All the usual disclaimers. Just keeping these characters busy, know they're not mine.

***

It was a cheerful meal that night. Kaylee cooked, with Book’s provisions and his help, and between them they produced something close to home-cooking. The market had provided fresh greens, which they simmered with a little salt pork and onions, some new slaughtered chickens, fresh peaches, and butter just in from the farm.

They were all at the table, all but the stableboy Warrick had sent.

“Where’s whats-his-name, Gowan?” Wash asked.

“Said he didn’t want no supper. I reckon he’s maybe a little sickish from leaving atmo for the first time,” Kaylee answered. “I offered to fix him a plate, if he was just feeling shy-like, but he said he wasn’t hungry. I ‘spect he turned in early. Big day, first time off planet.”

Even Inara and Mal managed to be more than civil under the influence of the meal.

“This must be a good job, Mal,” Inara remarked calmly. “I can’t remember when I last saw you sit at the table after the meal.”

“You’re still here, too, I notice, and it’s something I haven’t seen you do lately, neither,” Mal’s voice was just as neutral as Inara’s.

“Well, I ..”

“It’s all right – folks like to have you here. You don’t need to apologize for your charm.”

Inara looked up quickly at Mal’s remark about charm, but it seemed not to be meant rudely.

“Speaking of charm,” she offered, “those are very charming passengers you booked for us. I can’t remember when I saw animals so beautiful.”

“They are that, aren’t they. Smart, too. These are the cream of Warrick’s string of eventing horses. He’s sending them out Halcion to improve the stock out there,” Mal replied.

“Eventing horses?” Kaylee asked.

“Yeah, it’s a kinda game rich people like to play with horses. The horses have to do exactly what they’re asked to do without the judge tellin’ how the riders get ‘em to do it and then they run fast and jump over things outside in a field and then they haveta jump over big walls in an arena. I’ve only seen it a time or two, but it’s all kindsa spectacular. Takes strong, smart horses to be good at it. These mares are good at it,” Mal answered.

“Only mares?” Inara asked.

“There’s one gelding, but otherwise only mares,” Mal confirmed.

“Don’t they need stallions, too, to improve the herd?” Kaylee wondered aloud.

“Stallions don’t have to go in person,” answered Mal, “in order to improve the stock.”

“Whaddaya mean, they don’t have to go in person?” Jayne said. “Don’t it take two of them animals to make a new one? Just like folks?”

“Same as folks, yes, but same as folks you don’t have to have the daddy be there his own self.” Mal replied, his lips quirked as he waited for Jayne to take that in. “He can go in a cryochamber. Or at least the part of him that needs to be there can go in a cryochamber.”

Jayne’s mouth opened as he worked this out.

“Ya mean they …”

“They do, but we don’t have to discuss the mechanics at the dining table.”

“The mares do not like it so well,” offered River.

“I am not asking how you know that and please do not tell me,” interjected Simon, to general laughter.

“You really love them, don’t you, sir?” said Zoe, quietly to Mal, under the cover of the laughter.

“Love what?”

“Horses, sir.” Zoe never used more words than she needed to.

“Yeah, I reckon I do. Always did. Loved ‘em almost as much as teenage girls do. They’re the thing I miss most, living in the black. There’s nothing like ‘em.” Mal looked calm and almost dreamy in the lamplight, clearly remembering something that made him happy.

“What about that one, that one as isn’t a mare and isn’t a stallion?” asked Jayne.

“What about him?” answered Mal.

“Well, you call him ‘him,’ but if I understood what you just said, he ain’t a daddy, cause we didn’t bring no daddies on this trip.”

“No, he ain’t. And he ain’t gonna be,” responded Mal.

“Well, what is he? And what use is he?” asked Jayne.

“Stallions ain’t the easiest companions,” answered Mal. “But male horses are often stronger than female, and they’re not so gorram female. Marish, the hands back home called it when the mares were fretful and tetchy. So a gelding is a male horse that isn’t a stallion.”

Jayne puzzled over this visibly, then horror covered his face.

Before he could speak, however, River spoke.

“You said you had man parts, Jayne, but you do have a girl’s name. Maybe you’re like,” and she turned to Mal, “that -- what is his name?”

“His name, I’m sorry to say, is Fat Ninny. What he is, is a gelding. A stallion without man parts, as you correctly surmise.” Mal grinned at River, and at Simon’s discomfort with the entire conversation, and at Jayne’s horrified face.

The general uproar broke up dinner. That, and the end of the peach cobbler and real coffee.

***

The boy removed a foot square box from his duffle bag before he climbed onto a stool on a chair in the hallway outside the passenger dorm to which Kaylee had shown him that afternoon. He carefully unscrewed the air vent cover and, averting his face as he opened the box, he slid it carefully into the duct work of Serenity. Taking a long, folding carpenter’s rule, he shoved the box out of sight before screwing the cover back onto the vent.

Listening carefully to the talk and laughter coming from the mess, the boy moved through the ship, climbing into the duct work three more times to insert a foot-square box. He carefully averted his face each time as he opened the box, trying not to breathe in the dust they released. He pushed them all out of sight.

***

The next morning the boy slipped into the kitchen very early, only to find Mal waiting for him.

He looked speculatively at the boy for several moments before speaking.

“So you’re not Gowan, are you?” asked Mal quietly.

“W-w-what makes you say that, sir?” stammered the boy, cringing in anticipation of the blow he was sure was coming.

“You don’t know a gorram thing about horses, that’s how I know you never worked in Warrick’s stable. So you gonna tell me why you’re here and why the real Gowan isn’t here?” Mal’s voice wasn’t loud, but it was implacable.

“Well, sir, I’m his brother and we swapped because I needed to get off Persephone in a hurry. He told me as much as he could and I figured I could suss it out once I got here,” the boy blurted. “I didn’t figure a cargo ship captain would know whether I knew anything about nags or not.”

“It’s nearly always a bad plan to count on someone else’s ignorance. What folks know and don’t know’ll often surprise you.” Mal answered calmly, still staring at the boy.

“Are you gonna put me out the airlock?” the boy whispered.

“Now why would I do that?” marveled Mal.

“I dunno. Seems like you might, since I lied about who I was.”

“There’s something about you I don’t like,” Mal said, “but I’m not gonna put you out the airlock this morning, not at least until we’ve finished mucking out. I was a stupid boy myself once. Now I’m just stupid. What’d you do that’s got you on the run? In trouble with the law or with a girl?”

“I don’t want to say, sir.” The boy looked away as he answered.

“Well, as long as you do what I say and don’t make trouble I won’t put you out the airlock. Come on, I’ll show you what needs to be done. Oh, and what’s your real name?”

“You c’n keep calling me Gowan. I kinda like it.” Mal and Gowan worked companionably at the morning chores, talking quietly to the horses, Gowan occasionally coughing as he forked hay.

“You have that cough long, boy?” Mal asked.

“Nossir. Seems like it came on in the night,” Gowan answered. “S’nothing.”

“Nothing or not, go up to the infirmary when we’re done here. I don’t need some Persephone plague on my boat. We got a good doc, he’ll see to you.” Mal smiled a half-grin at the boy and nodded up the ramp.

***End of part 2***