Firefly--The Ghost Machine, page 18
“You can at least tell me who you are,” Zoë said, unfazed. “’Less you’re too smug to.”
“It can’t do any harm, I suppose,” said the man, after a moment’s thought. “Book. Derrial Book. You might not be familiar with the name, but you’ll doubtless have heard of me by another sobriquet: the Butcher of Beylix. I’m the man, Miz Zoë Alleyne, who is going to make you rue the day you ever signed up to fight for the Independent cause.”
“We don’t have all day, son,” said Gabriel Tam, still proffering the hunting knife to Simon. “Take it. Use it. Make the act as swift as you can. Be merciful to the girl.”
Simon stood paralyzed with horror and disbelief.
“Knew it,” said Bryce Tam. “I told you, didn’t I, Gabe? I said he’d freeze up. Boy just doesn’t have the cods to do what needs to be done.”
“Give him a few moments to process,” Uncle Holden counseled. “It’s a lot to take in.”
Kaylee kept her gaze fixed on Simon. Eyes he had stared into longingly, wistfully, so many times.
Maybe this is all just a test, Simon thought. They’re seeing how far I’m prepared to go. They won’t actually make me go through with it all the way. They just want to know that I’m willing to put family before self.
“No,” said his father. “I can tell what you’re thinking, Simon. I raised you. You’re an open book to me. You’re thinking all you have to do is take the knife, and we’ll call a halt to the whole thing, let the girl go free, end of the matter. You’re thinking this is all symbolic, nothing more. But you’re sorely mistaken. Nobody is leaving here until that girl is dead. Now, it can be you who delivers the fatal strike, or it can be one of us. Makes no difference in the long run. It would simply be better for everyone concerned if it were you.”
“Then we’d know that you’re fully a Tam,” said Bryce.
Simon at last found his voice again. “This… this is evil. You have no right to do this. Kaylee and I haven’t done anything wrong. We’re two people who have fallen in love. You can’t punish us for that.”
Two people who have fallen in love. Only now, in this terrible predicament, had Simon managed to express his feelings about Kaylee out loud. The irony would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so awful.
“You mustn’t regard this as a punishment, son,” said Gabriel Tam. “All it is, is a sacrifice.”
“Think sensibly,” said Uncle Holden. “You’d marry this girl? This grease monkey? And how do you think she would behave at social occasions? At the Archimedes Club Annual Ball, for example. Or the varsity polo meet. You think it’d be okay for her to stand there and talk machinery with the great and the good of Rochester Peak? She’d be an embarrassment. To all of us. The wife of a Tam does not come from the gutter. The wife of a Tam comes from a world of etiquette and refinement.”
“You’re not even a Tam, Holden,” Simon said. “You’re a Buckingham.”
“A Buckingham is every bit the equal of a Tam.”
“Still doesn’t qualify you to pronounce on Tam family matters.” It was a cheap shot, but right then Simon didn’t have much else in his arsenal.
“Stop prevaricating,” said his father. He grabbed Simon’s hand and planted the still-sheathed knife in it. “You’re only prolonging the girl’s agony.”
“Don’t keep calling her ‘the girl.’ She has a name. Kaylee.”
“Fine. Then do the right thing by Kaylee and put Kaylee out of her misery. Go ahead.”
Simon weighed up his options. They weren’t many.
He slid the knife out of its sheath. It had a ten-inch titanium-coated steel blade with sawback teeth along the top, near the hilt, and a textured rubber handle with finger grooves. Designed for skinning, gutting, and chopping up game, it was as perfect for its purpose as any of the scalpels Simon wielded in the operating theater.
He padded over towards Kaylee. The knife’s blade glinted wickedly in the firelight.
“That’s it, son,” said Gabriel Tam with an encouraging gesture. “Don’t worry about making a mess. The three of us are going to clean everything up. We’ll bury the body in the woods, nice and deep so the wolves and the coyotes won’t unearth it. There won’t be any consequences from this. It’ll be a secret the four of us will take to our graves.”
Bryce stepped back from Kaylee, giving Simon free rein—and also, perhaps, so as to be out of range of any blood spray.
Kaylee’s expression had gone from hope to despair. All at once she had given up on the prospect of Simon somehow rescuing her. She slumped in the ladder-back chair, defeated. It seemed she thought there was nothing she could do now except resign herself to the inevitable.
Simon firmed his grasp on the knife handle.
He squatted down in front of Kaylee.
“I do love you, Kaylee,” he said. “I should have told you sooner.”
She gave him a look as if to say, Really makes no gorramn difference now, does it?
“And that’s why,” he continued, “I’m going to do this.”
He seized her by the elbow and hauled her to her feet.
Then he swung around, holding out the knife.
“Dad. Bryce. Holden. Don’t any of you wáng bā dàn move a muscle.”
Gabriel Tam scowled. “What did you just call us?”
“You heard.” Simon brandished the knife. “I’m going now, and Kaylee is coming with me. Any of you gets in my way, I will stab you.”
“He’s bluffing,” said Bryce.
Pivoting around, Simon jabbed the knife in his uncle’s direction. “Care to test that?”
Bryce studied his nephew’s face. Simon hoped he saw only pure, adamant resolve there.
Apparently he did, because Bryce took a small step backwards and raised his hands in a pacifying manner.
Simon turned around again, to face his father and Uncle Holden, and also the front door.
“Come on,” he said to Kaylee, and together they began walking towards the door.
“Simon…” said Uncle Holden.
“Son,” said Gabriel Tam. “You’re only making matters worse. You’re compounding one error of judgment with a greater error of judgment. You walk out that door, and you’ve sealed your fate.”
“What do you mean? You mean I’ll be ostracized? I can never darken the threshold of a Tam house again? I’ll be an outcast the rest of my life? I think I can live with that.”
“No,” said his father. “I mean we can’t permit you to leave this place. Not after all this. I imagine we might be able to rely on you not to tell anyone what’s happened here, but the girl?”
“Kaylee.”
“Kaylee. Her. There’s no guarantee she won’t report us to the authorities.”
“Not that it would do her much good,” Bryce chipped in. “They’d never believe her. The word of a lowly mechanic against the word of the three of us? We’d simply say she’s a liar, a fantasist. There wouldn’t even be an investigation, let alone a prosecution.”
“Good point, Bryce,” said Uncle Holden. “But word might get out nonetheless. There might still be a whiff of scandal. She could even go to the media. We can’t afford a blot on our good name.”
“Which is why, Simon,” said Simon’s father, “we are going to do everything we can to prevent you getting away. Both of you.”
“I’ll take that risk.” Simon continued on towards the door, taking Kaylee with him.
“Son, please reconsider. This is your last chance. Step outside, and you’ll be condemning yourself to death as well as her.”
At that moment, Uncle Holden lunged at Simon from the side.
Simon lashed out with the knife. He caught Holden on the forearm, slashing through his sleeve and drawing blood. His uncle stumbled backwards, clutching his injured arm and yowling like a scalded cat.
With an elbow, Simon butted the door open. He thrust Kaylee out ahead of him, meanwhile keeping himself turned towards his three relatives, with the knife poised between him and them to hold them at bay.
“Goodbye,” he said with finality, then backed out of the door after Kaylee.
They hurried across the porch. Simon knew his family members would be giving chase. They were momentarily stunned by what he had done, but they weren’t going to let him and Kaylee get away.
Down the porch steps. Towards his car. Simon fished in his pocket for the keys.
A shot rang out. A ragged-edged hole appeared in the car’s windshield.
Simon and Kaylee both hurled themselves to the ground. Another shot kicked up earth right by their feet. They scuttled around the side of the car on hands and knees.
Simon peeked over the car’s hood to see Bryce on the porch, legs spread in a shooting stance. He had a hunting rifle in his hands, one eye to the scope.
Now his father emerged from the lodge, also carrying a hunting rifle.
Bryce drew a bead on Simon’s head. Simon ducked down, and not a moment too soon. Bryce fired, and the round whanged off the car’s bodywork, ricocheting into the trees.
Gabriel Tam hastened to the edge of the porch, straddled the balustrade and lowered himself over the side to the ground.
Bryce loosed off another shot to keep Simon and Kaylee pinned in place behind the car, while his brother began moving round in a wide arc. Gabriel was aiming to take up a position somewhere to the side where he would have a clear line of fire at the two targets.
Simon used the knife to saw through the rope around Kaylee’s wrists. When her hands were free, she tugged the gag down from around her mouth.
“Simon…” she breathed.
“No talking. My dad’s trying to flank us. We have to move.”
“Can’t we get in the car and drive?”
“Bryce is a good shot. He’ll pick us off the moment we put our heads up above the dashboard. If we head that way”—Simon pointed—“and stay low, then we can keep the car between us and him until we reach the trees. But we have to go now, before my dad gets to where he needs to be.”
Kaylee nodded acquiescence. Next moment, she and Simon were crouch-running towards the forest.
“Bryce!” Gabriel Tam called out. “They’re on the move!”
“I see them,” Bryce replied, and a barrage of bullets came whizzing the two fugitives’ way. Tree bark splintered. Dead leaves erupted on the ground. One round passed so close by Simon’s head, he not only heard its waspish buzz but felt the pressure wave of its flight on the skin of his cheek.
Back at the lodge, Uncle Holden had emerged outdoors too. His voice boomed out echoingly. “Damn you, Simon. We’re coming for you! You aren’t going to get away.”
Even as he and Kaylee gained the cover of the trees, Simon had an inkling that Holden was correct.
Against three very determined men armed with high-velocity hunting rifles, the pair of them scarcely stood a chance.
After several long seconds during which Zoë looked all set to blow Wash’s brains out, she relaxed her trigger finger.
“No,” she said. “Tempting though it is, those aren’t my orders.”
“And, um, what are your orders?” Wash said.
“Question you should be asking is ‘Who’s giving them?’”
“Very next thing I was going to say.”
“You’re about to find out,” Zoë told him. “I have to say,” she added, “I’m looking forward to this.”
“Looking forward to what?”
“To seeing your face when you take this call. Go on. Boot up your sourcebox like I said.”
Wash eyed the Mare’s Leg, then his wife, and did as requested.
“Enter your password,” Zoë said.
Wash did that too.
“Now what?”
“There’ll be an incoming wave. We shouldn’t have long to wait.”
Several minutes passed. The gun remained trained on Wash, unwaveringly.
What the hell is all this about? he wondered. The one bright spot in an otherwise fairly crappy situation was the fact that he was still alive. How long that would remain the case, he had no idea. Was Zoë going to blackmail him? Was this some kind of robbery? He just couldn’t work it out. What he did know was that she wasn’t the woman he had thought she was. She was something else altogether. Something more.
An image popped up on the screen. It was a feed from what appeared to be a boardroom. Around a long oaken table sat seven men and women. The lighting was subdued, bordering on murky, so that Wash could make out little more than a face in profile here, a hand resting on the tabletop there. What he could see, however, gave an impression of wealth and influence, a center of immense corporate gravity.
“Mr. Washburne,” said the man at the head of the table. “How goes it?”
“Just dandy. My own wife’s holding me at gunpoint. Loving that. Who are you people?”
“We’ll come to that in due course. First of all, please accept our congratulations on the course of your career so far. You have conducted business in an exemplary fashion. You started out with next to nothing, and now you have more than you can possibly have dreamed. Quite the mogul.”
There was a smattering of applause from the assembled company. To Wash, it sounded bizarrely sincere.
“But then lately you have experienced the odd hitch, have you not?” said the spokesman. “A few flies in the proverbial ointment. How has that been for you?”
“An absolute joy. How do you think it’s been?”
“It’s always distressing when one’s upward trajectory is hindered, even if only slightly. It gives one a sense of… Well, mortality, I suppose. Problems are for lesser beings. It is disconcerting to be reminded that one is not as exceptional and unassailable as one has come to think. That one is not a titan after all, or for that matter a god.”
“Look,” said Wash, “this is obviously some sort of commercial proposition. And I can’t fault your sense of the dramatic. There you are, all mysterious and unidentifiable, and my wife of several years turns out to be a gun-wielding sleeper agent or some such. You have my attention. What do you want?”
“Cutting to the chase, eh?” said the spokesman. “We like that. Well then, Mr. Washburne—may I call you Wash?”
“Nope.”
“All right. Mr. Washburne it is. I’ll lay things out for you straight. We were the cause of your recent business upsets. The labor dispute, the accounting error, the attempted hostile takeover, the lawsuit—we were responsible for them all. With a little help from the dauntless and dedicated Mrs. Washburne, of course. Her inside knowledge of Pteranodon Inc.’s day-to-day affairs has proved invaluable. All this time, while you thought she was your wife and business partner, she was covertly gathering data.”
Wash flicked a glance at Zoë. She just shrugged and nodded.
“Thanks to Zoë, our spy in your camp,” the man onscreen continued, “we now know as much about you, professionally and personally, as you do yourself. Your habits. Your predilections. The crux of the matter is, we are perfectly capable of destroying you. You should consider the litany of difficulties Pteranodon has encountered over the past few weeks as an exercise of our power. We arranged it all with the merest lifting of a finger—a demonstration, an object lesson. Now imagine what we would be capable of if truly provoked. Not only could we bring your entire empire crashing down around your ears, we could see to it that you spend the rest of your days in abject penury and shame, a pariah.”
Wash felt a chill, deep inside. It didn’t occur to him for one moment that this was an idle boast. These people, whoever they were, were not messing around.
“‘What is it you want from me?’” said the spokesman. “That is your next question. And the answer is perfectly straightforward. One third of Pteranodon. A thirty-three per cent stake in the company and thirty-three per cent of all its profits in perpetuity.”
“That’s all?” said Wash. “Why not take sixty? Eighty? And my kids while you’re about it.”
“Be as facetious as you like, Mr. Washburne, if it makes you feel better. This is a one-time-only offer. It will not be repeated. You have precisely sixty seconds in which to make up your mind, although I suspect you have already decided.”
“And if I tell you go screw yourselves, you bunch of xī niú leeches? What then?”
“You are permitted that single piece of blustering bravado. That and no more. The clock is running. What’s it to be?”
Wash looked at Zoë again.
“Don’t expect me to give you any advice,” she said. “All I’ll tell you is that it makes no nevermind to me whether you give them a yes or a no. You’re the one whose future is on the line. You say no, and I’ll file for divorce, take a hefty alimony settlement and the kids, then watch from the sidelines as Pteranodon goes down in flames and you with it. You say yes, and you’re stuck with me for a while to come, so’s I can keep a close eye on you and make sure you behave and don’t try anything stupid. Everything stays pretty much the same, except you’ll be a mite poorer and, of course, you won’t have your precious Zoë sleeping with you anymore. That particular burden, I’m glad to say, is one I’m no longer going to have to bear. Meantime, we continue to be mom and dad to Celeste, Ulysses, and Uriah. They aren’t to know any different.”
Wash suppressed a groan. Bad enough he was being bullied into signing over a significant chunk of his prosperity. He was also going to have to cohabit from now on with a woman who clearly didn’t love him, and had never loved him? And pretend to their children that all was well? For how long? For good?
“You went to all that trouble,” he said to Zoë. “Married me, had babies with me. All just to maintain your cover?”
“It wasn’t all bad. I love those kids with every fiber of my being. You gave me them, and I’m grateful to you for that, if nothing else. But don’t flatter yourself there was anything meaningful between us.”
“Ever?”
“There might have been to begin with. Maybe. But all said and done, dear husband, you were only a means to an end.”
Wash turned back to the boardroom on the wave screen.
In that moment, he had never hated anyone quite as much as he hated those seven faceless people. Them and the woman he had loved completely and had believed loved him back just as much.
