Bandiagara, Part 2b

River and Ip crunch numbers, and Jayne tries to detect croutons.

Serenity had been a hive of activity ever since they lifted off from Beylix. That very night, Mal and Jayne secured the cargo of junkyard parts with netting to keep it from shifting around during take-off. The next morning, Jayne and Zoe started cleaning and sorting. Most of the pieces were corroded and dirty, and some were downright filthy. Kaylee stopped in on her way to the engine room.

"Let's put the spaceship parts at the passenger lounge end of the bay. Small electronics next to Ip's blinky machine, but don't block his access. Vehicle parts by the airlock. Household machines like sewing machines and refrigeration units under the port side catwalk. If'n ya don't recognize it, pile it in the middle an' I'll come figure it out when I get done with the repairs to Serenity." Kaylee then disappeared into the engine room, where she and the Captain were working on repairs.

As soon as Kaylee left the cargo bay, Simon ventured out of the infirmary and lent a hand with the sorting. He'd been working with Kaylee in the engine room for long enough that he now had an idea what many of the pieces of junk were, and he had selected a number of them from the dump himself, so his help was more productive than one might expect of a Core-educated surgeon.

Ip came into the bay to read the data from his grav anomaly machine, and as soon as he was done, he stayed, taking over the task of sorting through the small electronics. When Zoe relieved River at the helm, River came and joined Ip at his task.

Mal was everywhere. He was on the bridge, in the engine room helping Kaylee, in the cargo bay, cleaning, sorting, stowing. He even took Simon aside for some special task, and the two of them disappeared for a time.

The only one not up to her ears in work was Inara. The first day she took over cooking meals and doing dishes, leaving the others free to return to their tasks. Still, she was at loose ends most of the day. It felt wrong to be standing idle while the others were working so hard, but she couldn't even begin to guess at what most of the items in the cargo bay were. She took it on faith that the cargo was worth transporting. Mal certainly believed that it would turn out to be treasure for Serenity. To her it just looked like a pile of trash.

. . .

Ip was crunching numbers in Serenity's dining room. It was the data from the Shadow fly-by, and he was taking the raw data from the particle detector and processing it into something that he could compare with data from other sources. As usual, he enjoyed doing his work in the public areas of the ship, rather than holing up in the privacy of his bunk. He never seemed bothered by the fact that everybody who passed through the dining room interrupted him and asked questions. Even Jayne.

"What's that machine you got settin' in the middle of the table for?" Jayne asked, as he served himself a snack.

Ip was surprised that Jayne was curious enough to ask, but then again, the piece of equipment sat right in front of Jayne's customary seat at the table, so it was hard for him to ignore. "It's a particle detector," Ip answered.

"What does it do?"

"Detects particles." Ip still remembered the incident of his ruined shoes. It was payback time.

Well, duh, Jayne's expression read, I know that. But he asked, "Particles of what?"

"Charged particles. Neutral particles. Atomic particles." Jayne didn't look like he recognized what Ip was talking about, so he elaborated. "You know, ions, protons, electrons." Jayne was still looking blank, so Ip added, "Wontons. Croutons."

Jayne smirked. "That why you got it on the dining table here? You detect any croutons, you let me know. I like 'em." He got up and carried the rest of his snack off towards the cargo bay.

. . .

Ip's next visitor was River.

He glanced up from a series of involved calculations to find himself looking into her intense, brown-eyed stare. "Gah! River, you startled me," he exclaimed, trying to recover his calm. "I didn't hear you come in."

River smiled playfully, keeping her giggles to herself. She'd carefully snuck up on him, taking advantage of his preoccupation. "Jayne told me you were following a trail of breadcrumbs," she said. This wasn't an exact quote. "Doc 'Noyman has a machine up there in the dining room what detects croutons," is what Jayne had actually said. "Seems stupid to me. Just better off followin' yer nose."

Ip smiled back. "Trail of breadcrumbs is a good description. Except the trail is not very complete."

"It's hard to follow a trail of breadcrumbs," River observed. "Breadcrumbs get eaten by birds."

An image of River as a bird filled Ip's mind. River, hopping gracefully across a deserted landscape, picking breadcrumbs out of the ashes. Albatross, thought Ip. That's what the Captain calls her. Albatrosses were graceful in flight, but awkward on the ground.

"It's not a very appropriate image," River said, as if she had plucked his thoughts out of his head. "May I crunch with you?" she asked, sitting down close beside Ip.

"Crunch?" Ip replied in confusion. "With me?"

"Numbers," River responded, pulling the chair closer.

Crunch numbers. Ip smiled. "Sure. I'm downloading the time-of-flight data from the particle detector. I have an algorithm set up to analyze the time-of-flight and the flight paths…"

. . .

"You're really good," Ip said, with admiration.

River's eyes widened. She smiled.

"At numbers," Ip added, paying her back for playing with him earlier. "Are you sure you're not actually a PhD terraformologist or perhaps a mathematics professor in disguise?"

"Disguised as a girl," River said.

Ip smiled. "It's a good disguise." He looked at her in admiration, seeing not only her bright mind, but, as she had just pointed out, the girl—or really, the woman in her. She was not a child.

"Can't see the weapon. Only see the girl."

Ip was disconcerted by this puzzling statement. What weapon? Oh. She meant she was carrying a concealed firearm. Okay. He really didn't see the need, aboard Serenity, in deep space, but he had noticed that the Captain often went about the ship wearing his gun in a holster, and not only when they were planetside. Apparently River did, too. He briefly wondered where she concealed it. He had heard of women carrying guns underneath their skirts, strapped to their thighs. An image of what a weapon would look like, strapped to River's thigh, flashed in his mind, to be rapidly suppressed as inappropriate. Re-engaging his train of thought, he wondered why so many of the crew of Serenity felt the need to be armed, and it also bothered him that a man with PTSD, known to be prone to violent flashbacks, walked the halls of the ship armed with a deadly weapon. Why did the doctor not persuade the Captain to lock up his gun in a safe place when it wasn't needed?

"Doesn't feel safe," River interrupted his thoughts. "Never feels safe."

Who was she talking about? Ip wondered. Him? Herself? The Captain? He shook off the thought, and returned to the safer subject of mathematics. "You really never went to a university?"

"My education was interrupted."

Ah, right. He remembered her saying that she had left the Core—impulsively, he supposed—and that Simon had accompanied her, throwing up his high-trajectory career at Capital City Hospital on Osiris. "Why did you leave school?"

She did not look at him.

"River, I know you're bright. I can't imagine it had anything to do with academics."

"Unsuitable," she mumbled.

"What was unsuitable?" Ip puzzled a moment. "The academic program at your school didn't suit you?"

She nodded, unable to speak, still not looking at him.

"You could have transferred. To another school. 鬼 Guǐ, you could have transferred directly to a university. Never mind finishing high school. Harcliffe would kill for a student as bright as you. You could have skipped over undergraduate requirements and gone on directly to graduate-level classes."

She was shaking her head sadly, as she regarded him with tears in her eyes. Ip recognized that the subject of schooling was distressing to her.

"Not so interested in formal educational programs anymore?" he inquired sympathetically.

"Tried it. Wasn't any fun," she replied in a small voice.

"You could apply to a university now. With your intelligence, the doors of the best are open to you."

"Can't pay." She was still shaking her head. Ip really was relentless. He didn't get it, that there was no way River Tam could go to a university like a regular person. Simon would have been annoyed with him, but River, despite everything, was amused. And pleased, too. Because it meant that Ip still saw her as a person with the potential to lead a normal life. It was a view that no one else, no one, held.

"For a student like you, the admissions officers would bend over backwards to find funding."

River contemplated the picture of university admissions officers engaged in backbends. Then she considered them doing headstands, and finally, cartwheels. Amusement showed on her face.

"What's so funny?" Ip asked. "They would, you know. You'd be an extraordinary student."

"Gymnastics. Backbends. Headstands. Cartwheels."

Ip thought a moment, then joined her in a smile. "It is an amusing picture. Even if they didn't wear their business suits and neckties." After another moment of snickering, he said, "But I'm perfectly serious, you know. Funds wouldn't be an issue, for a student like you."

"It's not about the money."

Ip was thinking about his own university experience. It had been the best time of his life. In high school—despite having gone to an academically-oriented high school filled with intelligent teenagers—he'd still been a bit of a fish-out-of-water. Too academic to fit in with the popular crowd. Too gregarious really to fit in with the nerdy crowd. But at Harcliffe University—a top-flight Core university—most of the students had been just as academically talented as he was. His gregariousness—or perhaps he should just call it for what it was, social cluelessness—was an asset. (He knew he often rubbed people the wrong way, but he really didn't know what to do about it or even if he could do anything about it, so he just went on being himself.) He wasn't socially inhibited, and it had made him very popular with the professors. He was never shy about going to office hours and asking tons of questions in class, and professors noticed him.

"Are you worried you wouldn't fit in?" he asked.

River knew she would never fit in, but it didn't worry her at all. "Can't leave Serenity. Don't want to leave Serenity."

. . .

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glossary

鬼 Guǐ [Hell (lit. 'ghost')]

A/N: Okay, I'll admit it: I'm begging for reviews here. Hardly anyone found it to be worth the trouble to write in about the last couple of chapters. I know, I know, everyone's busy, etc., but...it's kinda discouraging to get so little response. Alright, enough with the irritating whiny noises. I'll stop now. :-)