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As the firefly flies Praxed is seven days from Illyria, where the Academy orbits, but the two things pretending to be men and the girl pretending to be River Tam fly away in the wrong direction.
Here, half a day from Praxed, is a gas giant called Veritas, orbiting a dim red star. The other planets in this system are unhabited and uninhabitable; the six moons of Veritas are little better. This particular one is just barely capable of sustaining life. It is empty, nameless, a stopping point for smugglers mostly.
But something is growing here. The things that wear blue gloves leave their ship on the moon -- the Alliance will come and pick it up for them sooner or later, or someone will steal it, and they don't give a damn either way -- and gather up the girl. She follows, glazed-eyed and docile, as they make their way to the rose.
Its green leaves are nearly as grey as the dust that surrounds it; the blossom is stunted and faded red. A ring of dead petals surrounds the plant. Like other roses we may have known it sings on a subliminal level, a song discordant with some inner sickness. Here, now, the song is little more than the sickness itself, rampant.
Studding the healthiest and largest stalk (a tightly furled rosebud nods at the end of it) are six thorns. One of the girl's captors strips off a blue latex glove, and touches one particular thorn with the thing at the end of his arm.
That ain't a hand.
For all three of them--even the drug-dazed girl--there is a sensation of size; of a rapid and uncontrolled expansion of the self. Like an explosion. It's intoxicating and now--
Let there be light
--now they are in a greenhouse: full of multicolored rosebushes, spiraling out in twirling paths from a distant center, dense with foliage, redolent with scent. An entire universe little bigger than a building, one of the shortcut worlds that let you step from here to there and then flip back to find yourself a long way from where you started. They'll owe a favor for using it, but they're in a hurry. There isn't a drug her system won't break down eventually, and they have plans for River Tam. Make no doubt of that.
A storm lashes at the glass; the wind howls around the corners. The moon peeks through a ragged veil of cloud and (GLINTS off a pair of glasses) casts a dead yellow light over everything.
The roses sing, every one of them -- red, yellow, lavendar and dusty pink and cream-white. The same song, and yet some are beautiful, and some are buzzing, hissing, wrong. Counterpoint without melody. And it is spreading. Sickness creeps from plant to plant like a dry white mold, working its cancerous way inwards towards some central point.
Ours. Ourssssss.
Whatever that central point is, the three figures now hurrying along a path are moving away from it. The things that pretend to be men don't like to look in that direction. The girl looks everywhere, but seems to see nothing; she stumbles, too-blank eyes fluttering half-shut, and is steered along by blue-gloved hands. They flee along twisting gravel paths, stepping on weeds and poking blades of grass that crackle and squeak underfoot. Everywhere, softer than the songs, there is a vague and stealthy rustling, as if all the plants were moving, very slowly. Or talking.
A girrrl? Our girl? Niiice girrrl. Ourrr girrrl.
It doesn't take long to find the bush they want; the two were just here a few days ago. Sickly-sweet perfume is heavy around them. Blue gloves hold tight to the girl's thin arms, and the same one as before runs an appendage -- call it a finger, why not? -- delicately along the saw-toothed edge of one particular leaf.
And there is the oppressive sense of weight, of dwindling away. For a moment they are tiny figures in a garden of infinite size, dwarfed by the roses and then the pebbles and then the very atoms and then--
--then there are three figures on the colony world Verney, in front of a rosebush with yellow-orange blossoms, fifty miles from the nearest settlement.
The girl who is not River Tam stares after the rose with dazed eyes, but the two things masked as men pull her away, with the absent firmness of a man moving a piece of furniture, and lead her to the ship hidden in a nearby copse of trees. It could be the twin of the one they abandoned on Veritas's barren moon.
It takes less than two days to reach the Academy.
Here, half a day from Praxed, is a gas giant called Veritas, orbiting a dim red star. The other planets in this system are unhabited and uninhabitable; the six moons of Veritas are little better. This particular one is just barely capable of sustaining life. It is empty, nameless, a stopping point for smugglers mostly.
But something is growing here. The things that wear blue gloves leave their ship on the moon -- the Alliance will come and pick it up for them sooner or later, or someone will steal it, and they don't give a damn either way -- and gather up the girl. She follows, glazed-eyed and docile, as they make their way to the rose.
Its green leaves are nearly as grey as the dust that surrounds it; the blossom is stunted and faded red. A ring of dead petals surrounds the plant. Like other roses we may have known it sings on a subliminal level, a song discordant with some inner sickness. Here, now, the song is little more than the sickness itself, rampant.
Studding the healthiest and largest stalk (a tightly furled rosebud nods at the end of it) are six thorns. One of the girl's captors strips off a blue latex glove, and touches one particular thorn with the thing at the end of his arm.
That ain't a hand.
For all three of them--even the drug-dazed girl--there is a sensation of size; of a rapid and uncontrolled expansion of the self. Like an explosion. It's intoxicating and now--
Let there be light
--now they are in a greenhouse: full of multicolored rosebushes, spiraling out in twirling paths from a distant center, dense with foliage, redolent with scent. An entire universe little bigger than a building, one of the shortcut worlds that let you step from here to there and then flip back to find yourself a long way from where you started. They'll owe a favor for using it, but they're in a hurry. There isn't a drug her system won't break down eventually, and they have plans for River Tam. Make no doubt of that.
A storm lashes at the glass; the wind howls around the corners. The moon peeks through a ragged veil of cloud and (GLINTS off a pair of glasses) casts a dead yellow light over everything.
The roses sing, every one of them -- red, yellow, lavendar and dusty pink and cream-white. The same song, and yet some are beautiful, and some are buzzing, hissing, wrong. Counterpoint without melody. And it is spreading. Sickness creeps from plant to plant like a dry white mold, working its cancerous way inwards towards some central point.
Ours. Ourssssss.
Whatever that central point is, the three figures now hurrying along a path are moving away from it. The things that pretend to be men don't like to look in that direction. The girl looks everywhere, but seems to see nothing; she stumbles, too-blank eyes fluttering half-shut, and is steered along by blue-gloved hands. They flee along twisting gravel paths, stepping on weeds and poking blades of grass that crackle and squeak underfoot. Everywhere, softer than the songs, there is a vague and stealthy rustling, as if all the plants were moving, very slowly. Or talking.
A girrrl? Our girl? Niiice girrrl. Ourrr girrrl.
It doesn't take long to find the bush they want; the two were just here a few days ago. Sickly-sweet perfume is heavy around them. Blue gloves hold tight to the girl's thin arms, and the same one as before runs an appendage -- call it a finger, why not? -- delicately along the saw-toothed edge of one particular leaf.
And there is the oppressive sense of weight, of dwindling away. For a moment they are tiny figures in a garden of infinite size, dwarfed by the roses and then the pebbles and then the very atoms and then--
--then there are three figures on the colony world Verney, in front of a rosebush with yellow-orange blossoms, fifty miles from the nearest settlement.
The girl who is not River Tam stares after the rose with dazed eyes, but the two things masked as men pull her away, with the absent firmness of a man moving a piece of furniture, and lead her to the ship hidden in a nearby copse of trees. It could be the twin of the one they abandoned on Veritas's barren moon.
It takes less than two days to reach the Academy.
