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Ch.9- Enter the Green Dragon

The remainder of dinner was spent with David 'Cosmo' Janek regaling the crew with stories of heists he had pulled. While the computer work was only interesting to Kaylee, Wash, and River, David tried to accommodate everyone by playing up the escape portion of his escapades.

Pretty soon Mal, Zoe, and David were discussing various strategies for roof-top escapes, while Kaylee, Wash, and River grilled him for details regarding the various systems he had broken into. Wash and Kaylee were especially amused by the tale of some after effects David had left behind in one particular banking system: upon the arrival of the president of the bank the next morning after a heist, his password caused all the lights to blink on and off, and set off all the fire sprinklers. River smiled over at Simon at that story, reminded of her own orchestration when they were younger.

But the only thing that Jayne was keeping tabs on was the interaction between River and David. Although outwardly it appeared as though Cosmo was trying to talk to everyone equally, anytime River piped up he would immediately swing his head around to either answer her or listen to her.

Simon also noticed. He remembered his earlier thoughts about not being able to hold a cotillion for River and that she might be settling for Jayne; but here it seemed that maybe the cotillion was coming to her. He decided that it couldn't hurt for River to explore her options. She and David were currently discussing his latest work.

"So you see, there are actually two locks in public key cryptography. They use asymmetric key encryption algorithms, in which both code keys must be kept secret yet not derivative. Also there are systems using mathematically related public and private keys."

River nodded excitedly. "Yes! That's what I tried to explain to Simon about our parent's security system, but he just wouldn't listen! He just kept trying to guess their password, when it would have been so much easier to just cross the wires and sneak the blonde in through the kitchen window!"

All eyes turned to Simon, who was trying to figure out how to biologically convert himself into a dust mite right then.

"Sneakin' in a blonde, huh?" Kaylee was grinning from ear to ear. Oh, this was good info.

"All right, Doc," Jayne leered from across the table. "Not so innocent as you make Kaylee think, eh?"

As the others joined in the heckling, Simon found an unabiding desire to divert attention from himself.

"Well, Jayne, I guess I don't have as much experience as you with the ladies," he lamely threw out.

Jayne clenched his fists, suddenly furious. First his girl, if she was that, had just spent the better part of dinner talking to some hundun just because he had some smarts, and now Simon was making him look like a piece of dirt on top of it.

"Simon, that wasn't nice," River interjected. She could feel the anger pouring off of Jayne, but what was confusing to her was that it was not all directed at Simon. In fact, it felt like Jayne might have been a little mad at her. She hadn't felt that in a long time and was confused by the feeling. Why would he be mad at her? What had she done wrong?

"Well I'm sure I'm the worst one here with women," said David, self-deprecatingly. "Being one of the 'verse's biggest geeks is great for getting free stuff, but being on the run and sociably inept does have its downfalls."

"No, no, not at all…" There was a chorus of disagreement around the table as mostly everyone tried to reassure David that he was just a fine person. Great, thought Jayne, guy calls himself a loser and everyone rushes to tell him he's great. I ever said that and they'd probably all agree with me. His sullenness grew.

Simon meanwhile, was trying to make nice with River. "You're right, mei-mei." He turned to Jayne. "I am sorry about the crack. It was inappropriate." Jayne just stared back suspiciously. Simon rarely had a civilized word for him; he must have something up his sleeve.

Kaylee was giggling at something Janek had said. Simon decided now was the time to push a little.

"I'm sorry David, River didn't hear that joke, could you repeat it for her?" He smiled his most wheedling-a-better-system-upgrade-from his parents smile.

"Sure thing, Sy. So River, that's a pretty name, there was this one system that I was taking a little more time than usual to get into, so my partner got a little impatient and decided to fire up the…"

Simon grimaced at the horrid nickname, but the prompt was working. At least it looked like it was. River was staring into David's eyes, murmuring 'aha's every minute or so. What Simon, or David, did not know was that River wasn't listening to a word that he was saying. She was too busy hearing angry thoughts shooting out from Jayne in the direction of her, Simon, and David.

If it was just Simon annoying Jayne then she would have ignored it. Those two still set each other off after all this time, although it had been less of late. And what Jayne had to be mad at David about she could not comprehend- he was a paying client and Jayne liked money, so what was the problem there?

The problem she was having though was that once again Jayne's walls were up and she could not readily define what he angry about, only that he was. When she reached out to him it was as if she was looking at a very tall dam that was spilling over at the top. So she was only getting a glimpse of emotion, all reason and explanation being held back behind the dam.

She realized that David was approaching the end of his story so she pulled back into herself to listen and laugh at the appropriate endpoint. Too bad she had been distracted, he was funny. And intelligent, it had been a while since she had been able to talk to anyone who could grasp the advanced concepts that came to her as easily as breathing.

"So nice to meet an intelligent young man way out here," Simon was saying. "Don't you think, River?"

"Huh?" She stared at Simon, startled. Her eyes grew large as she realized what Simon was doing. She quickly looked over to Jayne--- who wasn't there. He had gotten up and left. She hadn't even realized it. Go se.