Steven Brust - My Own Kind of Freedom

Jayne.

Jayne was the only one who didn’t dance.

He had no balance. That’s why he did all of those things, he couldn’t find his balance point.

She got up, then, and walked to the Med Bay. Simon looked up and said, “What is it, River?” but she ignored him. She went over to Jayne, who had was looking upward with fractured shards of consciousness coming and going like his breath; wrung out, shot full of drugs and holes with his life flowing through tubes and his spirit spreading through the ship like the ghost locked up in the hold.

She stared down into Jayne’s half-open eyes. “Boxing is just like ballet,” she told him, “except there’s no music and they hit each other.”

Then, satisfied, she turned and went back to her room.

She walked away from the speaker and took another glance at Sakarya. He was well secured to the stairway with steel cuffs. There was nothing within nine feet of him. He looked back at her; his eyes were dead things.

“Food, water, and toilet break in an hour,” she told him. Then she turned back to the speaker, punched a button and said, “Wash, surveillance check.”

“We’re good,” he said. “Dining room?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I’ll be there as soon as I’m sure nothing is coming to eat us.”

She looked at the prisoner again, wondering why she didn’t hate him; wondering if there was something that had died, somewhere along the road.

Someone said, “So, did you think it was a good operation?” Zoë recognized her own voice, and wished to hell she could take the words back.

“Quite professional,” he said. “Do you actually care what I think?”

“Evidently.”

He nodded a little. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, I mean, why was it important to ruin me?”

“We were much too late for that, Colonel.”

“Glad to have given you the opening for the line, but you know it doesn’t answer the question.”

“Yes it does,” she said, and turned and headed up the stairway, hearing her boots clank loudly in the wide, empty space of the hold.

“River,” he told his sister patiently, “we need to get to the dining room.” He wanted to ask her what she had meant when she spoke to Jayne, but he was afraid she might tell him.

“It’s not that far,” she said reassuringly, but made no move to get up from her bed.

“Mal is expecting us to be there.”

She gave him a look he couldn’t interpret. “Yes. He’s going to ask questions, and he’ll want answers, only the answers he wants won’t be there.”

After some hesitation, he asked it. “Where will they be?”

“In the cargo hold,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. “Where the ghost is.”

Simon made a few connections in his head, put a few things together, and nodded slowly. “You see, River, we can’t always tell when you’re speaking in metaphors, and when you’re being literal. That makes it hard—”

“What makes you think I can tell?” She sounded genuinely curious.

“To use a metaphor, or a simile, requires activating a part of the brain that… “ he trailed off. “It isn’t that you can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy, it’s that you can’t express the difference. The language centers… I might have something.”

“But what about seeing the future?”

He frowned. “You see the future?”

“I see my future. I see more tests.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

“What else can I do?”

“You want me to remember.”

He nodded.

“I don’t want to remember.”

“I know. But…” he looked for the words. “I think you’re in a state of lucid dreaming, while you’re awake.”

She was quiet for what seemed like a long time, then she turned her deep eyes on him and said, “But how can you do anything about it?”

“I’m a trauma specialist,” he said. “Come on, let’s go to the dining room.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder and knew it without turning around; had known when he heard the footsteps.

“Everything is all right?” he asked, and felt her hesitation.

“Did you hear from the feds?”

“Agent Merlyn said he’d be showing up sometime in the next hour.”

“Good.”

She stood there behind him, just touching him.

“Sweetiekins, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know how this is going to come out.”

“You mean, Mal?”

“What we did—”

“What I did, you mean.”

“The Captain won’t like it.”

“Then we’ll have to stage a mutiny.”

“Wash, that’s not funny. That’s almost what we did.”

He stared out at the light blue cloudless sky of Hera.

“Did you see another choice?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Why not? It’s what you’ve been doing for the last six years. And Mal too. When you don’t have any choice, you do what you have to.”

Her hand still rested on his shoulder.

“Then what?” she said softly. “What happens after that, Wash?”

He locked on the autopilot and stood up. “Maybe I can find a job performing with finger-puppets.”

She wrapped her arms around him. “And what would I do?”

“Cook my dinner and rub my tired fingers. Ouch.”

She shook her head, smiling. “Some things, you and I just ain’t cut out for.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“The Captain—”

“This is our home. He knows that. And it’s his home because we’re here, and he knows that too.”

“If he gets pushed too far—”

“You know, for someone who’s known Mal longer than any of the rest of us, you don’t have a lot of faith in him. Come on, let’s not keep them waiting.”

They were sitting around the table. On his left was Kaylee, looking at the table in front of her; then Simon, looking at Kaylee; then River, looking at nothing; then Wash and Zoë, who were involved in some sort of whispered conversation.

“All right,” he said, looking at each of them one at a time. “I got a bit of mad I ain’t used up yet, so now’s the time. Wash, maybe you can start by telling me how it happened that you concocted a plan with the fed behind my back. I’d expect that from Jayne, not from you.”

Wash looked down at the table.

“Not good enough, Wash. I need an answer.”

Still nothing.

He felt the knot of anger in his belly; he noticed his right hand, sitting on the table, was starting to shake. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like Wash to do something like that; not, at any rate, unless it involved protecting Zoë, or—

“Kaylee,” he stated.

She looked up. “Yes, Cap’n?” There was a tremor in her voice.

“You got something to add to this?”

Her mouth opened and closed, and she glanced at Wash, as if for support. She got it, too. “Mal,” said Wash. “She was going to crash Serenity into the house.”

He looked at Wash, who was now staring back, and then at Kaylee, who had returned to studying the table-top. “Huh? Why?”

“Because,” said Wash, “she thought we were all going to die.”

“We weren’t going to die.”

“Yes you were,” said River. “You were going to kill the ghost, and then the wizard was going to kill you, and then Zoë was going to kill the agent, and then the security forces—”

“You weren’t even there!” said Mal.

He suddenly felt everyone looking at him.

“Which,” he continued less forcefully, “doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”

“Sir,” said Zoë, “you’ve been off your game. We’ve been covering for you. Sorry, but that’s how it is.”