Eavesdown     Eavesdown by Shanna  

 Disclaimer: I'm making no profit from this. The characters and situations
belong to Joss and his minions. This story is in response to the Chinese
phrasebook challenge at Television Without Pity.  

 Simon Tam stepped off the passenger transport at the Eavesdown Docks on
Persephone and immediately wished he could turn around and go right back
on board the ship. The miasma that assaulted him -- and there really was
no better word than "assaulted" -- was almost overpowering, a combination
of sweat, unwashed human flesh, exotic cooking odors, various bodily
fluids, dirt and decay. The sounds were even worse, a cacophony of voices,
engines and God knew what else. 

 But his journey had very little to do with his personal comfort, so he
got a better grip on his bags and forced himself to merge into the crowds.
It was twilight, and he was grateful for what light remained. This wasn't
a place he wanted to be after dark. In the distance, he could see the
sunset reflecting on the shining towers of the more prosperous part of the
city. That was where he would be more comfortable, where he should have
belonged, but not anymore. 

 His underground contact had told him to book a room at a hotel in the
Eavesdown district, where he'd get a message telling him where and when to
retrieve his cargo. It would be a place that took cash and didn't take
names. He wasn't optimistic about the quality he'd find at a place like
that. He'd certainly done his fair share of traveling -- on family
vacations, going along with his father on business trips when he was a
kid, attending various medical conferences -- but he'd never traveled like
this before, anonymously and always looking over his shoulder, staying at
the worst possible places rather than the best. 

 "My, aren't you a pretty one!" a voice catcalled from nearby. He chanced
a glance to see what had to be a prostitute. He wasn't surprised. They
tended to congregate near docks on all worlds, whether in the Core or on
the Rim. He'd treated more than a few in the emergency room when they'd
been robbed or assaulted. 

 "Hey, handsome, lookin' for a friend?" 

 "Well, hello there, pretty baby. Let Mama teach you a thing or two." 

 "Hi, good-looking, want a ride?" 

 His cheeks burning, he kept his eyes focused straight ahead, doing his
best to ignore the voices coming at him. He'd always thought it was bad
form for people blessed with advantages to complain about those
advantages, but he sometimes secretly resented his looks. People had to
really get to know him and know what he could do before they took him
seriously as more than just a pretty face. With his other advantages, such
as wealth, a good name and a prestigious position, taken into
consideration, he often wondered if anybody ever bothered to find out who
he really was, especially the women his parents made a point of
introducing to him at dinner parties and balls. They saw a good-looking,
wealthy doctor from a good family, and that was all they really cared
about. 

 That was a possible bright side to his current circumstances. He was no
longer wealthy, his good name was sullied with the outlaw stamp, he no
longer had a job and his family had disowned him. So now he was a
handsome, outlawed, homeless, unemployed doctor. What a catch! 

 He narrowly side-stepped the bloody conclusion to a knife fight and
resisted the urge to stop and render aid. That would only draw attention
to himself, and the last thing he needed was to have the authorities
question the fighters and ask if they could identify the doctor who
treated them. 

 I can't do this, he despaired for what had to be the millionth time in
his journey. He wasn't cut out for this kind of life. He was entirely
unprepared. He was doomed to fail, and when he failed, he was dooming his
sister, as well. 

 But if he didn't do anything, she was just as doomed, and he wouldn't
have been able to live with himself if he'd done nothing. To calm himself,
he resorted to a familiar exercise. *Problem: A patient arrives in the ER.
He's fallen from a scaffold on a tall building and has multiple fractures
and internal injuries. What do you do?* His mental checklist of tests and
procedures kept him occupied until he reached the hotel the underground
had sent him to, and he'd just finished saving his imaginary patient's
life as he reached the front desk. 

 It was probably a good thing that he'd been too preoccupied to notice the
exterior of the hotel, judging from the condition of the lobby. He
probably would have turned and run. He didn't think anyone had cleaned the
place since it was built. A cloud of dust rose from the carpet at each
footstep, and the few pieces of furniture looked like they'd been used for
target practice. 

 He set down his bags and hit the bell on the front desk, then waited for
the clerk to appear. It took several minutes before a woman of
indeterminate age stepped forward. She looked like she'd been weathered
and worn since childhood, and her hair was so dirty it was impossible to
tell the color. Somehow, he doubted he could expect clean sheets. He
opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat
and tried again. "I-I'd like a room for the night. Please." 

 She named a price that seemed high considering the surroundings, but he
didn't feel he had much option other than to pay it. He took the cash from
the breast pocket of his coat and handed it over. The woman handed him a
key that hung from a heavy wooden plank with the number twelve carved into
it. He thanked her and bent to pick up his bags, but froze when she said,
"You wouldn't be Mr. Jones, would you? Simon Jones?" 

 That was the alias the underground had printed on the fake identification
documents they'd given him. He'd been skeptical about their choice of
alias. The last name practically screamed fake, and using his real first
name didn't seem like an alias at all. They'd reassured him that it was
safer. It decreased the risk that he'd forget to answer to his new name
or, worse, answer to his real name when he wasn't supposed to. It was best
to keep things simple, they'd said. In other words, they knew they were
dealing with an amateur. 

 He cleared his throat again. "Yes, yes, that would be me." 

 "Message for you." She handed him a grubby envelope, which he tucked into
his coat pocket. Then he picked up his bags and headed for the stairs.
Room number twelve was at the top of the stairs on the left side of the
hallway. It took a couple of tries and both hands before he was able to
get the door unlocked, then he had to try to prop the door open with his
foot while he moved all of his bags inside. 

 He very quickly noticed he wasn't alone in the room. Somebody was already
in the bed. "Oh, excuse me, they must have given me the wrong room," he
said, but the person in the bed didn't respond. 

 He edged closer, then took a quick step back as the smell hit him. He was
pretty sure the person was dead. He'd seen enough dead bodies to recognize
the look and the smell. Just in case, though, he moved forward again to
check the pulse. As he expected, there wasn't one. Dead people didn't
particularly bother him. He'd dissected a few during his training, and
he'd even brought a couple of briefly dead people back to life. This
fellow, however, appeared to be beyond his help. From the looks of him,
he'd been dead a couple of days. Simon wasn't encouraged by what this said
about the quality of the housekeeping at this hotel. 

 As comfortable as he might be around the dead, he didn't want to share a
hotel room with them. Clutching his key, he stepped into the hallway and
spotted a maid with her service cart. What, exactly, was one supposed to
say when complaining about a corpse in one's hotel room? He could barely
form a coherent thought at the moment, let alone a meaningful sentence. 

 "Chuang2shang4 you3 shi1ti3, qing3 huan4 yi2xia4 chuang2dan1!" he shouted
at the maid, then mentally kicked himself. What kind of idiot would bother
to request clean sheets when he'd found a corpse in his hotel bed? The
sheets were the least of his concerns. 

 The maid looked dubious, but when he opened the door and showed her
inside, her eyes only widened a little bit. He wondered just how often
they found corpses in the beds in this place. "Perhaps a different room
for you?" she asked. "I'll go get a key." He handed over his wooden number
twelve plank, then stood in the doorway of the room to wait for her to get
back. He heard raised voices coming from the lobby, but he couldn't follow
the words. A few minutes later, the maid returned with another wooden
plank. "Now you're in eleven, okay?" 

 She held the door to room number twelve propped open for him while he
transferred his bags across the hall into the new room. "Sorry for the
inconvenience," she said. She hesitated for a moment, as if waiting for a
tip, but he'd be damned if he'd tip someone after being forced to switch
rooms due to a dead body in the bed. She finally gave up and went away,
and he shut the door, made sure it was locked, turned the interior
deadbolt, connected the chain, then dragged the room's one rickety chair
to wedge under the doorknob. He wasn't taking any chances in this place.
There was no telling how the dead man had ended up that way. 

 Now that he was more or less safe, for the time being, a delayed reaction
shock set in and he had to sit on the edge of the bed because his legs
were shaking so badly that they threatened to stop supporting him. Then he
had to clasp his hands together to keep them from shaking. He was not cut
out for this kind of work or this kind of life. "Why me, River?" he
whispered. 

 He could almost see her in front of him, with that look of exaggerated
patience she got when she was dealing with someone who wasn't nearly as
bright as she was. "Who else, Simon?" she asked. 

 She had a point. True, their father probably could have put a stop to all
of this with the right word to the right people. Gabriel Tam was
influential enough that the government wouldn't have stonewalled him if
he'd made any kind of protest. But he wouldn't have seen the code in the
letters if they'd been sent to him. Hell, he'd even refused to see the
code when Simon had broken it and shown it to him, highlighted and
annotated. Who else, indeed. 

 The problem was, he felt doomed to failure. He was a surgeon, not a spy,
resistance fighter or even a very good liar. Unfortunately, River wouldn't
see it that way. For whatever reason that he'd never been able to fathom,
she'd always idolized her big brother. Even when she was correcting his
spelling and critiquing his homework, she acted like she thought he was
infallible. As an infant, she stopped crying when he picked her up. She'd
taken her first steps to come to him. Her first word had been his name --
his real name and not some baby-talk nickname. 

 He had a feeling, though, that some of her hero worship might have faded
by now. It had been years since she had sent the first coded message. By
now, she'd probably given up hope that he could do anything to help her.
He hoped she knew that he would have tried his best, even if he ultimately
failed. 

 With a burst of nervous energy, he got off the bed and began pacing the
room. This was crazy. He was crazy. Maybe they'd all been right about him
-- his parents, his friends, his colleagues. He could hear the chatter in
the hospital corridors: 

 "Hey, did you hear about Tam? He finally snapped." 

 "We all saw that coming. He was going off the deep end. It was only a
matter of time." 

 "Poor kid, the stress was too much for him." 

 That was the only conclusion they could come to, given the fact that he'd
disappeared into thin air after acting weird for years. He'd been erratic
and twitchy. He'd gone from good citizen to being far too familiar with
blackout zones, the seedier parts of town and the interior of police
stations. 

 Just thinking about it made him start shaking again. *Problem: There's
been a mid-air flyer collision. Multiple wounded, all arriving
simultaneously. Triage, then treatment. What do you do?* 

 He was halfway through mentally evaluating the accident victims when he
had to laugh out loud. They must have been right about him. After all, he
was having conversations with his absent sister and treating imaginary
patients in his head. He'd given up the job he'd trained most of his life
for, alienated his family, given most of his money to a shadowy
organization he knew next to nothing about and set off to the edge of the
system on nothing more than a promise from people he didn't entirely
trust. He was stark raving out of his mind. He should just get up in the
morning, find the first transport back to Osiris and check himself into a
mental facility for evaluation. 

 Only, he knew that's not the way it would go. Even if he made it to that
mental facility, he knew he'd never be allowed to leave. At one of the
stops along the way he'd checked his bank account and found it frozen.
He'd barely got away from the terminal before police converged on it. They
knew why he'd left and what he was doing, and were trying to make it as
difficult as possible. They wouldn't take such measures for a young doctor
who'd buckled under stress and was suffering from delusions. As the old
saying went, you weren't paranoid if they really were out to get you. 

 He belatedly remembered the note the desk clerk had given him. He sat
back on the bed and pulled the envelope out of his pocket, then opened it
with trembling fingers. All it said was, "Your cargo will be ready after
noon tomorrow, Eavesdown cargo storage, bay 7." He felt faint. This was
proof. It was for real. He wasn't crazy. Well, maybe a little bit, but he
wasn't suffering from delusions. Still clutching the note, he bent over
and put his head between his knees until the room stopped spinning. With a
deep breath, he straightened up and checked the clock on the nightstand.
It was still early evening, far too many hours until he would be reunited
with his sister, or rather with her cryosleep chamber. 

 He wasn't hungry, but he forced himself to nibble on a ration bar, just
to keep his strength up and prevent another fainting spell. From this
point on, personal weakness was something he couldn't allow himself. He
had to protect his sister at all costs. Period. 

 The noise from the street below showed no signs of fading, but he knew he
had to at least pretend to rest. He undressed and put on his pajama pants,
then hung up his suit and brushed it carefully. He wouldn't be buying new
clothes anytime soon, so the clothes he had would have to last a while. He
pulled back the covers on the bed, and after taking a good, long look at
the condition of the sheets, he pulled on his old red sweater and a pair
of socks, then slipped an undershirt over his pillow. He thought about
putting on surgical gloves because he really didn't want to touch those
sheets with his bare skin, but that might be overkill. He was going to
have to get used to less-than-ideal conditions. This was very likely the
way the rest of his life would be. That was a depressing thought. 

 As tired as he was, he couldn't relax enough to get to sleep. He jumped
at every sound, sure that it would be federal agents coming to arrest him.
Come to think of it, even if they knew where he was, they probably
wouldn't make their move until he was in possession of the cryosleep
chamber. Otherwise, there wasn't much of a case against him, and their
real objective was getting River back. They'd wait until he led them to
her, which meant he was safe for the night. 

 Strangely enough, he found that almost reassuring. Reassuring enough, at
least, to allow him to get to sleep. 

 He woke the next morning to light streaming into his room and even more
noise from the street below than there had been the night before,
something he hadn't thought possible. After washing, shaving and dressing
he forced himself to eat another ration bar. It was a godawful substitute
for food, but it was better than having to leave the room before he
absolutely had to, and he wasn't even sure he could find anything better
nearby. 

 He'd taken his time at doing all of these tasks, and he still had a
couple of hours to go. He didn't have to check out of the hotel until
noon, and he didn't intend to leave until the last possible second. He
occupied himself by unpacking and repacking his bags, making sure
everything was in order. It was difficult to get his mind around the fact
that these bags held everything he owned. Everything he and his sister
owned, he corrected himself. One bag held the few items of River's he'd
been able to grab from her room before his father had thrown him out of
the house for good. He had no idea if she'd grown since she'd been off at
school, so he'd selected things that were long and loose and should fit
her no matter what. He'd also brought her favorite childhood doll. She'd
need something other than him that was familiar. 

 Finally, it was time to go. He gathered his bags, picked up his key and
headed down to the lobby. He dropped the key off at the front desk, then
steeled himself to face the chaos of the Eavesdown streets. They weren't
as frightening as they'd been in the encroaching darkness, but they were
still noisy, busy and smelly. He'd familiarized himself with a map of
Eavesdown on his encyclopedia during his long journey to Persephone, so he
knew exactly where to go to get to the cargo storage facility. 

 There was one man on duty at the front desk. He looked like he hadn't
bathed in weeks, and his clothes had probably never been washed. The man
wore a t-shirt that once might have been white but which now was
discolored beyond repair. It didn't quite fit him, leaving a sizable gap
above his waistline through which a flabby belly protruded. The man
scratched his bare belly as he said, "Somethin' I can help you with, son?"


 "I have cargo stored in bay seven," Simon said. 

 "Oh yeah, just came in an hour or so ago. Fellow said you'd be comin' for
it. Where you want us to deliver it?" 

 Simon froze. He hadn't really considered that yet. "Deliver it?" 

 "Well, I'm just assumin' you want it put on another ship, otherwise you'd
have just had it shipped to wherever you wanted it 'round 'bout these
parts, right?" 

 "Oh. Right. Well, I-I haven't secured transport yet. I just wanted to
check on my cargo first." He wanted to see it for himself. He wouldn't
know until well after he reached Boros what was really inside, but he'd
feel a lot better if he could verify that it really was a cryosleep
chamber and that it was functioning properly. 

 The man leveraged himself out of his chair with much grunting, then took
a key ring off a hook on the wall and said, "Right this way, son." Simon
followed him past a series of wire cages. The man came to a stop and
unlocked one of the cages. "There you go. That what you were expectin' to
see?" 

 Simon held his breath as he stepped forward and let his bags fall to the
ground at his feet. It was as best as he could tell a real cryosleep
chamber. He checked the readings, and they were all satisfactory. Resting
one hand on top of the box, he thought, I'm here, mei-mei. We'll soon be
safe. 

 He turned back to the attendant and said. "I'll need to go line up
transportation. May I leave my bags here?" 

 "Sure can. But we won't transport them to your ship. Union rules." 

 "Right. Okay. I-I'll be back soon." 

 Now he had to brave the docks area again. It was much less intimidating
in daylight, but it still wasn't pleasant. At least he had a destination
planned. Based on his own research and what the underground had told him,
Boros would be the best place to wait until River came out of cryosleep.
They'd probably have to move on from there soon enough, but it would do
for now. 

 He walked down the row of ships, reading the signs displaying their
destinations and departure times. He'd only found one heading for Boros,
but it was leaving in two days, and he didn't want to stay here that long.
If the signs were depressing, the ships were even more so. Most of them he
wouldn't trust to shelter him from a rainy day, let alone safely convey
him and his sister through the vast emptiness of space. He shuddered at
the thought of all that nothingness. 

 Finally, he reached another sign advertising a departure to Boros. They
were set to leave at 1500, which was plenty soon enough for him. While he
was still studying the sign, a cheerful voice called out, "Hi there!" He
looked up to see a girl sitting in a lawn chair, twirling a flowered
umbrella behind her. She was extraordinarily pretty, mostly because of the
sunny smile that lit her face. Her features were fine enough, but he felt
like most of her prettiness came from within. She was joy in human form.
"Lookin' for a ride?" she asked. 

 He hesitated. Before last night, he never would have considered that she
might mean anything other than transportation, but after those prostitutes
he'd passed, he couldn't be sure what she was asking. No matter how he
answered, he risked making a fool of himself. If he took her at face value
and that wasn't what she meant, he'd look hopelessly naive. If he took it
as a different kind of invitation, he'd only insult her. He settled for
asking a question of his own. "Is this your ship?" 

 "Yeah. Well, not technically. Captain Reynolds owns her. But I look after
her. I'm the chief engineer. Actually, the only engineer, and that's just
a fancy way of saying I'm the mechanic. Her name's Serenity. Ain't she a
beauty?" 

 He looked up at the ship looming over them. "Beauty" wasn't exactly the
word he'd use to describe it. From what he could see, it was old, battered
and rusted. He tried to think of something nice to say. He was a terrible
liar, but he didn't want to hurt the girl with his true opinion. 

 "I know she don't look like much," she said, so much closer to him that
he jumped in surprise when she spoke. While he was looking up at the ship,
she'd come over to stand next to him. "But ships are kind of like people.
It's not the way they look, it's what's inside that counts. Now, that
don't mean that pretty ships -- or pretty people --" she gave him a look
that made him blush "-- are always bad. It's just that's not the most
important thing. When it comes to a ship, the outside don't matter at all,
so long as it keeps the air in, right? What really matters in a ship is
the engines. They make all the difference between a good ride and a bad
one. Serenity here runs real smooth and quiet-like. With other ships, that
ain't always the case. See that one over there?" He turned to see that she
was pointing at a nearby ship with a gleaming, polished hull. "She's as
shiny as all get-out, but when she runs, it's like this." She made roaring
and sputtering noises and her whole body shook in what Simon presumed was
meant to be an imitation of an engine. The display was so ludicrous, yet
so delightfully uninhibited, that he couldn't help but smile. It almost
hurt his face, it had been so long since he'd had a reason for a genuine
smile. 

 She stopped her engine imitation and her smile grew even bigger. "So, you
can smile, after all." Reaching up, she tapped his cheek lightly with one
finger. "And you have a very nice smile. You should do that more often."
Now he knew he was turning ten shades of red. He didn't think he'd ever
been flirted with quite this boldly. Back home, the women would never lay
their cards on the table like that. Now that he thought about it, it was
probably just a sales technique, anyway. Who could resist a pretty girl
who had a knack for making a man feel special? 

 She didn't seem to notice his discomfort, for she went right on talking.
"I'm Kaylee, by the way," she said, grabbing his hand and shaking it. She
had a firm grip, and he could feel the roughness of calluses and a few
healed cuts on her hands. 

 "It's very nice to meet you, Kaylee," he said formally, instinctively
falling back on a lifetime of habit. Even as he shook her hand, his
attention wandered back to her ship. It didn't look like a passenger
transport. More like a smuggling vessel. It had a generally disreputable
appearance.. A loud "Ahem" shook him out of his thoughts. He forced his
attention back to Kaylee. 

 "You know, it is customary in most places to introduce yourself when
someone introduces herself to you," she said sternly, but her eyes were
laughing. 

 "Oh. Oh, I-I'm sorry. I'm Simon." 

 She squeezed his hand. "It's very nice to meet you, Simon." She didn't
let go of his hand. He waited for her to ask his last name, but she
didn't. Then again, she hadn't given him hers. "So, Simon, are you coming
with us?" 

 "I have some cargo. Do you have space for that?" 

 She laughed and ran her thumb across the back of his knuckles. "We're
mostly cargo space. We just take passengers from time to time. But we have
real nice passenger quarters, anyway. What kind of cargo is it?" 

 He stiffened instinctively, but it was a natural question. "It's not
large, just some medical equipment. I'm a doctor." That was the truth,
more or less. A cryosleep chamber could be considered medical equipment. 

 Her eyes went wide. "Ooh, I don't think we've ever had a doctor on board
before. We don't even have one on the crew. Cap'n and Zoe do most of the
doctorin'. They had to do field first aid in the war." She winked at him.
"Maybe we'll have to take advantage of your services while you're on
board. You are comin' with us, right?" 

 "What kind of crew do you have?" 

 She frowned, like she was mentally working through the roster. "Well,
let's see, there's Captain Reynolds. And Zoe, she's first mate. Wash is
our pilot. He's married to Zoe. And then there's Jayne and me." He
hesitated to ask what a "Jayne" was. "Oh, and there's Inara, but she's not
on the crew. She just rents one of the shuttles and lives there. She's a
Companion." She said this last with a trace of awe in her voice, then she
narrowed her eyes. "You wouldn't have a problem with that, would you?" 

 "No, not at all." While he'd never engaged the services of a Companion
himself, he'd had plenty of reason to be grateful for their extensive
training in the occasions when he'd been seated next to them at dinner
parties. They had an ability to make small talk flow smoothly, a skill he
lacked entirely. When talking to a Companion, he almost felt like a good
conversationalist, even if he knew that any interest in what he had to say
was feigned. 

 "Well, that's good, then. Oh, and she don't service the crew or
passengers. Just thought you should know." 

 "How many passengers are on this run?" 

 "So far just one, a Shepherd. And you." She said the last with another
one of her bright smiles. She was quite the saleswoman. 

 "How much, for me and my cargo to Boros?" It felt strange to ask the
question. He'd never had to consider the cost of anything. But now every
bit of money he had was currently in his possession, and he wouldn't have
a way to get more until he ran across someone so desperate for a doctor
that they wouldn't care about references or credentials. She named a price
that seemed reasonable enough, if a bit low. He wasn't going to argue with
her, though. 

 "So, what do you think, Simon? You flyin' with us?" 

 He glanced again at the ship. This would be an easier decision to make if
he could think straight. Unfortunately, Kaylee's sunny smiles had messed
up his thought processes when they melted the ice that had filled his
veins ever since he'd first learned that River was in danger. *Problem:
Your patient's heart has stopped beating. What do you do?* Except, unlike
his imaginary patient, his problem wasn't that his heart wasn't beating,
but rather that it was, what felt like clear out of his chest, for the
first time in a very long while, and at the worst possible time. What was
it he'd sworn so recently? No more personal weaknesses. No fear, no
selfish motivations, no major decisions swayed by the presence of a pretty
girl whose smiles made him feel warm inside. This was a decision he needed
to make with his head, not with his heart -- or any other portion of his
anatomy. 

 Then again, would Serenity be a bad choice even if he could pretend that
Kaylee wasn't standing there in her brightly patterned silk jacket worn
over mechanic's coveralls, twirling her umbrella over her shoulder while
she smiled at him and held his hand? It was going to the right place. It
was leaving soon. With a small crew, they'd be so busy they wouldn't have
time to pry into his affairs. If he was right about it being a smuggling
ship, they'd be as eager as he was to avoid the authorities. And if there
was a chance that the journey wouldn't have to be lonely or unpleasant for
him, then that was just a bonus. 

 "Yes, I believe I am," he said, freeing his hand from her grasp so he
could reach into his pocket for the fare. 

 Her smile grew even larger, and she bounced up and down a few times. "Oh,
shiny! I'm so glad. We can get to know each other on the way. It'll be
fun." He was a little overwhelmed by her enthusiasm and had to wait for
her to quit bouncing so he could hand her his money. She didn't even count
it before she stuffed the money into her pocket. 

 "I'll have to go take care of my cargo," he told her. "I'll be back
soon." 

 "Don't be late. Captain Reynolds usually likes to get away a bit early.
You'd better be on board well before departure time." 

 He turned to go, and she waved good-bye to him like they were parting for
hours. He waved halfheartedly in response, his head still spinning
slightly. Kaylee was certainly a force of nature, and he still wasn't sure
if he'd just been conned by a master. As he walked away, he thought he
heard a gleeful cry of "Wheeeee!" coming from behind him. 

 The same attendant was still sitting at the front desk in the cargo
storage warehouse. "You found transport?" he asked as Simon approached. 

 "Yes. A ship called Serenity." He gave the docking bay number, then
added, "They're leaving at 1500, and I need to be loaded well before
then." 

 "Don't worry about it. We'll get right on it. I imagine you want your
bags." Simon nodded, and the man pried himself out of his chair, got the
key ring and went once more to the storage locker. As Simon gathered his
belongings, the attendant was already bellowing for someone to take care
of moving the crate. With one last glance over his shoulder at the
cryosleep chamber, Simon headed back to Serenity. 

 When he got there, Kaylee was talking to someone else, apparently another
potential passenger. While she smiled and looked enthusiastic, she didn't
appear to be flirting. She wasn't touching him or holding his hand. Maybe
it hadn't been just sales technique, after all. Simon hovered in the
background until they'd completed the transaction. By the time he stepped
forward to greet her, a small wheeled vehicle with a trailer behind it had
arrived at the docking bay. On the trailer was the cryosleep chamber. 

 "This your cargo?" Kaylee asked. 

 "Yes. Where should they put it?" 

 "We ain't puttin' it nowhere but right here," the man driving the vehicle
said. "We don't load ships. Union rules." 

 Simon started to protest, but Kaylee stopped him with a hand on his arm.
She turned to look over her shoulder at the ship's cargo bay and shouted,
"Wash! Got some cargo needs loadin'." Seconds later, another wheeled
vehicle with a trailer backed down the cargo ramp and stopped next to the
vehicle from the warehouse. A blond man then jumped off and he and the
cargo driver transferred the cryosleep chamber to the other trailer. Simon
held his breath the whole time. Then the cargo vehicle drove off, and
Simon followed his cargo -- his life -- to the ship. 

 "Please be careful with that," he called out as Wash drove up the ramp. 

 He turned to see three more people arriving at the ship, two men and a
women, all of them quite tall. The man in the lead stopped and gave him a
long look while the others went on inside. Simon got the distinct
impression that he'd been measured and found wanting. Not that he was too
concerned about this man's opinion. He looked cold, unfriendly and
untrustworthy. His icy stare was the exact opposite of Kaylee's warm
friendliness. Simon steeled his own features into a similar icy coolness. 

 Kaylee made the formal introductions. "Mal, this is Simon. Simon, this is
our captain." 

 Oh God, this was the captain? Then it possibly did matter what this man
thought of him. Fighting to keep his cool, Simon nodded and said, "Captain
Reynolds." 

 "Welcome aboard," the captain said, although his eyes said that Simon was
anything but welcome. He turned to Kaylee and asked, "This all we got?" 

 Kaylee nodded, then turned to give Simon a reassuring smile. Simon didn't
feel very reassured. He had a feeling the captain would prefer not to have
him on his ship, and he would have been happy to oblige, if he had any
choice in the matter. He hefted his bags and went deeper into the cargo
bay. Kaylee grabbed her chair and umbrella and slipped into the cargo bay
just as the airlock doors slid shut with clang that had a ring of
finality. There was no turning back now, and he couldn't help but wonder
if he'd made the wrong decision. 

 He rested a hand on the cryosleep chamber and thought, I'm sorry,
mei-mei. It was the best I could do. 

 Then Kaylee came bouncing up to him. "C'mon, I'll show you to your room."
She grabbed one of his bags out of his hand before he had a chance to
protest. He had no choice but to follow her deeper into the ship. She led
him through a doorway, then down a passage, where she stopped and slid a
door aside. "Here you go. Nice, ain't it?" 

 He went inside and looked around. It wasn't bad, really. And there wasn't
a corpse in the bed, which was a marked improvement over his previous
accommodations. Kaylee followed him into the room and put down his bag,
the turned to give him another one of her smiles. "I'm glad you're flying
with us, Simon. I think I knew you would be from the time I saw you. It
was meant to be." She started to leave, then paused and said, "Oh, the
captain will want everybody up in the dining room in a little bit to go
over the rules of the ship. Just look for one of the stairways and go up.
Or I could come by and show you the way." 

 "I'm sure I can find it. I don't want to keep you from your duties." 

 "Okay, then. See you around." With a flutter of her fingers, she was
gone. 

 And here he was, on a disreputable looking ship with a disreputable
looking crew (with the possible exception of one very pretty girl) and a
captain who already hated his guts. Meant to be? Who knew? He'd never been
particularly religious. Not that he didn't believe, just that he'd never
put much thought into it. The idea that someone might have been directing
his life to put him in this place at this time was, quite frankly,
terrifying. This wasn't where he wanted to be. But it was where he had to
be, and so far, everything had gone as well as he could have hoped to get
him to this point in his journey. Now, if only whoever was guiding his
actions could just get him to where he was supposed to end up, he might
even survive. 

 The End  If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Shanna