Firefly--The Magnificent Nine, page 7
If River was perturbed by this behavior, she gave no sign. Rather, she smiled in a weird, loopy sort of way. Amused, apparently.
“River!”
Jane climbed up onto the fence. She wasn’t sure what to do. She was reluctant to risk her life for a person she barely knew. But she couldn’t simply leave River to face the cows alone, could she?
She was about to slide over the fence when she noticed something odd.
The cows weren’t moving. They were eyeing River calmly. They seemed to sense she posed no threat. They might have acted that way towards Jane herself, but with a complete stranger? Somebody who had tried to come between them and their eating? It was unheard of.
River started laughing as the cows swished their tails and gazed at her through their long, luxuriant eyelashes.
“We had some of your friends aboard Serenity once,” she said to them. “Cows in space. Cows that jumped over the moon.”
She touched the head of each cow in turn, rubbing the scrubby topknot between the horns. Then she skipped back towards the fence and vaulted over it nonchalantly, all as though she had just been petting a basket of puppies, not a cluster of unpredictable 600-pound longhorns.
“You,” Jane said to her, “are either the bravest or the craziest person I’ve ever met.” She added, “I like you. Will you be my friend?”
“Don’t be silly!” River replied, chuckling. “We’re friends already.”
***
“Now, this may be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever said…” Mal began.
“There’s some fierce competition for that,” Inara quipped.
Mal shot her a look. “But I’m thinkin’ the doc may be on to something. One on one, do you think I could take Vandal, Mr. Mayor?”
“It strikes me that you were a soldier once,” said Gillis. “Would that be correct?”
“What gave it away? The impressively fierce demeanor? The impeccable straight-backed posture?”
“The brown coat.”
“Or that.”
“You were an Independent. Independent troops fought hard and they fought dirty. A ragtag band, but you held out against the full might and panoply of the Alliance forces. Nobody can do aught but respect how your side conducted themselves during the war, even if the rightness of your cause is open to debate.”
“Our cause made every Browncoat worth a dozen Alliance soldiers.”
“I’m sure you are a resourceful and accomplished combatant. I imagine you’ve held your own against many an imposing foe.” Gillis’s face tightened. “Believe me when I say this to you. Even someone of your caliber does not stand a prayer against Elias Vandal.”
“Oh. That was quite a build-up. Didn’t much like the punch line, though.”
“Vandal is as big and mean and tough as they come, Captain Reynolds. Next to him, your burly friend Mr. Cobb here is a mere pantywaist.”
Jayne tapped Wash on the shoulder. “Did he just insult me or say somethin’ nice? I can’t tell.”
“I think it was both,” said Wash.
“You’re sayin’ I’d be mad to challenge him?” said Mal.
“I’m saying,” said Gillis, “that you could do so, but you’d surely be needing the services of your Shepherd afterward.”
“Huh.” Mal squared his jaw. “Well, that kinda makes my mind up.”
“You’ll come up with some other way to defeat the Scourers?”
Inara shook her head sorrowfully. “No, Mayor Gillis. You clearly haven’t grasped what sort of a man Malcolm Reynolds is.”
“Me an’ Mr. Vandal are going to have us a little showdown tomorrow morning,” Mal said with finality. “Reaver or no, he’s going to find out—maybe for the first time in his life—how it feels to have his ass handed to him.”
Thetis’s sun was perched on the horizon, sending out shafts of red light in all directions like distress flares. It was an ageing star, running low on inner fuel. Soon it would commence the millennia-long process of dying, expanding as it consumed the last of its own thermonuclear energy, then collapsing in on itself. That was “soon” in astrophysical terms, of course. Centuries from now. The ’verse never did anything in a hurry.
Jayne and Temperance were out on the stoop, side by side in rocking chairs, facing the sunset. Everyone else was indoors, save for River and Jane. Jane was showing River around the farm.
An awkward silence hung between the former lovers. Jayne, never good with words, hoped Temperance would say something. Temperance, for her part, was waiting to see if Jayne was going to volunteer to speak. Both would exchange glances now and then and pretend they were just two old friends having a pleasant, companionable time watching the day end.
Jayne was the one who finally broke the impasse. “So. It’s Temperance McCloud now, huh? There a Mr. McCloud?”
“Nope,” replied the woman he used to know as Temperance Jones. “I just thought, ‘New planet, new surname.’”
“And maybe you’re hiding from your past,” Jayne said. “Runnin’ from something you don’t want catching up with you.”
“Past like mine, you surprised by that?”
“Not really.”
“I’d take it as a kindness if you wouldn’t mention to anyone as how I used to be Jones. ’Specially in front of Jane. She doesn’t know about any of that stuff, and doesn’t need to. Far as she’s aware, I’ve always been a farmer.”
“Got it. Your shady days are behind you.”
“You still mad at me, Jayne?” Temperance said. “After all this time?”
“No,” Jayne lied.
“You’d have every right.”
“All right then. I am. You just lit out, Temp. I woke up one morning, expectin’ to find you next to me in bed. There was just an empty space. No note, no nothing. For a whole day I kept thinkin’ you’d be back any moment and I’d be all, ‘Oh, where were you?’ and you’d be all, ‘Oh, something came up,’ and that’d be that. A week went by, and I was still hopin’. Like a fool.”
“I should’ve given you some sort of reason, I guess.”
“Ya reckon? I was outta my mind trying to figure out where you might have gone to. Tore up half of Bellerophon lookin’ for you. We’d just pulled a nice little switcheroo with some iffy Earth-That-Was artifacts, hadn’t we?”
“Couple of jazz long-players, as I recall,” said Temperance. Her smile was wistful but had a certain cold edge.
“That was a good dodge, that one,” Jayne said. “We printed up Miles Davis labels and sleeves and stuck ’em on Kenny G vinyl. The mark… What was his name?”
“Cain Stephenson.”
“Yeah. Him. He was such a dumb sack of niú fèn, he played them on his gramophone and couldn’t tell the difference! Threw his cash at us like we’d just handed him the Holy Grail, and it’s not like the two men even play the same instrument. Rich idiots and their dough—they deserve to be parted. Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “I like money as much as the next guy, but only if it’s properly earned, not if it’s inherited or got from doin’ somethin’ soft-handed like lawyering or politicking. That sort of money don’t count. The sort of people who have it don’t count either. They make my skin crawl.”
“Yeah,” said Temperance vaguely.
“What I still can’t figure, though, is what made you up and leave. It was all going so well, and then suddenly…”
Temperance looked away towards the sinking sun. Its rim was now touching the peaks of the hill range to the west. Nearer by, Jane was demonstrating to River how the corkscrew drill worked. When she showed River the devilworms squirming inside the machine’s collection chamber, River squealed—although it was hard to tell whether in delight or disgust. Perhaps both at once.
“It was… complicated,” Temperance said. “It wasn’t that I was unhappy being with you, Jayne. Far from it.”
“But you were gettin’ itchy feet.”
“Wasn’t that neither.”
“I didn’t give you any reason to hate me. I was nothin’ but good to you.”
“I know!” Temperance sounded frustrated. “We were great together. Maybe perhaps that scared me a bit, but in a good-scary kinda way. No, Jayne, it was…” Her voice trailed off. “I can’t explain.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Little of both. I’m hoping you might be able to piece it together.”
Jayne rose to his feet. He was angry but doing his best to restrain his emotions.
“Piece it together?” he said gruffly. “How? You ain’t tellin’ me nothing, Temp. Give me something to work with, some clues, then yeah, I can piece it together. Don’t give me anything, I’m in the ruttin’ dark!”
He strode off, stalking away into the gathering dusk, shoulders hunched, fists clenched. He passed a tree and looked as though he might punch it, before thinking better of the notion. On he went until he was lost from Temperance’s sight.
***
A few moments later, Shepherd Book stepped out from the house onto the stoop.
“You aren’t being fair with him, are you, Miz McCloud?” he said.
“Were you behind the door eavesdropping, Preacher? Mighty unchristian of you, if you were.”
“Not at all. I only came out for a breath of air. I saw Jayne stomping off. Saw your face. It wasn’t hard to come to the conclusion I did. I’m good at reading people, you see.”
“Because you know scripture?” Temperance said sharply. “That’s what gives you such a powerful insight into folks’ hearts?”
“May I?” said Book, pointing to the chair Jayne had just vacated. It was still rocking from his abrupt departure.
“Free country,” Temperance replied with a shrug.
“Now, I don’t pretend to know everything that’s going on between you, or that has gone on,” Book said, seating himself. “But Mal and Zoë have said a couple of things back there just now.” He jerked a thumb towards the kitchen. “Veiled comments. Unsubtle hints that have enabled me to make certain inferences. Really, though, it’s as plain as plain can be. To everyone except, it seems, Jayne Cobb.”
“What is?”
“Who Jane—your Jane—is.”
“And who is she?”
“Please don’t mistake me for an innocent, Miz McCloud. The clothes may suggest I am. My past says I am not. There’s many a Shepherd who’s guileless and naïve. I am not one of them. Jane is Jayne’s, isn’t she?”
Temperance did not reply.
“And she is the reason you ditched him,” Book went on. “You were pregnant with her—his child—and for some reason you had a problem with that. You couldn’t tell him. You couldn’t bring yourself to ’fess up. So you fled.”
“Calling me a coward?”
“An aggressive response there. Could it be I’ve struck a nerve?”
“I just don’t take kindly to people insinuating things, least of all men of the cloth.”
“Miz McCloud… May I call you Temperance?”
“If it pleases you.”
“Temperance,” Book said. His tone was gentle. Compassionate. “The prospect of motherhood is daunting at the best of times but never more so than if the baby is conceived by accident and you are not in a committed relationship. And Jayne as a father? Trust me, I have difficulty getting my head around the notion, let alone considering it an alluring prospect. Moreover, you were young. No one could blame you for running. I simply wonder whether it would have been better to be honest with him. He might have surprised you.”
“I couldn’t,” said Temperance. “Not then.”
“And now?”
She directed her gaze towards her daughter. “No less hard now. Jayne mightn’t be ready for the truth. He might freak out.”
“I must say it’s a source of some perplexity among the crew that he hasn’t cottoned on yet.”
“Jayne was never what you’d call a towering intellect.”
“It may not dawn on him at all unless someone tells him,” Book said. “Surely it would be preferable if the revelation came from you, rather than Mal, for instance, letting it slip. Because sooner or later, you mark my words, one of the crew is going to say something. They’re like children in a way. They can’t control themselves. Especially if there’s a juicy secret begging to be spilled.”
The daylight was almost gone. Coogan’s Bluff lay not far north of Thetis’s equator. In these latitudes, when the sun got itself a mind to go, it went fast.
“Preacher,” said Temperance, “I don’t hold much with religion.”
“Few do, and of those who profess faith, some take it far too seriously and others consider it a license to misbehave.”
“I guess you’re used to acting as spiritual counselor to your shipmates.”
“Among other functions I fulfill.”
“Probably they listen to you.”
“If only,” Book said, smothering the remark in a rueful chuckle.
“Well,” said Temperance acerbically, “I ain’t one of your shipmates, and I’d consider it a favor if, in future, you keep the spiritual guidance to yourself when you’re around me. Do I make myself clear?”
“Abundantly so.” Shepherd Book stood, his manner all at once somewhat stiff. “I apologize if I have upset you in any way.”
He headed back indoors.
The sun had disappeared. The western sky was purpling. A smattering of stars were twinkling into life.
Temperance felt ashamed of herself for turning on the Shepherd. He had only been trying to help. She should have been more forgiving.
But tell Jayne the truth about Jane? The whole truth?
If she did, Jayne might never forgive her.
Before daybreak the next morning, there were two departures from Serenity.
One was Inara and Kaylee setting off in Inara’s shuttle. Their destination was Whiteplains Edge, the largest town on Thetis, to all intents and purposes the capital city. It lay a quarter of the way round the planet, a good half-day’s travel, and according to Temperance it boasted several scrapyards where spaceship parts could be bought. Kaylee had a shopping list as long as her arm and was looking forward to haggling over prices. There wasn’t a parts dealer in the ’verse who knew more about astronautical engineering than she did, and nobody could fob her off with a cobbled-together piece of garbage pretending it was top quality. She was no rube. She would not be taken advantage of.
Inara was with her not only as pilot but as escort and friend. Her role was to protect Kaylee and keep her out of trouble. At the scrapyards Kaylee would need no assistance, but in the wider environs of the city she might well benefit from having an experienced, older person present. Just in case.
***
Kaylee was full of enthusiasm as the shuttle embarked on the journey to Whiteplains Edge. Inara was happy to accompany her. Their departure could be described as optimistic. Shiny, even.
Not so the morning’s other departure.
Mal, Zoë, Jayne, Simon, and Shepherd Book were making their way to Coogan’s Bluff in the Flying Mule. There, Mal would be throwing down the gauntlet to Elias Vandal.
Mal was not exactly thrilled about this.
But in the absence of a viable alternative, he accepted it was what he had to do.
As far as he was concerned, there was one small chink of light in an otherwise dark situation. Temperance was paying for the repairs to Serenity.
“Partly my fault your ship was brought down, Captain Reynolds,” she’d said. “It’d never have happened if I hadn’t asked you to come to Thetis. So I should be the one to make it right financially. I’ve money squared away. I can afford it.”
True to her word, she’d set up a transfer of credits from her account to Mal’s. Kaylee found she had more cash to play with than she’d been expecting—although the total figure Mal had told her she was allowed to spend at the scrapyards was somewhat lower than the sum Temperance had handed over. He was keeping a bit back for, you know, expenses and suchlike.
Of course, no amount of money was going to be any good to him if he died today.
“Generous woman, your ex,” Mal said over his shoulder to Jayne as the Mule skimmed towards the town through the pearly-gray light of predawn. Jayne, Simon, and Book occupied the back seat while Zoë rode up front with Mal.
“Yeah. Regular saint,” Jayne mumbled.
“You’d be sitting pretty right now, I reckon, if you and she were still an item.”
“And you’ll be yappin’ through a busted jaw if you don’t stop going on about her.”
“Raising Jane together. Maybe a heapin’ of other kids as well.”
“Seriously, keep this up and I’ll rip your arm out of its socket and beat you to death with the wet end.”
“Touchy,” said Zoë.
“Well,” said Mal, “he has had overnight to think about it.”
“Think about what?” said Jayne.
“Mal.” Shepherd Book, leaning forward, laid a hand on Mal’s shoulder. It gripped like a clamp, meant to stem a flow.
But Mal was in a reckless mood. The imminent possibility of death did that to a fella.
“I mean, come on,” he said. “Temperance couldn’t be making it more obvious with the name. It’s practically a neon sign.”
“Captain,” said Book, “this is neither the time nor the place. It should come from Temperance, not from you, not from any of us.”
“All right!” Jayne growled, thumping the Mule’s bodywork in agitation. “That’s it! What the gorramn hell has got everybody so all fired up? You’re all yammerin’ like you’re in on some big joke and I ain’t. Somebody better tell me what this is about or I’m gonna start bashin’ heads together.”
“I figure I should be handing out cigars,” Mal said. “Roughly fourteen years too late, but better late than never.”
“Cigars?”
“And you’re due all those Father’s Day cards you didn’t get.”
“Father’s Day…”
Jayne flicked an ear as though a gnat was buzzing him. His brow furrowed and his eyes lost focus as he pursued a train of thought.
