The Ghost Machine, page 23
part #4 of Firefly Series
He could barely see her face now through the tears blurring his vision.
“Kaylee…”
It was then that a sixth person entered the clearing.
River knew, as soon as she stepped into Simon’s dream, that she should have got there earlier.
In the middle of a forest clearing, Simon was bent over the supine form of Kaylee, whose eyes had lost all their usual luster and whose chest was rising and falling erratically as her lungs took their last few desperate sips of air.
Watching over the pair were River’s father and two uncles, hunting rifles in hand. The three older men were blank-faced, as though they had switched off every emotion. All River could detect in them was a kind of grim satisfaction, the sense of a difficult job accomplished.
As River looked on, Kaylee’s chest went still.
In that moment, Simon was broken. He bowed his head. His shoulders heaved, and a series of deep, guttural cries escaped his throat—a sound so raw, so primal, it was barely human.
River longed to rush over and comfort him, even though she was well aware that Kaylee was not dead in the real world. Not yet, at least. With Serenity hurtling towards Luna Minor, it was only a matter of time.
Instead, she addressed the others. They were her first priority. Potential opposition.
“Dad,” she said. “Bryce. Uncle Holden.”
Her father scowled. “River? Honey, this is a surprise. Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I need you to leave, all three of you. I want to speak with Simon, alone.”
“Leave?” said Bryce. “Now why should we do that?”
“Because you’re only going to try and stop me waking Simon up. I’d much rather you just walked away and didn’t make things difficult for me.”
“Difficult? I’ve no idea what you’re implying.”
“I think you do, Bryce. Your goofy playboy act serves you well, but underneath it you’re sharper than you let on.”
“The girl has something of an attitude, doesn’t she?” said Uncle Holden. “I’ve always said you and Regan give her far too much leeway, Gabriel. Isabelle and I are much stricter about what the twins do and say, and they’re all the better for it.”
“With all due respect, Holden,” said Gabriel Tam, “Cordelia and Flavia aren’t geniuses. River is.”
“Even so. River’s success in life has come at a price. I certainly wouldn’t let my daughters be quite so pert as yours has just been.”
“You know what, Holden?” Gabriel nodded. “Actually, you make a good point. River, apologize to Bryce.”
“Or what?” River said. “You’ll shoot me, like you did Kaylee?”
As if on cue, all three men raised their rifles.
River had been hoping not to antagonize them. That hadn’t been the plan at all. It was hard not to resent them, however. They might not be her real father and uncles. They might be just warped versions of the genuine Gabriel Tam, Bryce Tam, and Holden Buckingham, twisted out of true by the effects of the siren on Simon’s psyche. But how they had behaved, what they had done, was still unforgivable. They had just murdered one of the kindest-hearted people River had ever met. They had tried to murder Simon too. How could she keep herself from hating them for that?
“Last chance, River,” her father said. “Apologize, or you’ll go the same way the mechanic girl did.”
Simon’s dream was doing its best to reject her, just as Wash’s, Zoë’s, and Jayne’s had.
But time was running short. River had to get someone on the ship to wake up, and if there was any person she could get through to, it was surely her brother. Assuming, that was, Simon’s grief over Kaylee hadn’t utterly destroyed him. Which it may well have.
Another, similar trauma might just do the trick.
River wondered how this was going to feel. Would it hurt? Probably would.
She squared her jaw, balled her fists, and broke into a run.
As one, the three rifles zeroed in on her.
As one, the rifles fired.
River!”
Simon was in his bunk, sprawled half on, half off the bed. He gaped around him in alarm.
River. Where was River? He had watched them shoot her—his father and his uncles. Maybe they had just winged her. No, unlikely. Three shots. High-velocity hunting rifles at point-blank range. He had seen her body hurtle backwards, limbs flailing, as though she’d been suddenly yanked by a rope. That wasn’t “winged.”
But there was still a chance she was okay. He had failed to save Kaylee, but if River was only wounded, he could save her.
It took him several moments to realize he wasn’t in the forest clearing not far from the family hunting lodge. He was aboard Serenity.
He was also feeling like death warmed up.
He began to analyze his physical condition. Rapid heartrate. Pain between the temples. Difficulty focusing his eyes. A twinge in his chest.
All symptoms of excessively elevated blood pressure.
He put index and middle fingers to his wrist, finding his pulse. He concentrated on slowing his breathing, reducing the excess carbon dioxide in his cardiovascular system. He wasn’t ill. This was a panic attack.
Hardly surprising, given that he’d just seen both Kaylee and River get shot.
But neither of them was here with him now, in his bunk.
A dream.
Must have been.
Some kind of appallingly vivid dream.
The breath-control exercise worked. Simon’s pulse began to steady. His head began to clear.
He got to his feet.
And promptly keeled over, flat on his face.
Riding in Caleb Dahl’s chauffeur-driven limousine along the highway that traced the curve of Clearcrest Bay, Kaylee seethed with self-recrimination. How could she not have seen this coming? The mansion on Harmsworth Avenue. The dim sum and mint juleps. The overpayments. The man’s sleek magnetism. Even this gorramn limo. It was all too perfect. Of course there had to be a catch.
The catch, in this case, being that Caleb Dahl was an out-and-out crook.
They sat together now, Dahl with his gun trained on her, and he was smiling as silkily as a well-fed lion. When he caught her looking at him sidelong, all he did was arch an eyebrow, as if to say, This is your fault, Kaylee. You should have known better.
“Who are they?” she asked eventually.
“Who?” he replied. “Those folks back at the spaceport? Nobodies.”
“They’re somebodies to you. Else why would they be in chains? Must have a value if you don’t want ’em getting away.”
“If you must know, they are the dregs of the ’verse,” Dahl said. “Some of the worst the Border planets have to offer. A concatenation of scoundrels and wastrels, drifters and druggies, hoboes and vagabonds. People no one wants in their neighborhood. In a way, I’m performing a useful service. I’m kind of a cleaning operation, like the plumber who comes to unclog the sink.”
“They can’t all be scoundrels and wastrels and whatever else you just said. I saw children on that Firefly. Kids not even in their teens.”
“Even scoundrels and wastrels have families. Sometimes you get one fella, he comes with dependents. A job lot, you might say.”
“But what do you want them for?” Kaylee said. “Do you sell them off as slaves? Forced labor? What?”
“Now that there would be a poor business model indeed. Trying to convince people to purchase as employees those who are congenitally not predisposed towards working? To shift the shiftless?” Dahl chuckled at his own wordplay. “I would be a pauper within weeks.”
“Prostitution, then.”
“Do I look like some glorified whoremonger?”
“Don’t know. Never met one, glorified or otherwise.”
“No, Kaylee, the raggedy-ass assortment on that ship—and all the others I’ve smuggled onto New Virginia before them—have but one thing to offer. By simple virtue of their being born with the parts common to all us humans, they can make themselves very lucrative.”
It took Kaylee a moment to fathom the meaning of this.
“Their organs,” she said. “You’re an organ peddler.”
“I prefer to think of it as ‘dealer in pre-mortality donations,’” Dahl said. “You know how it works in the normal course of events. You have an organ that’s failing, you put yourself on the waiting list for a replacement. Assuming you get lucky and a match is found, it costs you a small fortune in hospital bills for the transplant op. If you have insurance, your premiums skyrocket to the very limits of exorbitancy and beyond. Me, I cut through all that. I offer a range of organs, in all tissue types, fresh as they come. Well, maybe not wholly fresh. Some of the donors have a history of abusing their bodies. I can’t guarantee that the organ you’re getting will be in pristine condition. But at least you’ll be getting one and, providing you can scrape together the dough, at a relatively affordable price.”
“It costs someone else’s life. That’s not my definition of affordable.”
“Not necessarily their life. A single kidney, for instance. We can harvest one of those, and the donor won’t die.”
Kaylee thought through the ramifications. “You’re saying you keep your so-called donors alive?”
“As long as they can continue to provide viable parts, yes. Plus, I own several properties around town where I furnish them with accommodation, food and water, round-the-clock medical care, a few creature comforts—likely more than they could ever lay claim to beforehand, during their previous unproductive existences.”
“They’re your prisoners and you gradually dismantle them piece by piece until they’ve got nothing left to offer.”
“When you put it like that, it sounds as though I’m cannibalizing them for parts, like you yourself would with an old wreck from the junkyard,” said Dahl. “And now that I think about it, it’s a fairly accurate comparison. Just a mite reductive for my tastes.”
“You’re inhuman.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
Kaylee could scarcely bring herself to ask what she asked next. “And me? What are you intending to do with me? Am I going to become another of your ‘pre-mortality donors’?”
Dahl chewed his lip. “See, I am in a quandary over you, Kaylee. You know too much now. That’s plain. I can’t really let you go free. You’re the type that would run straight to the Feds and blab. But I’ve grown more’n a smidge fond of you. There’s my dilemma. I wouldn’t want to have to do away with you. Apart from anything else it would be a shame to lose such a talented mechanic. And one who is honest, good-natured, and easy on the eye as well. Which, mechanic-wise, makes you pretty much a unicorn. No, I am most conflicted here, so I’m taking you home until I can figure things out.”
At least she wasn’t going to die imminently. That was some comfort to Kaylee. Unlike poor Gerard the spaceport security guard, whom Dahl had killed on the spot without batting an eyelid.
In the interim, however, while Dahl pondered her fate, she was presumably going to be his captive. Detained at his mansion like the proverbial bird in a gilded cage.
The limousine pulled up outside the mansion gates. They opened automatically, and the car glided through and continued on towards the house, its headlamps illuminating its route between the cypresses that lined the crushed-shell driveway.
As soon as the limo drew to a halt, Dahl climbed out, beckoning Kaylee to follow him with a wave of his gun. A sea breeze wafted her face as she stood. Distant breakers rumbled and sighed. She looked towards the gates, which were just beginning to swing shut. Too far to make a run for it. She would never reach them before they closed, and, anyway, if she did attempt a bid for freedom, Dahl would probably decide he had no choice but to shoot her. She would be making his mind up for him.
At that moment, a vehicle parked a short way down Harmsworth Avenue, in the shadowy margin between two streetlamps, revved into life. Tires screeched as it accelerated from a standing start and made for the narrowing gap between the closing gates. It scraped through with inches to spare and came careering up the driveway, continuing to gain speed.
Dahl didn’t hesitate. He loosed off a couple of rounds at the approaching vehicle. Whoever was behind the wheel clearly meant him no good.
At the same time, Dahl’s chauffeur stepped out of the limousine, drawing his own gun. He leaned on the limo’s roof and got off a couple of shots of his own.
The bullets sparked off the oncoming vehicle’s bodywork. It was now close enough that Kaylee could identify it as a tow truck. She had a sneaking suspicion she knew whose tow truck it was too.
Dahl steadied himself, lining up a shot at the truck’s windshield. Kaylee flung herself at him, ramming an elbow into his arm and throwing off his aim.
Next instant, the tow truck went barreling front-fender-first into the side of the limousine. Kaylee and Dahl were both standing to the rear of the car, out of harm’s way. The same could not be said for Dahl’s chauffeur, who was on the other side of the limo. The crunching, rending impact shunted the limousine sideways towards the house, taking the chauffeur with it. His legs were caught beneath the chassis and he went under. His scream was abruptly cut off.
The tow truck and the limo it had T-boned came to rest against the mansion’s front steps. Neither vehicle had benefited from the crash. One side of the limousine was caved in. The tow truck’s front end had concertinaed inward and fluids were spattering out from under its engine block. Both, it would be safe to say, were write-offs.
Caleb Dahl looked aghast. No, Kaylee thought, he looked affronted. As though he couldn’t believe anyone would have the nerve to do what the driver of the tow truck had just done.
“Now, who in tarnation would—?” he began.
She cut him off. “My father, that’s who.”
The driver’s door of the tow truck—upon which the words ALOYSIUS FRYE AND DAUGHTER, MECHANICAL REPAIRS were stenciled—squealed open. A determined-looking Aloysius Frye emerged, a double-barreled shotgun in his hands.
“Drop it,” he said, leveling the shotgun at Dahl.
Dahl leveled his pistol at Aloysius Frye in return. “You drop yours.”
“Don’t reckon I can do that, Mr. Dahl, being as that’s my daughter you have there. Her safety is my one and only concern, and until such time as it is guaranteed, this shotgun of mine ain’t gonna budge.”
“But Aloysius,” said Dahl, regaining some of his customary suaveness, “is this any way to treat your benefactor?”
“Benefactor? Hah! Is that what you call it? I call it what it was: a transaction. Even at the time, I knew it was a devil’s bargain, but I made the deal anyway, ’cause I had no choice. I guess I should’ve foreseen it would come back to bite me in the ass. Devil’s bargains have a way of doing that.”
“Pop?” said Kaylee. “What are you talking about?”
“Never you mind, pumpkin. Just step on over here, by my side, and together we’ll take our leave of this place—unhurt.” The last word was directed at Dahl, with heavy emphasis. “Explanations can wait for later.”
“You never told her,” Dahl said, mildly amused. “Of course. That’ll be why she didn’t put two and two together just now, after she discovered the line of work I’m in.”
“There’s a reason I forbade you from associating with this man,” Aloysius Frye said to Kaylee. “I didn’t want you knowing what it was, because I’m rightly none too proud of it.”
“He’s a criminal,” she said, thinking this alone was reason enough.
“He’s that and more. Took me until tonight to figure out you’d disregarded my instruction. I’d had my suspicions for a while about those two names that kept turning up in our books: Mr. Calabash, Mrs. Darlington. Not to mention the way you got squirrelly whenever I asked about them and the jobs you were carrying out for them. It was kind of an obvious code, in hindsight. I oughtta’ve cracked it sooner. Then you didn’t come home this evening when you said you would, so I decided to stake out Dahl’s house. Moment I saw you step out of that limo, him holding you at gunpoint, I knew my worst fears had come true.”
“And I’m glad you came, Pop, really I am. But you have to tell me how you and he already know each other.”
“Like I said. Later.”
“No, Aloysius, tell her now,” said Dahl. “Or rather, allow me. It’s really quite straightforward, Kaylee. Your father needed a new heart. When was this, about ten months ago? Is that right, Aloysius? His old one was giving out on him. But business wasn’t so great. He couldn’t afford the hospital fees, and as for health insurance, being a self-employed person his coverage was as basic as it gets. So he came to me. You can work out the rest.”
“All my savings,” Aloysius Frye said. “Every last scrap of platinum I had. And even then it wasn’t enough. I’m paying him off the rest of what I owe monthly, at an extortionate rate of interest.”
“I think it’s quite a fair rate myself,” said Dahl. “And you should feel honored. I don’t extend credit to just anyone.”
“But you said you’d had your heart fixed,” said Kaylee to her father. “I took that to mean…”
“You took it to mean what I wanted you to, pumpkin. That it was a minor ailment and the docs were able to correct it. I’m sorry I wasn’t honest. I didn’t want you to worry. More to the point, I didn’t want you to know I was in hock to this bastard.”
“But you must realize where your replacement heart came from.”
Aloysius Frye gave a sorrowful shake of the head. “I try not to think about it. Sometimes it keeps me up at night. Often, in fact. But we had a pact, didn’t we, Mr. Dahl? I asked you never to call round my place of work, as a condition of our deal, so’s I’d never have to see your face again and be reminded of what I’d done. You agreed to it. Then you broke it.”
“I had mechanic work I needed doing, so I went to the best in town,” said Dahl. “It just so happened you weren’t in that day, but your delightful daughter was, and she has proved every bit your equal on the engineering front.”
“I’ve no notion what you did to squirm your way into her trust. All I can say is yān guò de hún dàn like you should be strangled at birth.”
