Bandiagara, Part 9a

Children's games have more serious implications.

It was time, Mal decided, or well past time, that he had a talk with River about…aw, hell, this was gonna be awkward. Girl was a genius, and for probably as long as she could remember she'd been years ahead of her cohorts in intellectual matters. Mal could just imagine what little girl River had been like—playing with other little kids in her neighborhood, probably put them all off talkin' about the physics of dust motility and the fallacious arguments of the 23rd century philosophers or some such. Since then she had lived through horrors that most adults never had to deal with, and she was not yet out of her teens. The girl had grown up fast.

It was the growing up fast bit that had Mal worried. He'd made River pilot of Serenity, given her adult responsibilities. She handled it well (so long as she was not having one of her crazy times), but when he recollected what he'd been doing when he was eighteen, it had him near a panic.

So when he saw River and Ip dancing together in the firelight at the feast, alarm bells began ringing in his head. Then he saw them kissing, and the bells escalated up to a decibel level that was impossible to ignore. It wasn't that he didn't trust Ip Neumann. The young man was intelligent and good-natured; he seemed to be kind. It was just that…he didn't trust him. River had an older brother, one who worried about her and cared for her and gave up his whole life in the Core to rescue her, and just about smothered her with his over-protectiveness. In Simon's mind, River was still his 小妹妹 xǐao mèimei, and he hadn't come to terms with the notion that she was growing up. Mal wasn't River's brother, nor was he her father, but he felt responsible nonetheless for protecting her and making sure she didn't get hurt. Especially considering the kind of examples she was surrounded by on Serenity. Her brother and Kaylee—doin' it all hours, all over the ship, with enough noise that everybody aboard knew more details than was decent. Jayne—well, Jayne's mouth was and always had been full of words unfittin' for young ears, and his talk alone was enough to color the air blue. Zoe—she weren't doin' nothin' indecent, but regular association with a five-month-pregnant lady was bound to turn a young person's thoughts a certain direction. Him and Inara—well, he didn't reckon he was settin' the best example himself, them not being married.

He made up his mind to take the next opportunity to have a private talk with River.

. . .

River joined the crowd of children settled under the acacia trees outside the schoolhouse on the outskirts of the village. A wooden board with a dozen pits carved into it was the focal point of the group, and River watched as two of the children took turns scooping up the game pieces from one of the pits and distributing them according to a certain pattern among the other pits. The children who were not directly involved in the game were not shy about expressing their opinions about what would make the best move.

"No! Musa, you're not going to capture anything if you choose that one!" a girl exclaimed. The boy hesitated, his hand over the second pit.

"Choose the next one," another boy advised.

"No, no! Choose the one behind!" an excitable, tall boy said. "It has seven pebbles. You'll capture the pebbles in both pits that way."

"Yes, he will," said the opposing player, a quiet girl. Her eyes gleamed as Musa made the move, capturing the pebbles in two of her pits. "But then," she said, scooping up the contents of a third pit, "I will capture four of his."

A chorus of groans and cheers erupted from the children, according to which player they were hoping would win the game.

River smiled at the children and silently watched the game. Soon she had the rules figured out, and she calculated the sequence of moves that would win, lose or tie the game, watching as the children scooped up and distributed the game pieces, capturing their opponents' when their move ended by bringing the total of pieces in the pit to two or three. Eventually the quiet girl's strategy prevailed over Musa's hesitation, and the two children stood up, allowing others to take their place.

"Would you like to play?" the quiet girl asked River.

"Yes," River answered. "Do you have another game board?" she asked, since two more players had settled down at the original game board.

"We can make one," the girl answered, settling down in the dust beneath the tree. "My name is Isatou," she said, as she scooped a line of pits in the soil with her hands.

"My name is River," River replied, and scooped a line of pits herself. She quirked her eyebrow at the girl, who understood immediately.

"Oh, no worries," Isatou said, producing a little bag from the pocket of her dress. "I always carry my pebbles with me. Most of the children here do." She overturned the bag and the pebbles spilled out on to the ground. River watched as she distributed them amongst the pits in the starting positions.

"Those are pretty pebbles," River observed. They were octahedral rock crystals—or, more accurately, they were truncated octahedra: fourteen faces, six of them square and eight of them hexagonal. River noted that most of them had a bluish cast, ranging from pale to an intense deep color, depending on the amount of cupric impurity integrated into the crystal structure. Clarity was also variable, and ranged from clear to milky.

"Yes, very pretty," Isatou agreed. "All the children know where to find the pebbles, but I know where to find the best ones."

"Let's play," River said.

. . .

Mal found River deeply involved in a board game with the village children. There was no bringing up the subject he had in mind before the kids, so he settled down to watch the game. It was a variant of oware, a game he had played as a child on Shadow, and although at first he watched to be sure River wasn't taking advantage of the children, he soon realized that many of the children were more than a match for the Albatross. He was sure she could calculate many moves ahead, but the kids were well-practiced, and their impulsiveness worked to their great advantage, because River's opponents frequently did not make the most logical move, and the randomness of their choices forced River to reconfigure her strategy completely between moves.

"…a fifty-eighty percent chance of a positive outcome, taking into consideration the randomness factor," River was saying as she scooped up a handful of rocks from the dust.

No sooner had he come to the conclusion that River was just as likely to get her clock cleaned as to clean up, than he felt a gentle tug on his hand. He looked down to see a bright smiling face and a pair of shining eyes, and recognized one of the children who had been treated at Simon and Inara's clinic. "Jëkkëre Inara, do you want to play, too?" the child asked him.

"Absolutely," Mal answered with a grin, and a smile on top of it at the warm feeling that came from being called Inara's husband (even if it weren't really true). He soon found himself settled in the dust, facing a young boy, helping to scoop out a line of pits.

When Mal was a boy, the game pieces were either marbles, or, if you were improvising, seeds. These kids were playing with pieces made from rock crystals. They were not carved or cut, but just the crystals as naturally formed. Mal had a feeling about the crystals, but soon he was caught up in the game, laughing along with the children, and causing an uproar when he made an unexpected move and captured the pebbles from five of his opponent's pits. It was a bold move, but it didn't last, as the boy picked up the pebbles from his only remaining pit and captured all of Mal's.

. . .

After another busy day assisting Simon in the infirmary, Inara took a stroll in the cooler air of the early evening, and found Mal settled in under a tree near the schoolhouse, surrounded by a crowd of children.

"You think I should sow this one?" Mal asked the group at large, his right hand hovering over a depression in the dirt, while his left hand held onto the legs of a small child who had climbed onto his shoulders to watch the game. "Watch it, little one, the hair's still attached," he said as the tot grabbed two fistfuls of his hair for balance. The children shouted, "Yes! No!" in equal numbers, or at least at equal volume. "What do you say, Isatou?" he asked a little girl.

"I say no," she answered, decisively.

"Alright then, no it is." His hand moved over to the adjacent pit. "How's about this one, then?"

"No, no," an excitable boy exclaimed. "You'll lose the game!"

Mal looked up, caught Inara's eye, and smiled. "Musa?" he asked a boy standing at his side. "What's your advice?"

"You'll lose this round," Musa declared, "but—" he bent over and whispered in Mal's ear.

Mal's face broke into an ear-splitting grin. "That's as good a reason as ever I heard, Musa." He made his move. The children groaned. Mal's opponent, a girl who looked to be about ten years old, wore a look of undisguised greed on her face as she anticipated cleaning up.

But then she hesitated. It had been a sure thing, but—where had all the good moves gone? A ripple of excitement spread through the crowd of children, as they realized the Captain had turned the tables. Inara watched as the girl grew frustrated, then picked up a handful of pebbles and nearly threw them into the pits.

Inara saw that Mal was carefully observing the girl and the other children, but his face gave nothing away. He went through the process of asking the children's advice, not prolonging it overmuch, then made his move. It was a spectacular blow-out, and the girl quickly moved to clean up the wreckage. Mal had lost by a huge amount, and the girl, all smiles now, moved off to let others play.

Mal stood up and dusted himself off. "Let it never be said that Malcolm Reynolds cannot snatch defeat from the jaws of victory," he pronounced. "Thanks for a good game, Mualuma."

"Don't go, Jëkkëre Inara!" the children began to protest, and the young one clung to his leg.

"Got to get back to work, y'all," he said, "but I'll come and play again tomorrow, if I can."

He made his way over to where Inara was standing and put a hand round her waist. When he spoke though, it was to Ip, who, unnoticed by Inara, had joined the group. "Ip," Mal said quietly, "will you take a look at the game pieces the kids are playing with?" Ip, whose attention was completely focused on River, was taken by surprise. "Isatou," Mal called, getting the attention of a quiet girl nearby, "will you show Dr Ip your pebbles?"

The girl smiled at Mal, who gave her a brief one-armed hug and a smile in return. She pulled a little bag from her pocket and poured about fifty curiously-shaped rock crystals into Ip's hand. Ip started so violently he nearly dropped them all in the dust.

"Are they what I think they are?" Mal asked Ip quietly.

Ip looked up and met the Captain's gaze. "Yes, Captain, they are—timonium nesosilicate crystals. I've only ever seen them in museums!"

Mal looked from Ip to Inara and back again. "Pure timonium—or pure enough as makes no nevermind."

. . .

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glossary

小妹妹 xǐao mèimei [baby sister]

Jëkkëre [Husband of] Inara

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