoholics. Now that had been a long year. Nothing compared to this one, mind you…
“I know there’s all the gamblin’,” said Kaylee, “but ain’t there other stuff to do too this weekend?”
Simon thought he’d known back then what tired felt like. He’d been wrong, so very wrong. He was wrong about a lot of things, these days… Anyway, chamomile tea smelled nice. Made him think of being back home…
“This stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house,” intoned the Shepherd, “and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.”
“I ain’t givin’ nobody a tenth of nothing,” muttered Jayne.
“And for once I entirely agree with you,” said the captain. Simon, closing his eyes, let the conversation wash over him. Perhaps some part of his brain would be able to sort through the noise and determine whether there was any useful information to be gleaned…
“Like, ain’t there live music, and dancin’, and that kind of thing?” said Kaylee. “It ain’t all whorin’ and gamblin’—”
“It ain’t?” said Jayne, disappointed.
“We’re here to work, Kaylee,” said Mal, “not to party.”
“Don’t be such so grouchy, Captain. It’s Carnival! Hey, maybe I’ll get to wear my dress again—”
“It’s a very beautiful passage,” said Book. “God’s promise to us that even in our direst need we can consider ourselves not alone—”
“I’m sure it’s a fine piece of fiction,” said the captain, exasperation rising, “and you’re more’n welcome to read it to yourself in the privacy of your own quarters, Shepherd, where you’ll not be botherin’ anyone else, but I’ll thank you to keep all holy talk away from my dining table—”
“You like live music, Simon?”
Though the tea would certainly be nicer with a spoonful of honey stirred in… Was there any honey on Serenity? On Bethel? Were there bees on Bethel…?
“Simon?”
Simon, jerking awake, was suddenly aware of an expectant silence. He opened his eyes to see four people staring straight at him, with looks ranging on a scale from fond indulgence to violent dislike.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” said Simon. “I… I… I think I must have dozed off. What were you saying, Kaylee?”
Jayne laughed. The Shepherd smiled. Kaylee looked hurt. “Don’t worry. It don’t matter.” Wrong again, thought Simon. He grasped around for something to say. “Um, is there something special about this weekend?”
Kaylee brightened. “It’s Carnival!”
“Ah.” Simon didn’t have a clue what that meant, and he didn’t want to risk hurting Kaylee again by asking. “Carnival.”
“If Captain Misery there will only let us off the ship—”
“Maybe when we’re done with the job, Kaylee—”
Carnival, thought Simon. Was this something he needed to be worrying about? He sighed, and the Shepherd leaned in for a quiet word. “Shut your eyes again, son,” he murmured.. “We’ll call you when we need you.”
The Shepherd, Simon thought, was a very wise man. Bethel, he thought, another dung heap. But one that Kaylee wanted to see. Simon couldn’t square this circle, not now. Instead, obeying his preacher, Simon closed his eyes again. His mind drifted back to Osiris, where the world had made perfect sense, before everything turned upside down and he found himself here, amongst strangers, trying to make a broken girl better. Gǒu shǐ, thought Simon, I really am very tired…
* * *
Before Ava Jones left her home up in Evansville to catch the big train down here to Neapolis, she’d been so excited, telling all her friends about the job at the hotel that Uncle Nate had fixed up for her, and how she was looking forward to seeing the city at last, and imagining the good times she’d have when she got there. The day before she left, a friend of her late aunt came up to her, and, quietly, pressed a card into her hand. “You find yourself in any trouble, honey,” she said, “take this to a vidphone and call the number there. They’ll help you out, best they can.”
“Trouble?” said Ava. She wasn’t anticipating trouble. She was heading off to the big city, like she’d always wanted to since Momma and Poppa had died. Free at last! Money in her pocket and all the big wide ’verse to explore. “I’m a good girl! I ain’t plannin’ on gettin’ into trouble.”
“Honey,” said Aunty Eve’s friend, “sometimes trouble comes lookin’ for us. Take the card and make the call—if you have to.”
So Ava took the card, and, showing some of the very good sense that her Aunty Eve had tried hard to instill in her while Ava was in her care, she had kept the card with a handful of other small treasures wrapped on her person, rather than stored in her little case. She wondered where that little case was now. All her clothes (including her best dress and best hat) had been in that little blue plastic case. She figured she wasn’t seeing them ever again, and good hats and dresses don’t fall out of the sky. But the card was safe (along with Momma’s ring and the holo-images of Momma and Poppa’s wedding day and a little squishy toy bear called Patches), ...
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