Work Text:
I’m a fan of all seven. But right now, I think I’ll go with Wrath.
Avaritia (Greed)
1
“Charming,” Emily said, putting her Mark Cross suitcase down on the floor of the cargo bay.
“No, it is, really,” Amanda said. “I mean, last week I’d never been on a spaceship, and now I’ve been on three of them…”
“Manners!” Nolan said, leaning an elbow on his Louis Vuitton steamer trunk. “Let’s roll out our best company behavior and not get our hosts too angry, okay? I mean, by the time anybody thought to look for us—if anybody did, which they probably wouldn’t—then molecules of us would be scattered from here to Proxima Centauri.”
“Is that far?” Amanda asked.
“It’s going to be a long trip,” Emily said.
“Hi!” Kaylee said. “We love meeting new folks!”
Amanda skipped over to her (the nylon backpack shifting from side to side as she ran), hugged her, and kissed her on both cheeks. “It’s been so long since I met anybody friendly! The people in the Hamptons are so snobby!”
“Awww, well!” Kaylee said. “Core planets, y’know? And Osiris more than most. We don’t go there.”
Emily extended a hand, although her fingers pointed downward in a way that had more to do with her ring being kissed than with a hearty high-five. “Emily Thorne,” she said.
“We’re lucky this trip, Mal,” Kaylee said. “We got a famous man here, and two real pretty girls.”
“Nolan Ross?” Mal said. “Ain’t you got your own ships? Your own gorram flotilla?”
“Well, yeah, but right now we want to…”
“Go slumming?” Mal said grimly.
“Stay under the radar. A man such as yourself can appreciate that we don’t always want to, you know, file a lot of paperwork…”
“Man paid plenty for the privilege,” Zoe said. “Let’s not judge him harshly till him or his friends cause some trouble, neh?”
“They paid passage to Lilac, and when we’re in Lilac, we can get all that stuff we need,” Kaylee said.
“Far enough from the Core that we ain’t gotta worry, but fixed-up enough so they got hotels,” Zoe said. “Where my husband and I will be, case you got an emergency while we’re there. I recommend you don’t.”
The catwalk rattled, as a girl in a floaty chiffon dress ran past, followed by a pair of dark trousers and a white shirt, perfectly perpendicular to the catwalk.
“Hello, sailor!” Nolan said under his breath, because he hadn’t had long to look, but there seemed to be quite an ass on top of those long legs.
2
Jayne and Wash finished the assignment of moving some of Inara’s less mission-critical furniture, soft furnishings, and knickknacks out of her shuttle and into the second shuttle, which Emily rented herself so she could get some privacy.
3
Simon found River in the parts stockroom near the engine room, degreasing a panful of small gears. He didn’t think that her best chiffon dress was the most practical garb for the task. Nevertheless, but he didn’t think it was particularly dangerous either to River or Serenity’s crew or rolling stock, so he told her that there was going to be a crew meeting just before dinner, and Mal wanted everyone to be on their best behavior. River treated this subterfuge with the contempt it deserved, and told him to run along and play, she was fine.
Simon nearly collided with a tall, wafer-thin blond who stood, hands clasped behind his back and head tilted, examining the emergency light strip on the wall. “Hello,” Simon said. “Welcome aboard.”
“Well, things are looking up already,” Nolan said.
In the flash of an eye, each recognized a man with whom he could fall deeply in bed. Nolan raised an eyebrow. Simon nodded. “Where?” Nolan said. “You’d know, you live here.”
Simon took his hand and pulled him toward the passenger rooms. Simon slid the door open. Nolan pushed him toward the front wall. “Not that one,” Simon said. “It’s paper.” They stumbled toward the back wall, which had the virtue of solidity, performing evasive maneuvers around Nolan’s trunk, which took up most of the floor space. “Mal told me that there were going to be passengers,” Simon said, “So they assigned you this room.”
Simon rested his hands on the wall, near Nolan’s shoulders, and reached up for a kiss. Nolan clasped Simon’s waist (big hands, small waist, but still more than a handspan), stretched out his legs for Simon to straddle, and grabbed Simon’s ass.
4
Meanwhile, Amanda unpacked by the simple expedient of opening her backpack and dumping everything on the bed. Then she sat down on the bed and stroked the ruffles on the pink dress hanging in front of her.
Kaylee came down the hatch. “Everything OK?” she said.
“It’s great! I love spaceships! This is sure a pretty dress,” Amanda said. “Whose is it? Who was the designer? Do you know?”
“Awww, hey, no,” Kaylee said, thinking that she sounded like a drawling hick next to the exciting city girl. “Cap’n bought it for me right off the rack in a store in Persephone. Yeah, it’s my dress. This is my room, usually.”
“You mean they threw you out of your room? That’s not fair. That’s mean.”
“We ain’t got but so many passenger berths, she’s mostly a cargo ship. And it’ll be fine. I’ll bunk in with River,” Kaylee said. “You didn’t really meet her, maybe you saw her run past. She’s a dancer, you know, all slim and graceful and pretty. If you like the dress, wanna try it on? It’d be kinda tight on top, but if you’re not wearin’ it out, you don’t have to fasten up all the buttons in back.”
Amanda shrugged out of her off-the-shoulder top and shimmied out of her tight jeans. She left on her towering wedge espadrilles because otherwise she was afraid she’d step on some of the bottom ruffles. Kaylee helped her climb underneath the hooped petticoats and emerge, as if from a dark tunnel, into the light. Then Amanda wriggled while Kaylee, her fingers itching, did up as many of the buttons as would reasonably close.
Amanda stroked her own collarbone, then squinted into the tiny, dark mirror that Kaylee had tacked to the wall. “Gorgeous dress!” she said. “And it must feel great to move around in.”
Kaylee put one hand behind her back, flourished out the other, and sketched a bow. “May I have this dance, Mademoiselle?” There was not a lot of waltzing that could be done in the confines of Kaylee’s cabin, although there was a fair amount of colliding.
A little out of breath, Amanda said, “Now I want to see how it looks on you!” She pushed Kaylee toward the mirror and, her chin hooked over Kaylee’s shoulder, said, “Look! You look gorgeous!” Kaylee sighed, and pushed her shoulders back to reach for the buttons. In her experience, if you play with anything long enough, you break it. They collaborated in getting the dress off Kaylee and back on its hanger for display.
“We’re already mostly nekkid,” Kaylee said. “Wanna fool around? I like your hair. It’s real springy, like it’s got a lot of energy.”
“The Rim,” Amanda said, putting her hands on Kaylee’s hips and pulling her in. “Gotta love it!”
“The Rim’s no fun, compared to out here in the Black,” Kaylee said, slinging her arms around Amanda’s neck.
5
“Nice amenities package,” Nolan said. “I mean, I’m used to hotels having gift baskets, but that impressive upside-down one-handed retrieval…”
“Ummm, actually, it’s usually my room,” Simon said. “I just didn’t get around to cleaning out all the drawers, and I’ve had that stuff in my medikit the whole time I’ve been here, no chance to use it…”
“In that case, I’d rate it five-star,” Nolan said. “But I’m not gonna tell anyone, it’s going to be one of those restaurants you don’t want anyone to find out about.”
“No, uhh, I mean, I’m going to share the Shepherd’s room, there’s a rolling cot…”
“That’s not really necessary, is it? You can stay here with me.”
“It’s a pretty small bed even for one person…”
“I’m game if you are,” Nolan said.
“Can I ask you something?” Simon whispered, looking around to see if they were under observation. (Nolan thought it was a little late to worry about it.) “You’re Nolan Ross, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” Nolan said. “Kind of a give-away when I told your captain that.” Then he relented, remembering that Simon, far from being in the cargo hold, had been merely a tantalizing glimpse in retreat, and anyway the identity situation was a little complex.
“God. Oh my God. This is amazing,” Simon said. “I mean, I didn’t even think I’d ever meet you, much less… Nolan ROSS. I mean, I’m jealous. I can’t say that I came from a poor family…”
“I know,” Nolan said. “I see your parents all the time, at charity functions, you know.”
“…and I made a decent, well, quite a good living, but…I mean…making yourself unbelievably rich…God, I wish I could do that. And, of course, the whole point of surgery is not doing something absolutely new, you know? You wait until you have the clinical science established before you adopt a new procedure. So, I wish I was that creative. Well, at something except devising low-grade crimes. I’m not bad at that.”
“I’m pretty good myself,” Nolan said. “I’m Emms’ brain trust. Of course, her other accomplice is Amanda, and if zombies targeted her they’d have to pack a lunch, so there’s not much competition.”
On pure logistics, Nolan being so much taller, Simon would have curled up as, so to speak, the filling and Nolan the spring roll skin. But Simon thought that Nolan had been having a few rough weeks, so he thought that Nolan should get the comfort of hearing the conversation rumbling through his partner’s chest.
“I’m surprised you could just…well, pack up and go,” Simon said.
“Footloose and fancy free. I got thrown off the board of my own company, and the more planets away I stay from them, the happier they are.” Nolan shrugged his shoulder, so the scars on his arm were upward. “And that’s from the last guy I slept with,” he said. “So, nobody’s waiting up at home for me.”
“Ohhh!” Simon said sympathetically, shimmying down to kiss Nolan’s forehead. “Do you want me to do a little plastic on that?”
“No,” Nolan said darkly. “I could use the reminder.”
They necked for a little while, but didn’t really have the energy to go around again.
“Who are those girls with you?” Simon asked.
“Well, I’m me, as we’ve established, but Amanda is Emily, and Emily is Amanda…”
“Shen me?” Simon asked.
“Okay, we’ve got two blonde girls. The classy one, who goes by Emily Thorne, is actually Amanda Clarke. The tacky trampy one is really Emily Thorne, so when they met in reform school, they switched identities so Amanda can pretend to be Emily so nobody knows that she’s David Clarke’s daughter.”
“David Clarke?” Simon said. “The terrorist? Well, the terrorist financier? Oh, that poor girl, it must have been awful for her.”
“Honey, you’re a terrorist,” Nolan said. “Don’t believe everything you read when you’re hacking a warrants database. In fact, you’re one reason we’re here. Between Captain Reynolds’ war record, and your being a one-man Second Front, this seemed like a good place to Get Away From It All when things got a little hot in the Hamptons. Emily’s got some long-range plans, and this seems like a good source of contractors.”
“Wait, people know about us? About River?”
“’People’ in the sense of some of the best hackers in the ‘Verse, yeah. Just an average schmuck in the Fed, no.”
Simon sighed, a little less anxious, tension draining away like steam from a pressure cooker. Then he sighed again, unhappily. “The season for the Hamptons is almost over, anyway. My parents usually move back from their summer place to our CapCity compound around Chrysanthemum Bonfire Day.” He hesitated, not sure if he should ask.
“They took down so many framed captures that they had to repaint the house,” Nolan said, shaking his head. He frowned, then brightened a little. “We might have some spare time,” he said. “Want me to do a take-down for you? I mean, I have to warn you that my first solo wasn’t an unqualified success, but I bet I’ve improved with practice…”
“There’s no point,” Simon said. “I mean, it’s pointless to want things not to have happened. And even more pointless to launch another round of injury and damage. When I was back at work, even if that neurosurgery I had to do, or that crushed leg I had to repair, was caused by a hit-and-run driver, I’d still rather spend the time getting the victim more therapy than try to hunt down who did it.”
“Yeah, but maybe if you did—or got somebody else to do it, anyway—then maybe he’d stop plowing people down,” Nolan said, reminding himself never to introduce Simon to Daniel, because Daniel already didn’t feel guilty enough and he didn’t need an inadvertent champion.
“But people have reasons. I mean, Jesus, look at our parents. I can blame them for not understanding how much they’d have to do to take care of River, for not understanding that the world that always took good care of us had—suddenly gone insane. Or, it always was, we just didn’t know how to look behind the scenes. And maybe I think that even for just an ordinary young girl, her family should be willing to do anything, but…there’s an argument that you should be willing to sacrifice your family for the greater good of society. So if they believed that the Alliance needed to do whatever awful things they were doing in that place…”
Nolan propped himself up against the back wall. This was interesting. “C’mon, you mean to say that if you found out who was really responsible for doing this to River, and if he was at your mercy, you’d have some?”
“If it would cure her to bathe in a dish of his blood, then I’d get a scalpel,” Simon said. “Or, you know, a nail file or a toothbrush or whatever it took. Possibly whatever it took, slowest. But if it wouldn’t, then, no. Or, I guess, yes, by the form of the question.”
Invidia (Envy)
1
Simon, encumbered by the vacuum cleaner, walked past the sofa. Nolan and River were curled up on the sofa, sharing a whiteboard. He could see that it was scrawled with equations, and every once in a while one of them would add something, or rub something out, and sometimes they’d laugh.
{{That’s great}} Simon thought. {{Math jokes. I can’t give her math jokes, and I brought her someplace where everybody else is twenty light-years further away from being able to.}}
As soon as he was out of earshot, Nolan asked, “Do you mind, about me and your brother? I mean, obviously it’s too late not to have done it the first time, but if it’s a problem…”
“It’s fine,” River said. “He’s true blue. Not just flannelly. Let other penises dwell on guilt and grief. He should have some fun.” She started to hum. “Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?”
Simon was going to initial the chore list to show that he’d finished vacuuming, but had a shrewd suspicion that the whiteboard was out of commission.
Amanda, in a pair of shorts notable neither in length nor width, with a gingham shirt knotted at rib-height, took advantage of the supports for the catwalk to show Kaylee (in in coveralls that, by comparison, were a burqa) some of the things she used to do back home.
“That’s good exercise!” Kaylee said. “Also, it’s kind of a turn-on dancin’ like that, isn’t it?”
Amanda looked down to the cargo bay, where Jayne, no longer resenting the assignment, was breaking down wooden crates with a crowbar. “Depends on the audience,” she said, grabbing Kaylee’s hand and pulling in the direction of their room. “Aren’t you jealous?” she shouted down.
“Hell, no,” Jayne said. “I got an imagination.”
2
Mal couldn’t figure out where everybody was, so he wandered up to the bridge. “Hey, no wonder my boat’s tiltin’ forward on her nose,” he said. He registered only subliminally that Simon’s hand was stuck in the back pocket of Nolan’s jeans as they examined a blueprint. What really registered—it was hard to miss--was that Nolan was draped in one of Wash’s Hawaiian shirts, which hung like a tent on him. Nolan’s lemon-yellow and Kelly-green polo shirts were rather snugger on Wash.
For the life of him, Mal couldn’t figure out why anybody would wear two shirts with collars at the same time.
“Nolan’s got some ideas,” Wash said.
“I just bet he does,” Mal said.
“Some improvements to the command-and-control, and he thinks we can crank at least fifteen percent more out of the scopes, I don’t have to tell you, that could save our bacon.”
“Nolan thinks we can hack the Chartersley,” Kaylee said. “Better response, and uses lots less electricity, which means less fuel, which means we can go longer without a top-up. Or, of course, put on more speed in a pinch. Which we got lots of.”
“What’s all this gonna cost me?” Mal asked.
“Nothing!” Nolan said, with a wave of his hand. “Really, it would be a pleasure to be able to help out.”
Jayne leered. “Wanna sit on Santa Claus’ lap?”
“Didn’t believe in Santa even back in my rugrat days,” Mal said.
Ira (Wrath)
1
“Judge Turpin,” Emily began, looking around the dining table that now needed a few extra chairs pulled up. “Right now, he’s the Associate Chief Justice of the Beaumonde Circuit. But back…before…when I was a little girl, he was just a nobody in the petition room at the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Osiris. And he was—not my father’s best friend, I suppose, that dishonor belongs to Conrad Grayson.” (Nolan flinched, but Emily didn’t notice.) “And, when my father was under investigation, he prepared the subpoenas, and the search warrant, and even the warrant for his arrest.”
“He had an oath, my dear,” Shepherd Book said gently. “I suppose you’re implying that, for a friend, he could have reduced the charges…or seen that a file went ‘missing’?”
“If he had an oath, he should have known that there was no evidence. Or that he was being told lies. He was supposed to defend the public, but all he defended was Grayson Versal.”
“And you say that to say what?” Mal asked.
“My first thought was hiring you to assassinate him,” Emily said brightly.
“Get up and walk away from this table,” Mal said. “We’ll put you down on Lilac, same’s we promised, but that’s all. What you want, that ain’t me. Maybe I’ve killed folks, time to time, but that was for reasons of need, not as a hired gun. Where’d you get your intel about me and my ship and my crew, anyhow?”
Nolan waved a hand vaguely. “Wash! Mr. Universe says hi!”
“Oh, yeah,” Wash said. “Him. Haven’t thought about him in years. Tell him hi back from me.”
“But then, I decided to take that off the agenda. Right about now, Turpin is winding up his family vacation. With your help, I could kidnap him…or, of course, kidnap his wife or kids and use them as leverage to get what I want.”
“That bein’?” Zoe asked.
“Files in my father’s case. The electronic record has been wiped clean, of course. But there used to be hard copies, but they disappeared around the time that Turpin bought his Lilac vacation cabin. Not that he could afford it on his salary. A vlogger got on to it…and disappeared shortly after an entry was posted explaining that it was an old family property from his wife’s family. Well, two can play at that little game.”
Wash raised his hand, waggling the fingers. “Why not just forget about it? I get it, it was a long time ago but most of your life—your whole life after it got screwed up for you—but, you’ve got the world by the tail. Instead of doing stuff that is going to get you heinously bound by law or worse, just enjoy being young and rich and beautiful and, although I already mentioned rich, it can’t be stressed often enough…”
“I’m disappointed,” Emily said. “A man who names his ship after the place where he got his ass kicked, I wouldn’t think that would be a man with a ‘live and let live’ attitude.”
“Well, it’s not my ship and I only got my ass kicked-in-law,” Wash said. “And kidnapping…well, aren’t there any property crimes you’re in the market for? Couldn’t you, like, blow up his house?”
“That’s so two weeks ago,” Nolan said. “Although, actual explosives would be a new skillset for us.”
“Property crimes,” Emily said. “I think we can work with that.”
“Why do I feel like I’m at a going-out-of-business sale that’s been goin’ on for seven years, and the price tag is seventy-five-percent off triple the price?” Mal asked.
“The other way around, Captain Reynolds,” Emily said. “You’re not going to be defrauded. You’re going to be enriched. Just transporting us was more lucrative than most of your jobs. Help me out with this, and there will be a substantial payment for your assistance, and you can keep whatever you can take from Turpin’s house. Make it look like a low-grade burglary.”
“We can do low-grade!” Jayne proclaimed proudly.
“If we wait a few days, the Turpin family’s vacation will have ended, and they’ll go home, leaving the property essentially empty,” Emily said.
“You know this how?” Jayne asked.
“Nolan checked their social calendar, and the grocery orders for the house, and their credit accounts—they booked passage home,” Emily said.
“How substantial’s substantial?” Zoe asked.
Mal glared at Zoe, then at Emily. “Zo’, I’ll handle that part. If there’s anythin’ to handle. A man don’t take kindly to being ordered around and told what crime to do.”
Wash snorted at looked at Nolan. “Captain Reynolds, I think you’ve just discovered ‘employment,’” Nolan said. “It’s like monotheism and calculus. It keeps getting independently discovered over and over.”
“Mal, if we, for once, have a bunch of money then we won’t have to keep doing stupid things because we’re broke,” Wash said.
“An excellent practical point,” Simon said. “And sometimes I feel that Wash and I are the tag team for mentioning moral issues. And getting our asses slammed on the mat.”
“I don’t see no moral issue here,” Jayne said, unctuous as any preacher who had just discovered that the photographer snapping him coming out of a whorehouse didn’t have any film in the camera. “A whole bunch of folks lined up to do dirt on Emily’s family. She’s out to make ‘em sorry for it. ’Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,’” Jayne recited. “And he made us in His image, so that means he’s on board with it. And I say, if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.”
“Shepherd, you want to take this one, from inside Christianity?” Simon asked.
Book scooted his chair over to Emily’s, and laid his hand gently on her wrist. “I won’t talk to you about religion,” he said. “I’ll just tell you what happened to me. I had been a man of wrath…”
Jayne perked up, expecting to hear more of his friend, mentor, and spotter’s obscure history.
“…and then, when I changed the path I walked, I found that, no matter how much I repented, there was still a place inside me that was hollowed out, empty. And no amount of prayer or fellowship or trying to reach out with love to those around me has ever been able to heal that scar or fill up that yawning emptiness. I hope you can learn from my example. Zoe, what do you think?”
“I believe in justice,” Zoe said. “Conjure Mal’d say that the government is just the biggest bunch of crooks with the best guns, and if you ever go to them for justice, you’re a damn fool. Me, I’d say that first you try it by the book, but ain’t no use askin’ the doer to punish the deed. They call revenge “wild justice”—well, I had a bouquet of wild flowers on my weddin’ day, and my husband didn’t ask before he picked ‘em neither, and they were the prettiest flowers I’ve ever seen. When you can’t afford the orchids from the flower shop, then you stand up for yourself and get pickin’.”
“Well, that’s inspiring,” Simon said. “Better to light a single Molotov cocktail than curse the darkness?”
“What you young people don’t think about,” Book said, “Is that it never ends. I’ve seen how it never ends. Before the ticker-tape is swept up after the victory parade, the ‘victors’ have to shore up their gains as the vanquished swear to rise again. Miss Thorne, don’t you know that all the guilty people who harmed you have families and friends of their own? Even if you can escape legal penalties—which becomes exponentially more difficult the more crimes you commit—then you give all those people a motivation to come back at you and the people close to you.”
“Let them try,” Emily said, and smiled. Jayne crossed himself.
“Okay, everybody out of here, ‘fore this turns into a symposium,” Mal said. “If you work for me, I’ll let you know if you’ll be workin’ for her this job.”
2
When they reached Lilac (scheduled for Crime Minus Two), and while Emily conferred with manager of one of her numerous private-bank accounts and Amanda got a mani-pedi, Nolan happily wandered through the market with Jayne and Kaylee. He soon found himself burdened with potatoes, flour, onions, baking chocolate, and carnations, although at least the flour sacks fit into the fourth-hand copper kettle Kaylee talked him into buying.
Then they went to a sporting goods store, where Jayne reluctantly decided that the compound crossbow wouldn’t be all that useful and wouldn’t hang flat on the wall for display. Nolan put his foot down and said that if Jayne insisted on being treated to twenty-five pounds worth of armor-piercing hollowpoints, he could carry the damn package himself.
Jayne slung his other arm around Nolan’s shoulder—he wasn’t that much taller, but he certainly took up more space width-wise--and said, sentimentally, “You ain’t paid enough to make me actually like you, but I’m a merc so I’ll follow the money and not show much of what I really think of you.”
“Well, that’s a better offer than I got all this season in the Hamptons,” Nolan said.
Gula (Gluttony)
1
Nolan’s mother always said that you shouldn’t be able to detect a lady’s perfume unless you’re dancing with her, and the note that River brought him from Inara passed the test handily. He knocked on the shuttle door at the appointed hour. He brought his checkbook, just in case, even though she asked him for the honor of his company, as the guest of the House Madrassa.
This was by no means Nolan’s first visit to a Companion (although, back when it was still a luxury for him, he had to pay), so he complimented her on the décor of the shuttle, and on the talent of the artisans who had made all her ritual objects, from her candelabra to her best tea set.
They had quite a few acquaintances in common, so they gossiped, and then Inara suggested a game of Scrabble. Nolan generously offered to allow transliterated Mandarin, approximately equal to a five-pound handicap, he knew his Mandarin was pretty le-se.
Inara set out the tiles and Nolan produced a small enameled box from the pocket of his madras blazer. Inara’s eyes grew wide as he opened it.
“Thank you!” she said.
“Have one,” he coaxed. Speechless, Inara nodded and took one of the truffles out of the Maison Emmerling box. She extended the box back at him, but he shook his head. “I’m fine with this,” he said, raising the cut-glass tumbler freighted with a few sharp jewels of ice and a double shot of Inara’s best single-malt.
For a long moment, Inara just looked at the chocolate, then twirled it in her fingers, looking at it from all sides, from the beautifully silk-screened top to the castellated sides. Then she delicately licked the bottom of the chocolate, and sniffed it. “Macadamia pandan cognac?” she asked. Nolan nodded.
Inara breathed in, then sheared off a tiny slice with her front teeth and let the first bit of chocolate melt.
Nolan leaned over and kissed her, knowing that she’d find a graceful way not to end up with melted chocolate all over the back of his jacket. Not that he was comparing, or anything. He liked a woman with an appetite—he was sick of watching Emily push bits of already tiny servings around very, very large plates. (Although that was a necessary and not a sufficient condition: he liked watching Amanda eat barbecue, but that wasn’t enough to make him like Amanda.)
He sat back, studying his rack of tiles as Inara finished the truffle tiny bite by lick. With her gold-heavy sari rustling, put the ballotine away where it would be out of sight.
For a while they both gracefully tried to throw the game unobtrusively. Once Inara cleared her rack of tiles with “menarche” with the H on a triple-word score, they got serious, and ran out of tiles twenty minutes later (NR: 703, IS: 594). Then they put away the Scrabble set and finished off the evening with a psychiatrist-hour’s worth of half-and-half. Nolan put his clothes back on, bowed, and kissed Inara’s hand. He took a handful of her cards and promised to distribute them among his influential friends, although he was pretty sure that she overestimated the number of friends he actually had.
2
Simon looked up from his encyclopedia and grinned. “You didn’t stay over,” he said.
Nolan looked down—Simon was wearing navy-blue flannel pajamas with light-blue piping—and said, “Well, no. Of course I came back here. You don’t mind?”
By way of answer, Simon pushed back the blanket.
The way that, two hours after Thanksgiving dinner, the guests aren’t hungry—in fact they feel like they’ll never be hungry again, but, pie!—Nolan sat down and started playing with the pajama buttons as if they were the stuck-up part of the pumpkin pie crust.
“Did you and Inara, ever?” Nolan asked.
“No, oh God no, the one thing she and Mal agree about is that she doesn’t have engagements with the crew, and it makes sense, we’re stuck here together, you know? If it goes bad, it goes really bad.”
Nolan took off his clothes again and got under the blanket. “Fortunately Ems and I are usually not cooped up together when we’re Loitering for Purposes of Restitution, although there’s no real point in locking my door at home, it wouldn’t keep her out.”
“She doesn’t seem to like you very much,” Simon said. “Are you in love with her?”
“Fuck, no, that would be practically incest,” Nolan said. “Her father…well, I suppose it doesn’t matter that he was my first lover, somebody had to be, or didn’t, I guess, if my sex drive was on a par with my social skills. I practically went around writing his name on my looseleaf notebook, and thought about being her—what? What would that make me? Her stepfather? But it didn’t happen, so now I’m all with the pumpkin coach. But I don’t have to tell you about the care and feeding of mei-meis. The thing is, it wasn’t the, wasn’t just the sex. David was the first person who ever believed in me.”
Simon kissed the clump of hair over Nolan’s left ear. “I won’t be the last one who ever does,” he said. He sort of thought that came out wrong, but he had, at great cost, learned to stop digging when he got himself into a hole.
“What about that other girl? Why are the three of you going around together?”
“Well, there may have been an incident that a poorly educated and unstable individual might interpret as Emily trying to make her carry the can for an arson incident that obtained a degree of credibility from an earlier…”
“For someone with a fixation on a frame job, Ms. Thorne certainly hands out a lot of them,” Simon said.
“…So we’d rather have her inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in,” Nolan summarized. He yawned.
“Sleepy?” Simon said. Nolan nodded.
“Me too,” Simon said, and hit the light.
Invidia
“Wanna see somethin’ funny?” Jayne asked, leaving a track of mud as he stomped through the kitchen in search of one of those bottles of fresh milk they could, for the moment, afford (although the girl with the curly hair really sucked at putting things back where they belonged).
“Sure,” Mal said, regretfully taking only three chocolate chip cookies out of the box and closing it up, because he didn’t want to get too big for his britches.
“Simon’s out in the scrub, tryin’ to teach that wispy boyfriend of his to shoot. Surprised that Ross guy ain’t shot his own foot or Simon’s balls off, considerin’ that he shuts his eyes ever’ time he thinks he’s gonna pull the trigger. ‘Course, River does okay with her eyes shut, but Ross is some kinda freak but not that kind.”
Mal knew better than to launch into an aria on the theme of “Simon is doing what with his WHAT?” so he said, “Yeah? You let ‘em have one of your guns for that? Or maybe sold it to Mr. Moneybags for ten times what it’s worth?”
“Naah, Simon’s usin’ that 38-auto he bought couple-three months ago. He better buy some more shells, ‘fore he needs to aim that piece at somethin’ that ain’t empty bottles and used-up cans. ‘Nother funny thing? Doc ain’t a bad shot when it ain’t folks, neither.”
“Risin’ tide lifts all the boats,” Mal said. “Next thing you know you’ll try to sell me that Simon’s Hercules.”
Ira
1
Just before the assault team left, Simon pulled Jayne over to the side for a private word. “Remember,” he said, “Before you do anything particularly disgusting…three words. D.N.A.”
“Them’s letters,” Jayne said, suspecting that disgusting could be the key to a nice little tip from Emily. From what he’d heard, she was almost as rich as Nolan, especially since they seemed to be spending Nolan’s money on this little escapade so it wasn’t making her any poorer.
River confirmed that the Cunard Laetitia, with all four of the Turpins on board, had taken off, bound for Persephone. Then she went over to Inara’s shuttle to play canasta until Inara got the call for the pick-up.
2
Fredson Dussault, the head of security for the Turpin’s compound, was, at the moment, all of security, because, with no one in residence and expensive alarms on all surfaces, a false economy was obtained by laying off the rest of the staff.
He looked at the security screen. One of the two cops at the door held up her badge. He buzzed them in. Officer Rudhzhenko, the one with what must have been more buttons than regulation open on an unduly tight uniform, said, “Good morning, sir. We’re here in connection with that incident yesterday.” (That would be the incident in which Jayne, perched in a tree in a courtyard far away to be out of range of the security cameras, put a rock through a back window of the vacant house with a slingshot. He was also the artist whose atelier was responsible for the police ID, although River was his apprentice in paper-hanging.)
Officer Felserpath said, “We need you to come downtown and file a report.”
“A trivial thing like that…and no one in the family is even in residence…”
“Insurance!” Rudzhenko said, toying with the zipper on one of her long black boots. “And please bring the security tape for the back of the house, we’ll need to run it through our mugshot database and see if there are any matches.”
“Can we take your car, sir?” Felserpath said, longing in her voice as patent as when she looked at puppies in the pet-shop window. “We don’t get a chance to drive a fine vehicle like this.” She crossed her fingers, knowing that she had to sell it, because they hadn’t bothered to steal a police car or doctor up a mule with insignia.
“Sure!” Dussault said, handing the keys to Rudzhenko while Felserpath accompanied him to the back of the house, where he took out the security tape. (While he struggled to unhitch it from its moorings, she also unlocked the back door.)
While it took Dussault only four minutes to notice that they weren’t heading toward police headquarters, he allocated an extra few minutes to believing that a couple of girls wouldn’t have a sense of direction and wouldn’t know how to use the GPS. He had also felt it was unmasculine to put on the seatbelt, so it was really easy for Felserpath in the back seat to open the front door, and for Rudzhenko to shove him out of the buttery leather seat and out the door. The car hadn’t been going fast at all, so he hit the road with a thump and hauled himself up, hollering ninety-percent in indignation, as he watched it disappear as Rudzhenko floored it.
They drove around for a few minutes for Kaylee to call in the coordinates to Inara. Amanda and Kaylee left the car in a bad neighborhood, knowing that bits of it would turn up in an even worse neighborhood in a couple of days. Then they went to the Blue Sun Arches of Gold for litchi bubble tea and a sack of McCharsiubao sliders. They giggled a lot but managed not to make anybody tell them to get a room until they could get back and hit Kaylee’s room.
3
Zoe was pleased but not really surprised when the gadget that Nolan said would open the back door and conk out the security cameras actually did open the back door, and she could see that the camera wasn’t recording although she didn’t bother to open it up to see if there was a tape inside. She could do a fair-to-middling black bag job with her head down low enough for security cameras to miss anyway, and they’d be gone and off the planet soon.
Nolan strolled inside, secure in the performance of his hacks, followed by Mal and Emily. Jayne came through last, taking a little extra time to track mud on the carpet and look through all the stuff in the mudroom near the back door in case there was anything worth stealing. There wasn’t, so he broke a few things.
Zoe got the safe open, and, carrying a bundle of documents in her marigold-gloved hands, appealed to Nolan for a ruling. “Bearer, certificated, bearer, bearer, certificated, bearer….” he said, handling her a sheaf of readily saleable and untraceable securities. She rooted around in the safe, found a couple of packets of large bills, threw the traceable certificates back inside and slammed the door.
“Remember,” Mal admonished his crew, “You steal anythin’ special enough we can’t fence, then it’s goin’ in your bunk, and you gotta dust it.”
“Time’s a-wastin’,” Jayne called to Emily, who knelt on the floor, running a detector around the floorboards where she’d rolled up the hand-knotted silk rug. She had already been through everything that looked like a desk drawer or file cabinet; there weren’t many, it was a vacation place, after all.
Jayne was going to throw one of those big china vases through the window, but Mal admonished him that it looked bad if the broken glass was on the outside of the crime scene, so he took the tops off the decanters and sniffed to pick the good ones. Then Mal, who had already packed a crate of stuff that looked antique enough to be worth something but not a work of art of Interpol dimensions, carefully wrapped one of the small china vases as a present for Kaylee, she went for that stuff.
Nolan whistled through his teeth. “Some delicious ex parte communications here, Ems,” he said. “Seems there’s this big case Turpin is going to be getting soon, and the defendant has a few million choice words about why Turpin should see it their way.”
“So?” Emily said.
“Well, in the right wrong hands, Turpin could get removed from office, maybe even sent to prison,” Nolan said. “Especially since they probably paid for the privilege of abusing the rules, you know? So if you can find the bribe…”
“I want those files,” Emily said, pushing the detector implacably. Nolan finished transmitting the files to Serenity’s Cortex account and started a backup to his pocket encyclopedia. He was pondering whether it would look more convincing if he left the computer where it was or smashed it, when Jayne cut the Gordian knot by unplugging the computer and slinging it under his arm.
Zoe kicked the front door open. “I’ll be out in the scrub where we parked the mule in five,” she said, “And leavin’ in ten,” she said. “Anyone who ain’t there either gotta walk back or arrange for taxi service from my man, who won’t be in the mood to put his pants back on and furnish it.”
Superbia (Pride)
1
“You did what you came here for. You figurin’ on stayin’?” Kaylee asked. Her heart was squeezed because she knew she would miss Amanda, at least for a while (although she wouldn’t miss the whirlwind Amanda had made of their possessions). But she knew what she had to do.
“Maybe,” Nolan said. “No particular place to go, and we’re still letting the ashes cool on Osiris.”
“I think you’d best pack your traps and go,” Kaylee said.
“Why? You like Amanda, the Shepherd likes Emily, we already did at least a one-generation upgrade on your nav and stabilizers and I think we can get to two if we swing past Hamphill-4 so Wash is happy about that, and River and I are running a series to see how well she can predict the AllVerse Tao Jones, if we can get that knocked you’ll be set up financially for life…”
“You can’t just stomp in here and throw money around and think that buys you everything,” Kaylee said, getting up in his face to make him shut up. “Mal’s got his pride, and you got no right to take it away from him.”
“Well, in the interests of your not taking your life into your hands every time you’re not taking it into your hands by being places where people with and without warrant cards are shooting at you…”
“Everybody says that money is like manure,” Kaylee said. “Ain’t no good till it’s spread around. But you know what? Folk that think it’s a good idea to spread it ‘round on the dinner table, don’t get asked back. And you know what else you should look up when you’re all researching? Loyalty.”
Nolan hunched his shoulders, then shrugged. “All right. I’ll ask Emily. It’s not really up to me.” He had two ballotines of chocolates left so he gave one to River and one to Zoe.
2
“Kaylee’s right,” Emily said. “No reason to hang around, we’ve got plenty of work left to do.” She handed back Inara’s décor and gave her a hug and a pair of air kisses that Queen Victoria herself couldn’t have beaten for sheer insincerity. Emily started packing, decided she was tired of all the clothes in her suitcase, so she gave them to Kaylee.
Amanda said that she wanted to stay on Serenity. She could keep sharing Kaylee’s bunk and she was sure there were lots of things she could do to pay her passage, especially if they kept going to places where there were gentlemen’s clubs. This was greeted by a chorus of such unanimous disapproval in that relentlessly antidemocratic atmosphere that Kaylee had to say, “Sweetie, I got to live with these people, you know? And it was a real lot of fun with you, but we oughta quit ‘fore we take somethin’ sweet and pound it right down into the ground.”
Shepherd Book said that they always needed heli-skiing instructors at the Upper Slopes in St. Albans, and Amanda would fit right in and meet lots of nice people and drink lots of gluhwein.
3
Nolan went to Simon’s room and kissed him goodbye. “Here,” he said, handing him an authentic piece of paper written on with an authentic fountain pen. “This is my very private comm number. You could probably sell it to a journo for enough money to keep Serenity in fuel and protein for a while. By the way, that thing River told me about, when you first got here? Why didn’t Mal just keep the imprinted bricks instead of going off and getting shot at? You’d never have to buy food, like, ever again.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Simon said. “But I was too new for them to listen to me. Well, they still don’t. Maybe he thought of it as an audition, wanted to find out if my management of Kaylee’s abdominal gunshot wound was a fluke.” He waited for a moment, then told Nolan’s back, “You’ll find someone else like David. Only, luckier,” he said.
4
Wash flew Emily and Nolan and Amanda to the spaceport in the recently vacated shuttle, staying long enough to be treated to a farewell steak dinner. Emily and Nolan went to Beaumonde for the Regatta. Nolan slipped Wash two hundred credits to make sure that Amanda actually got on the liner to St. Albans, although neither of them thought there was much Nolan or Emily could do to make her actually stay there.
It was Zoe’s kitchen shift. She cooked the last of the broccoli and the end of the sausage in the chiller (there were still two more rings of sausage in the deep-freeze) with some macaroni. There was just enough red wine for half a mug all around.
Book raised his mug in a toast. “A salute,” he said. “To an unusually lucrative mission which, as a result of careful advance planning, did not result in any injuries, and I think it may fairly be stated that we escaped without detection.” And, just on cue, Wash returned from docking the shuttle, said that he wasn’t hungry, put the plate of cookies on the table, kissed Zoe hello, and went to the bridge for pre-takeoff checks.
Zoe stared at the Shepherd. She didn’t think he was an ill-intentioned man, but even decades in an enclosed order couldn’t excuse that degree of pure heathen ignorance.
5
Simon’s head sounded so dejected that River dried the dishes that he washed. “He was only here for a week. You only had sex with him four times,” she said consolingly. “Even though one of them was an all-nighter.”
“There is that,” he said. “We liked each other. Most people don’t like us. Nolan and me, I mean, not you and me. Of course people like you. River, it’s very complicated…sex, and liking people. I hope you get to find out. I hope you don’t.”
He unfolded the piece of paper, gave River a second to memorize the number, and said, “There. You can call him if you really need to.” It didn’t take either genius or psychic ability to divine that he meant “If you survive me.” Simon lit one of the stove burners, incinerated the paper, and then put on the kettle in case anybody wandered by and wondered by the burner was lit, and because life goes on.
6
Jayne motioned Mal off to the sofa near the dining area, and leaned in to whisper in Mal’s ear. “We gotta keep an eye on Kaylee for the next while,” he said.
“We don’t want that Amanda girl rubbin’ off on her. Well, the thought of her rubbin’ off on Kaylee will keep me pleasantly occupied through many a long, cold, lonely night, but I mean her influence. ‘Cause Kaylee is an innocent-type girl, and we don’t want to go into a bar when it ain’t U-Day and we’re just there to get drunked up and our ashes hauled and gotta rescue Kaylee from where she’s dancin’ on the table and gropin’ the barback.”
“Kaylee’s got good sense,” Mal said. “No need to worry about her. Unlike some.”
“Still, I’m glad she got to have some fun,” Jayne said. “Sometimes I think this ain’t no life for a young girl, out in the Black most of the time, seein’ just the same folks—and the same mechanical malfunctions—all the time.”
“Jayne, the onliest reason her Dad let her take this job is that it was a step up for her,” Mal said. “Wasn’t nothin’ for her in that hardscrabble town ‘cept handin’ her Pop the rags to mop up the oil under the hydraulic lift. We showed her the world.”
Accedia (Despair)
“Here,” Simon said, handing Mal the last packet of laundry from his work shift. Simon turned to head back up the ladder. “What’s the matter?” Mal taunted. “You look like Santa Claus ate all the cookies, left coal in your stocking and kidnapped your puppy.”
“I miss him, okay? Is that what you want me to say? Is that the sore tooth you insist on biting down on?”
“They had no call to come in here and get my crew to commence sluttin’ around. You just met him! You didn’t even know the man for five minutes!”
Simon refrained from saying that he knew him pretty well starting at about the six-minute mark. “Well, yeah, when I’m back in….I’ve slept, well, gone to bed with, plenty of people I just met.”
“Civilization? Is that what you were going to say? Then I’ll take barbarism out here in the black.”
“That’s what you’re proud of? That’s the standard that you think nobody else can live up to? You’re just the sultan in this miniature poorly machined harem, aren’t you? Collecting all the…attractive…people you can find and keeping them around you so you can not do anything with them. And thinking yourself betrayed if luck brings them something for themselves.”
“A man has to live by his beliefs,” Mal said. “Zoe said she believes in justice. I believe in fidelity.”
“To what? To waste and missed opportunities and thrown-away connections? Do you know the last time you touched me? You were punching me.”
“That ain’t so,” Mal said, remembering a sunny day with his arm slung around Simon’s shoulder, although he had to admit that the day went to hell in a handbucket right smart after that.
“And you know the last time I touched you when I wasn’t pulling out a bullet or putting a weave in a knife slash or icing a knuckle you split punching someone else? When I could take off your shirt when it wasn’t stuck down with your blood, when I could look at your body as a man, as a beautiful man and not as a patient when I can’t look at you? You know when that was? Never.”
The hatch clicked—Simon didn’t believe in slamming it—and Mal stood there, holding something clean and soft and warm but it was just a stack of faded shirts and threadbare towels.