Just a Little Favor for a Friend Pt. 8
Wedding Ring Ranch, continued further
***
"Looks like we have company in the sky," Wash informed Captain Reynolds as Serenity fast approached the glowing red-tan of Court's World. "It's..." he tapped the sensor twice with a finger, as if this procedure would clarify the reading. "Looks like another Firefly. Odd... Looks like her signature has a halo."
"What's she doing here, you think? She in our space?"
"I don't know, and, no, she ain't real nearby. Iron transport? They mine on Court's."
"I wasn't aware that they use mid-size transport ships for that."
"Maybe she's seeing the sights, Captain. Indicators don't include a way to read the motivations of the people on board."
"Lucky for us they don't. Maybe the same job's attracted others."
"Not every transport ship of this class goes out briganding. Looks as if we'll be at the ranch in time for a midday meal."
"Shiny. Keep a look out for our guides."
"What am I looking for?"
"Cowponies. Little ships. You'll barely see 'em-- use the sensors and when you see little blips in ragged formation, that'll be them."
"Cowponies, huh? Okay, will do."
Court's World did not appear much different up close-- the same swirling, red-tan patterns over a dusty plain. Serenity skimmed the dust haze. Low, broad grooves in the dirt were empty and arid. On the sloping banks, scrub bushes kept narrow ridges intact. As the Firefly approached the ranch area, cattle scattered, regrouped and wheeled, jerking their horns upward. The cattle, spotted in all colors, each with a layer of the same hazy red, galloped over a rise and down the grooves. Wash saw the cattle easily, but barely picked out the Cowponies. Their black hatches, surrounded by textured windows, appeared to him like stones or spots or crevasses. They did not seem to be moving, at first-- their parts did not move, and with Serenity speeding along, the small crafts' relationships to the rises in the dirt were hard to discern. Sure enough, though, the sensors picked up a full nine of them, two lines of three, the other three scattered loosely. The tiny ships were yellowish and blue, but the light played tricks until it seemed they were desert-colored, or dim mirages.
Serenity followed her guides into a hilly area. Here the rises were packed and fairly stable. Dust drifted off of them, but gullies replaced the low, broad waves. One of the Cowponies-- a leader in a group of three-- opened her hatch and a cowboy-hatted man waved a bandanna. Wash couldn't see some of the others, who had whipped underneath and around Serenity, but this one was well out ahead and circled in a gully that had no further opening. She settled like a bug in the mouth of the gully. Wash put Serenity down behind her in a spot marked by two other Cowponies who dashed into place and then away as the transport ship came down. On the ground, the Cowponies were much more clearly visible, with matte running strips around their sides. The running boards themselves were tractioned for jumping out, or for riding along while someone else piloted. Several men hopped onto the dust.
The nine Cowponies made a half-circle at Serenity's cargo door. Mal seemed unconcerned about his own safety in the closed-off canyon. He opened the cargo bay as if expecting to meet people he knew; several cowboy pilots took off their hats, seeing the mechanic, Kaylee, stepping down behind Mal. One made a little bow and scraped his boot in the dirt. "Sir, Ma'am, if you and anyone else with you who wants to come up to the house will just board our ponies, we can be there in a second. Just that Mr. Sheffield don't care for strangers being seen too close to the house right now. Not strangers with cargo ships and so on, anyway. If you'd tell Miz Inara to fly her shuttle on up there, that'll be just fine, he says."
"So he don't mind the shuttle?"
"No." The man who was speaking had whiskers and hair the same color as the dust. "Not a Companion's shuttle, anyhow. He just thought-- well, people know if he's hiring strangers and-- well, things are a mite touchy in town."
The rest of the crew drifted into the cargo bay; ship's doctor Simon saw the Cowponies and balked. "Better get used to the idea," Mal told him. "We ain't taking the other shuttle."
Simon watched River unhesitatingly pick out a little craft for her ride to the ranch house. He was left with the choice of staying in the gully with Serenity or joining River. He continued out onto the dusty ground.
Mal contacted Inara. "Getting the special treatment as usual, Ambassador Serra. The rest of us are roughing it. Meet you at the house."
All Inara replied with was, "Understood."
The Cowponies gave smooth rides, if a bit queasy on the dips and rises where Mal and his crew were used to the stabilizers of a cargo ship. Cowponies of the flesh and blood type joined the formation close to the ranch house, where it could be seen that the small rattle of the Cowpony class craft did not bother them in the least, whereas swooshing, hissing ships often sent horses into panicked runs. "They get used to these?" Mal asked his pilot.
"I wouldn't say that," the pilot answered. "They're born seeing 'em around. I think the main thing is the surfacing. No flashy reflections off the hull or the windows. We don't have anything in the way of range, but we don't need it. And a horse'll rope calves with one of these as if it were another horse. Not to mention how good it is for the spine if you've had one too many falls."
"I oughta get one of these just to ride around my ship."
The cowboy chuckled.
The hooved type of cowpony drove several clumps of stubborn cattle away from a deeply rutted area. Where the ruts grew deeper and dustier, iron fencing made a series of chutes, and the cattle seemed to be hoping for an opening. The Cowpony ships dashed down the center chute and cowboys and horses behind them closed a series of gates. Mal saw stacks of hay at the end of the chute, by an L-shaped set of sheds, and figured that's what the cattle were waiting for. Then came an open, flat space with dust tramped even and hard. Beyond it, the white ranch house, with its coating of dust, stood in its yard of dirt with two or three heroically maintained trees with curly trunks and tiny, clustered leaves. There was one more fence, painted white, with a few patches that needed redoing. The broad gate was opened by a man in white with a gardener's cap. The gateway was tall, with an arched iron sign across its top. Part of the sign seemed newer. It had a slight gloss and was a clean grey. It said, "Sheffield's". Below it, an older, redder material that matched the gateway frame read, "Wedding Ring Ranch". Below the words, welded into place, was a pair of large, iron rings, slightly overlapping each other.
Inara's shuttle came up, kicking up a bit of a stir. She minimized the noise and dust as best she could, keeping a high altitude until the last minute when she put down next to some trucks on the far side of the house. Kaylee was hopping out of the Cowpony she'd ridden in and gushing about it. "I want to get one of these!"
Kaylee petted her Cowpony, smiled to her pilot-- who smiled back a bit dreamily and bowed slightly to her-- and stepped quickly to catch up with Mal. Everyone on board Serenity had come along, including Shepherd Book, the chaplain, who had decided he wanted "some fresh air," although the air was more dust than pure.
Simon and River held hands. River wanted to run around, see everything, examine the hay, and talk to the cattle, but Dr. Tam, vigilant older brother, had decided upon one glance at the place that it was "rough" and the men "not to be trusted" and that River should stay with him until they reached the house. Since she was interested in the house as well as the grounds, River went with Simon willingly. Besides, Simon had thanked his Cowpony pilot graciously enough, so unless this turned into overt criticism of people to their faces, River had little to complain of.
Wash and Zoe strolled. They kept an even pace and an observant attitude. Zoe trusted Mal, of course, yet it had proved to be in her best interest and the best interests of the rest of the crew to be ever on the lookout for things Mal might have seen and dismissed when he ought to have paid them utmost attention.
Jayne stuck by Zoe. "Why don't they have any hogs?" he wondered, to her or aloud to himself. "They must eat pork sometime. And why ain't they got a well? Where's the well?"
The gardener who had opened the gate had gone. A man in fine blue and black house clothes came to wave the visitors up the few steps to the veranda and heard some of what Jayne said. "Not all worlds have the means to use wells. We import and create water. The rainstorms we do get don't leave much for storage."
"Fancy house," Jayne noted. The house man smiled.
The interior was especially fancy. Jayne, even Zoe, gaped at it, though erstwhile city dwellers such as Wash just thought it was nice. Mal looked for something to criticize, and found it. "Check out that statue. He's got enough money for statues but not enough to put clothes on them."
He knew Jayne would find that funny, which was the point-- Jayne laughed rudely.
A staircase split the entrance hall into halves. The crew of Serenity was ushered into a front room at the foot of the stairs on the left. Inara, floating even more decorously in such a house than she did on the ship, bowed gratefully to the servant who offered to seat her in another room. "Thank you. I will stay with Captain Reynolds and his crew, for now."
"Certainly, Miss Serra. It is a pleasure to see you."
She smiled, just enough, and entered the room where Mal had already slouched on a brick-red embroidered sofa and placed his feet on a low, lacquered table.
Kaylee perched carefully on the same sofa, and Jayne, not finding a seat in the room that he thought he would fit well, sat on the floor near Kaylee and played with a tassel on the edge of a cushion. Book stepped restlessly from one place to another until a thin, sparklingly dressed woman entered the room. Book stared, and stood still. He seemed to be uncertain how to proceed. Ever since joining the crew of Serenity, he never knew whom he was going to meet, whether he was supposed to know them ahead of time, or whether Captain Reynolds considered them friend or foe.
The woman had hair swept back from slightly hollowed temples, a beige silk dress and a pleasantly commanding demeanor. Mal started to find a way out of his slouch so he could shake hands standing up when he noticed the sunken cheeks that, though covered with inobtrusive powder cosmetics, drew him to compare cheekbones and overall outline with the man he'd seen on the screen earlier. "Vincent?"
Inara, who had stationed herself near Mal for this purpose, kicked him sharply in the ankle.
"Ow!" he whispered, but he stood up, though he had been settling back down once he realized the hostess was a man.
Jayne stood up. Wash stood. Everyone shook hands. The woman gave Mal a slightly wicked look. "If you insist, though Gloria is my preferred referent in this state."
"Wow," Kaylee told Gloria. "You're good. All... feminine, and stuff."
Jayne, who had resumed his seat, elbowed Kaylee's leg. "Yeah, not like you, eh Kaylee?"
Kaylee blushed. Mal frowned. "That'll be enough, Jayne."
Jayne rolled his eyes, ducked his head slightly and folded his arms.
"Thank you for coming," said Gloria. "I wonder if you might do a job for me. I suspect that you have heard, now and again, reports of sightings of alien life, alien ships, things of that nature."
"Sure, everyone has," said Mal.
"In town, that is, at Crater Mine, which is not terribly far from here, there is a great deal of excitement concerning a find which is purported to be alien in nature."
"So what?" Mal leaned forward, picked a small stone out of his boot, and flicked it across the lacquer table. Inara's eyes flashed, but Gloria only stifled a smile. "Stories like that are as common as dust mites," Mal continued. "What does it matter what people say unless they have proof?"
"The people in town, the miners, claim to have an alien fossil."
Mal sat up.
"They are publicizing it as such, and it is putting a small gear into some works I have been organizing since I moved to this ranch. The good fortune I had in securing this place for an extremely reasonable sum has allowed me to further other projects. I have no wish for property values to go up when a mine is as good as dead and its people have no further use for the place anyway."
"But what do you want with an iron mine that's as good as dead? What does the alien fossil-- if there could even be such a thing-- have to do with property values?"
"Everything." Gloria did not sit down, but moved in and out between pieces of furniture. Outdoors, the light was so dusty that it put a haze in the window light-- in shadow, the furniture appeared rich, but where the window light touched it the effect was ghostly. "Depending upon what they found, the item they dug up in the mine could make the area much more desirable to people wishing to dig up more of it. The miners already have the place and the equipment insured for amounts absurdly beyond what they are worth, and they seem to cling to the concept that they have a fortune on their hands. If they were beginning to see the light, it has been, shall we say, dimmed again by the appearance of what they deem a valuable object scratched out of their mine.
"As for me, I have no interest in investing in mines, though if there were much more to be gleaned from Crater Mine, I might consider it. No, in fact, my interest is in railroads, and I have one running in front of the ranch. There are two main towns so far on this world, and Crater Mine is not one of them. I wish to connect trade points and to take some of the transport income from generalized transport ships-- no offense-- and turn it over into trains. It is economical. It is handy. It just makes more sense than sitting on that-- excuse me-- gorramed mine."
Gloria said "gorramed" so delicately that Mal and River both snickered. Inara and Simon gave them dirty looks, respectively.
"So you don't care what they found as long as nobody else wants to find more of it?" Mal asked.
"More or less. I had thought that although the people were... stubborn, there would be no problem in sooner or later striking a deal to satisfy everyone. Now they pull this stunt."
"What do you want us to do?"
"I want you to engage in some potentially morally muddy activity. I wish for you to take the object known as the alien fossil from the town, and bring it to me. I have tried sending in my own people. Some of them, lesser known to the townspeople, have managed to take a look at the fossil. Those who went with the intent of perhaps bringing the item to me-- that is, those persons whom you might refer to as my hired muscle-- were turned away as soon as anyone recognized them. I want you to behave as though you do not know me, and thus, as anonymous visitors interested in the fossil, pick it up discreetly and bring it back here. For this you will be paid."
"Even if it's fake?"
"I do not, I may say, care one whit whether the fossil is fake or not. I may also say, however, that those who have glimpsed it and told me about it have... used bizarre descriptors. They have seemed to go in unbelieving, and come out rather less articulate about what they have seen than I would expect. I wish to see the item. I wish to discredit the concept of its being an alien's remains, fossilized or otherwise."
"You think aliens don't exist?" Kaylee asked.
"I do not know, of course, whether they do or not," Gloria stated. "How can one know something like that, unless one is looking at an alien? And it does not matter to me, because, so far, aliens do not affect this household one way or another. If indeed the people in Crater Mine are looking at one right now, let us say that this is a rather incovenient time and place for human beings to discover other races among us."
"You want to steal-- I mean have us steal it," Mal said, "So you can remove their evidence of it. So they can't advertise it. What if they do find more?"
"It may be a hoax," said Gloria. "If so, apparently it is a compelling one. You may spend the afternoon here. Rusty will show you the visitors' building. Also, if any of you need a ride to your ship, you may ask someone to take you and they will do so. I leave it to you to decide how to acquire the so-called alien fossil, though I would of course strongly prefer not being implicated in this action. Additionally, you may ride the train in to Crater Mine whenever you like. Tell the conductor I sent you."
"We'll get right on it. Thanks." Mal stood, shook hands, and turned to the door, where the cowboy with red hair and whiskers was waiting with his hat held respectfully in his hands.
Gloria turned to Inara and the two of them offered their fingertips to escort each other across the hallway to the other side of the staircase. Jayne watched them depart before standing up and stretching. He nudged Kaylee, who was watching the ladies' dresses ripple as they left, and muttered to her. "I thought we were gonna work for some Vincent feller."
***
"Looks like we have company in the sky," Wash informed Captain Reynolds as Serenity fast approached the glowing red-tan of Court's World. "It's..." he tapped the sensor twice with a finger, as if this procedure would clarify the reading. "Looks like another Firefly. Odd... Looks like her signature has a halo."
"What's she doing here, you think? She in our space?"
"I don't know, and, no, she ain't real nearby. Iron transport? They mine on Court's."
"I wasn't aware that they use mid-size transport ships for that."
"Maybe she's seeing the sights, Captain. Indicators don't include a way to read the motivations of the people on board."
"Lucky for us they don't. Maybe the same job's attracted others."
"Not every transport ship of this class goes out briganding. Looks as if we'll be at the ranch in time for a midday meal."
"Shiny. Keep a look out for our guides."
"What am I looking for?"
"Cowponies. Little ships. You'll barely see 'em-- use the sensors and when you see little blips in ragged formation, that'll be them."
"Cowponies, huh? Okay, will do."
Court's World did not appear much different up close-- the same swirling, red-tan patterns over a dusty plain. Serenity skimmed the dust haze. Low, broad grooves in the dirt were empty and arid. On the sloping banks, scrub bushes kept narrow ridges intact. As the Firefly approached the ranch area, cattle scattered, regrouped and wheeled, jerking their horns upward. The cattle, spotted in all colors, each with a layer of the same hazy red, galloped over a rise and down the grooves. Wash saw the cattle easily, but barely picked out the Cowponies. Their black hatches, surrounded by textured windows, appeared to him like stones or spots or crevasses. They did not seem to be moving, at first-- their parts did not move, and with Serenity speeding along, the small crafts' relationships to the rises in the dirt were hard to discern. Sure enough, though, the sensors picked up a full nine of them, two lines of three, the other three scattered loosely. The tiny ships were yellowish and blue, but the light played tricks until it seemed they were desert-colored, or dim mirages.
Serenity followed her guides into a hilly area. Here the rises were packed and fairly stable. Dust drifted off of them, but gullies replaced the low, broad waves. One of the Cowponies-- a leader in a group of three-- opened her hatch and a cowboy-hatted man waved a bandanna. Wash couldn't see some of the others, who had whipped underneath and around Serenity, but this one was well out ahead and circled in a gully that had no further opening. She settled like a bug in the mouth of the gully. Wash put Serenity down behind her in a spot marked by two other Cowponies who dashed into place and then away as the transport ship came down. On the ground, the Cowponies were much more clearly visible, with matte running strips around their sides. The running boards themselves were tractioned for jumping out, or for riding along while someone else piloted. Several men hopped onto the dust.
The nine Cowponies made a half-circle at Serenity's cargo door. Mal seemed unconcerned about his own safety in the closed-off canyon. He opened the cargo bay as if expecting to meet people he knew; several cowboy pilots took off their hats, seeing the mechanic, Kaylee, stepping down behind Mal. One made a little bow and scraped his boot in the dirt. "Sir, Ma'am, if you and anyone else with you who wants to come up to the house will just board our ponies, we can be there in a second. Just that Mr. Sheffield don't care for strangers being seen too close to the house right now. Not strangers with cargo ships and so on, anyway. If you'd tell Miz Inara to fly her shuttle on up there, that'll be just fine, he says."
"So he don't mind the shuttle?"
"No." The man who was speaking had whiskers and hair the same color as the dust. "Not a Companion's shuttle, anyhow. He just thought-- well, people know if he's hiring strangers and-- well, things are a mite touchy in town."
The rest of the crew drifted into the cargo bay; ship's doctor Simon saw the Cowponies and balked. "Better get used to the idea," Mal told him. "We ain't taking the other shuttle."
Simon watched River unhesitatingly pick out a little craft for her ride to the ranch house. He was left with the choice of staying in the gully with Serenity or joining River. He continued out onto the dusty ground.
Mal contacted Inara. "Getting the special treatment as usual, Ambassador Serra. The rest of us are roughing it. Meet you at the house."
All Inara replied with was, "Understood."
The Cowponies gave smooth rides, if a bit queasy on the dips and rises where Mal and his crew were used to the stabilizers of a cargo ship. Cowponies of the flesh and blood type joined the formation close to the ranch house, where it could be seen that the small rattle of the Cowpony class craft did not bother them in the least, whereas swooshing, hissing ships often sent horses into panicked runs. "They get used to these?" Mal asked his pilot.
"I wouldn't say that," the pilot answered. "They're born seeing 'em around. I think the main thing is the surfacing. No flashy reflections off the hull or the windows. We don't have anything in the way of range, but we don't need it. And a horse'll rope calves with one of these as if it were another horse. Not to mention how good it is for the spine if you've had one too many falls."
"I oughta get one of these just to ride around my ship."
The cowboy chuckled.
The hooved type of cowpony drove several clumps of stubborn cattle away from a deeply rutted area. Where the ruts grew deeper and dustier, iron fencing made a series of chutes, and the cattle seemed to be hoping for an opening. The Cowpony ships dashed down the center chute and cowboys and horses behind them closed a series of gates. Mal saw stacks of hay at the end of the chute, by an L-shaped set of sheds, and figured that's what the cattle were waiting for. Then came an open, flat space with dust tramped even and hard. Beyond it, the white ranch house, with its coating of dust, stood in its yard of dirt with two or three heroically maintained trees with curly trunks and tiny, clustered leaves. There was one more fence, painted white, with a few patches that needed redoing. The broad gate was opened by a man in white with a gardener's cap. The gateway was tall, with an arched iron sign across its top. Part of the sign seemed newer. It had a slight gloss and was a clean grey. It said, "Sheffield's". Below it, an older, redder material that matched the gateway frame read, "Wedding Ring Ranch". Below the words, welded into place, was a pair of large, iron rings, slightly overlapping each other.
Inara's shuttle came up, kicking up a bit of a stir. She minimized the noise and dust as best she could, keeping a high altitude until the last minute when she put down next to some trucks on the far side of the house. Kaylee was hopping out of the Cowpony she'd ridden in and gushing about it. "I want to get one of these!"
Kaylee petted her Cowpony, smiled to her pilot-- who smiled back a bit dreamily and bowed slightly to her-- and stepped quickly to catch up with Mal. Everyone on board Serenity had come along, including Shepherd Book, the chaplain, who had decided he wanted "some fresh air," although the air was more dust than pure.
Simon and River held hands. River wanted to run around, see everything, examine the hay, and talk to the cattle, but Dr. Tam, vigilant older brother, had decided upon one glance at the place that it was "rough" and the men "not to be trusted" and that River should stay with him until they reached the house. Since she was interested in the house as well as the grounds, River went with Simon willingly. Besides, Simon had thanked his Cowpony pilot graciously enough, so unless this turned into overt criticism of people to their faces, River had little to complain of.
Wash and Zoe strolled. They kept an even pace and an observant attitude. Zoe trusted Mal, of course, yet it had proved to be in her best interest and the best interests of the rest of the crew to be ever on the lookout for things Mal might have seen and dismissed when he ought to have paid them utmost attention.
Jayne stuck by Zoe. "Why don't they have any hogs?" he wondered, to her or aloud to himself. "They must eat pork sometime. And why ain't they got a well? Where's the well?"
The gardener who had opened the gate had gone. A man in fine blue and black house clothes came to wave the visitors up the few steps to the veranda and heard some of what Jayne said. "Not all worlds have the means to use wells. We import and create water. The rainstorms we do get don't leave much for storage."
"Fancy house," Jayne noted. The house man smiled.
The interior was especially fancy. Jayne, even Zoe, gaped at it, though erstwhile city dwellers such as Wash just thought it was nice. Mal looked for something to criticize, and found it. "Check out that statue. He's got enough money for statues but not enough to put clothes on them."
He knew Jayne would find that funny, which was the point-- Jayne laughed rudely.
A staircase split the entrance hall into halves. The crew of Serenity was ushered into a front room at the foot of the stairs on the left. Inara, floating even more decorously in such a house than she did on the ship, bowed gratefully to the servant who offered to seat her in another room. "Thank you. I will stay with Captain Reynolds and his crew, for now."
"Certainly, Miss Serra. It is a pleasure to see you."
She smiled, just enough, and entered the room where Mal had already slouched on a brick-red embroidered sofa and placed his feet on a low, lacquered table.
Kaylee perched carefully on the same sofa, and Jayne, not finding a seat in the room that he thought he would fit well, sat on the floor near Kaylee and played with a tassel on the edge of a cushion. Book stepped restlessly from one place to another until a thin, sparklingly dressed woman entered the room. Book stared, and stood still. He seemed to be uncertain how to proceed. Ever since joining the crew of Serenity, he never knew whom he was going to meet, whether he was supposed to know them ahead of time, or whether Captain Reynolds considered them friend or foe.
The woman had hair swept back from slightly hollowed temples, a beige silk dress and a pleasantly commanding demeanor. Mal started to find a way out of his slouch so he could shake hands standing up when he noticed the sunken cheeks that, though covered with inobtrusive powder cosmetics, drew him to compare cheekbones and overall outline with the man he'd seen on the screen earlier. "Vincent?"
Inara, who had stationed herself near Mal for this purpose, kicked him sharply in the ankle.
"Ow!" he whispered, but he stood up, though he had been settling back down once he realized the hostess was a man.
Jayne stood up. Wash stood. Everyone shook hands. The woman gave Mal a slightly wicked look. "If you insist, though Gloria is my preferred referent in this state."
"Wow," Kaylee told Gloria. "You're good. All... feminine, and stuff."
Jayne, who had resumed his seat, elbowed Kaylee's leg. "Yeah, not like you, eh Kaylee?"
Kaylee blushed. Mal frowned. "That'll be enough, Jayne."
Jayne rolled his eyes, ducked his head slightly and folded his arms.
"Thank you for coming," said Gloria. "I wonder if you might do a job for me. I suspect that you have heard, now and again, reports of sightings of alien life, alien ships, things of that nature."
"Sure, everyone has," said Mal.
"In town, that is, at Crater Mine, which is not terribly far from here, there is a great deal of excitement concerning a find which is purported to be alien in nature."
"So what?" Mal leaned forward, picked a small stone out of his boot, and flicked it across the lacquer table. Inara's eyes flashed, but Gloria only stifled a smile. "Stories like that are as common as dust mites," Mal continued. "What does it matter what people say unless they have proof?"
"The people in town, the miners, claim to have an alien fossil."
Mal sat up.
"They are publicizing it as such, and it is putting a small gear into some works I have been organizing since I moved to this ranch. The good fortune I had in securing this place for an extremely reasonable sum has allowed me to further other projects. I have no wish for property values to go up when a mine is as good as dead and its people have no further use for the place anyway."
"But what do you want with an iron mine that's as good as dead? What does the alien fossil-- if there could even be such a thing-- have to do with property values?"
"Everything." Gloria did not sit down, but moved in and out between pieces of furniture. Outdoors, the light was so dusty that it put a haze in the window light-- in shadow, the furniture appeared rich, but where the window light touched it the effect was ghostly. "Depending upon what they found, the item they dug up in the mine could make the area much more desirable to people wishing to dig up more of it. The miners already have the place and the equipment insured for amounts absurdly beyond what they are worth, and they seem to cling to the concept that they have a fortune on their hands. If they were beginning to see the light, it has been, shall we say, dimmed again by the appearance of what they deem a valuable object scratched out of their mine.
"As for me, I have no interest in investing in mines, though if there were much more to be gleaned from Crater Mine, I might consider it. No, in fact, my interest is in railroads, and I have one running in front of the ranch. There are two main towns so far on this world, and Crater Mine is not one of them. I wish to connect trade points and to take some of the transport income from generalized transport ships-- no offense-- and turn it over into trains. It is economical. It is handy. It just makes more sense than sitting on that-- excuse me-- gorramed mine."
Gloria said "gorramed" so delicately that Mal and River both snickered. Inara and Simon gave them dirty looks, respectively.
"So you don't care what they found as long as nobody else wants to find more of it?" Mal asked.
"More or less. I had thought that although the people were... stubborn, there would be no problem in sooner or later striking a deal to satisfy everyone. Now they pull this stunt."
"What do you want us to do?"
"I want you to engage in some potentially morally muddy activity. I wish for you to take the object known as the alien fossil from the town, and bring it to me. I have tried sending in my own people. Some of them, lesser known to the townspeople, have managed to take a look at the fossil. Those who went with the intent of perhaps bringing the item to me-- that is, those persons whom you might refer to as my hired muscle-- were turned away as soon as anyone recognized them. I want you to behave as though you do not know me, and thus, as anonymous visitors interested in the fossil, pick it up discreetly and bring it back here. For this you will be paid."
"Even if it's fake?"
"I do not, I may say, care one whit whether the fossil is fake or not. I may also say, however, that those who have glimpsed it and told me about it have... used bizarre descriptors. They have seemed to go in unbelieving, and come out rather less articulate about what they have seen than I would expect. I wish to see the item. I wish to discredit the concept of its being an alien's remains, fossilized or otherwise."
"You think aliens don't exist?" Kaylee asked.
"I do not know, of course, whether they do or not," Gloria stated. "How can one know something like that, unless one is looking at an alien? And it does not matter to me, because, so far, aliens do not affect this household one way or another. If indeed the people in Crater Mine are looking at one right now, let us say that this is a rather incovenient time and place for human beings to discover other races among us."
"You want to steal-- I mean have us steal it," Mal said, "So you can remove their evidence of it. So they can't advertise it. What if they do find more?"
"It may be a hoax," said Gloria. "If so, apparently it is a compelling one. You may spend the afternoon here. Rusty will show you the visitors' building. Also, if any of you need a ride to your ship, you may ask someone to take you and they will do so. I leave it to you to decide how to acquire the so-called alien fossil, though I would of course strongly prefer not being implicated in this action. Additionally, you may ride the train in to Crater Mine whenever you like. Tell the conductor I sent you."
"We'll get right on it. Thanks." Mal stood, shook hands, and turned to the door, where the cowboy with red hair and whiskers was waiting with his hat held respectfully in his hands.
Gloria turned to Inara and the two of them offered their fingertips to escort each other across the hallway to the other side of the staircase. Jayne watched them depart before standing up and stretching. He nudged Kaylee, who was watching the ladies' dresses ripple as they left, and muttered to her. "I thought we were gonna work for some Vincent feller."