They can afford to travel Alliance-class from Persephone, a comfortable if not luxurious berth in a passenger transport. The trip takes the better part of two days, and it's mercifully early evening on Sunday -- barely past late afternoon -- when they dock at the Isis Spaceport.
The prepaid car service picks them up and whisks them and their luggage to the boarding house where they've reserved a room for the next four days. It's in the heart of Capital City, not too far from a certain unremarked door just off Ehrmann Square.
Before they even start unpacking, they walk the few blocks to that particular door, to check that it still opens onto Milliways. Just to be sure.
On the way back they pass Ehrmann Square, where the fountains are dry and the trees are standing bare against a winter sky.
By the time Simon awakens Monday morning at the boarding house, Kaylee is already dressed and ready to go -- dressed in the lowest-key clothes she has, dressed to blend in. It sets the pattern for the week.
The thickened feeling of dread deep in her stomach prevents breakfast for her; the first time she tried, the breakfast didn't last. Simon goes over the itinerary for the day, and she never pays attention -- too busy trying not to be overwhelmed by her surroundings, with the buildings too tall and the streets too narrow, tapering off into nothingness where the horizon ought to be.
It's like one long nightmare, she decides, like the ones she never tells Simon about -- the more recent ones, and she can't wake from it.
Kaylee wants to go home; she knows quite well that there isn't really one to go to. Not any more. The closest she has is Simon, and she can't bother him right now.
And at night, when she goes to sleep, it's always
it will be better in the morning.
It never is.
They've done a little preliminary investigation (and Kaylee's had a coughing fit over the prices), and by the time they're arrived and faintly oriented, they have a list of places that they can sublet.
By the end of the first day, they've found their place: one bedroom, on a quiet tree-lined street, on the third floor, with a balcony. The windows face south, and when they first see it, sunlight filters in through the bare branches.
The place is nearly completely bare, except for a dented wok on the counter.
Kaylee (pale and tired) looks at Simon -- who's done most of the talking today -- and says, very quiet, and very timid, that she likes all the light.
The lease is signed by the end of the day.
They're not going to rent any of their furniture, Simon insists: there's no point in getting a place of their own and then furnishing it with other people's things. They'll buy what they need, and in five months they'll sell it to a used-furniture dealer. Or load it into
Serenity's cargo bay and sell it on one of the Border worlds like Persephone, someplace where Core-made items are in high demand purely for the social status they convey. Or give it away, or bequeath it to the next occupants of this apartment -- they can afford it.
He doesn't have to insist very hard. Kaylee doesn't say much beyond
whatever you think is best, Simon, but the relief in her eyes at the suggestion is manifestly obvious.
The best suppliers' digital catalogs have the floorplan function built right in; he keys in the dimensions of the apartment and spends a few hours touch-dragging and rearranging tiny images of bookshelves, table-and-chair sets, desks, wardrobes, mirrors, beds. Runs through possible choices and possible layouts, switching from floorplan to walkthrough mode and back.
He narrows it down to four possibilities before trying again to get Kaylee to come and look.
She silently watches through all four walkthroughs without taking her eyes from the screen. When he asks which one she likes best, she turns toward him without meeting his eyes, and he knows with sinking certainty what her response will be a second before she opens her mouth:
whatever you think is best, Simon.
It comes to her in a flash. She's walking in the sunlight, Simon is off at the school doing something, and the thought makes it through:
I've never been scared of cities before this.
Kaylee stops in the middle of the sidewalk on the empty street, and looks around her, blinking. Because it's not right, is it. It's not right that she's this scared.
There's a public Cortex hub down a side street. She can see it from here. And she knows who to call if she gets lost. And it's the Core, so it's going to be safe -- especially in Capital City. And if Kaylee's so disgusted with herself for her fear --
Without thinking too much about it, she turns down a side street. And another. And a third. And keeps walking.
That's how she finds the market -- the one that isn't too clean, with the merchants coming in from all over the planet, with dented furniture and interesting art and weirdly-shaped fruit and all manner of sights and sounds and things that are fried on sticks.
When Simon gets home that evening, there's a painted vase made from tin on the table, with a pattern of garishly bright wildflowers. In the vase are daisies. Kaylee is curled on the couch, asleep, under an equally garish chenille throw. (Handmade.) On the counter in the kitchen: star fruit, red carambola, and apples bigger than her fists.
And one lonely tangerine, because Kaylee ate the other before her nap.
(A few of the lines in her forehead have smoothed out.)
Thursday is orientation day of the training course, and it's fascinating. Simon's only had a competent user's understanding of the diagnostic imager before this, no more than what any doctor would need; any issues with the machine that might arise could be repaired by a technician. But the portable imager may need to be used quite some distance from any technical support, and as such the course begins with an in-depth study of how the imager works. In the next two weeks, the instructor promises, they'll cover ways to recognize and repair errors in the system themselves.
It's unexpected, and exhilarating -- and exhausting. But he's neither too absorbed nor too tired, that evening, to be aware of the depth of Kaylee's continuing unhappiness here. No;
unhappiness isn't a strong enough word. The depth of her
misery.
He lies awake that night, staring alternately at the ceiling and at Kaylee's back, knowing all the reasons he shouldn't offer to drop the course and take her back home. Wondering if he should anyway.
They're going back tomorrow night, for the weekend. Maybe it'll help.
