In their own suite, Mal and Inara were not feeling particularly comfortable as they prepared to take to bed either. The problem, Mal reflected, was that neither of them really had the technical know-how to really investigate the rooms for any kind of security monitoring devices and remove them, at least, not with any assurances that the exercise would be successful. For the entire evening, then, Mal had been forced to stay 'in character', playing the role of Nathaniel Hammond from Ariel, but he was sure that Inara didn't want him to continue acting as her client indefinitely.

All of a sudden, Inara got up from the table, where she had been amusing herself playing some solitaire game that Mal didn't know with Mah-jongg tiles, and turned to face him. "I'm sorry, but there's one thing that I must attend to before we retire for the evening."

Oh. "You need to leave the room for this?"

"I hope not, but if I must negotiate on this point in front of you, please do not interfere with the conversation lightly." She paused until Mal nodded his concurrence, and then laid her fingers upon the room's intercom control. "Is Mister Bentley available?"

There was a pause, and Mal was starting to wonder if Inara wasn't using the thing right, then. "Bentley here, and what is this in reference to?" The voice seemed to come from everywhere around then, not just the spot on the wall.

"Inara Serra wishes to clarify a point of our understanding," Inara replied to the invisible voice.

"Just a moment, if that's alright."

"Certainly." Inara let her fingers fall from the contact patch. Wondering what would happen next; Mal got up from the bed where he'd been sitting and trying to relax, and checked that his fancy rich boy clothes were all straight. With a strange 'zwaaht' sound effect, a haze of color and light filled the whole room for a moment and coalesced into a transparent image of their host standing next to the fireplace.

"I hope that this can be settled quickly over the holo-viewer," he said a bit testily.

"I would think so, sir," Inara said gracefully. "What I'm about to ask of is made more awkward by the fact that we two are, for all intents and purposes, guests at my request, and therefore insisting on all the usual courtesies is in itself indelicate, but - we were speaking with some of the scientist invitees earlier this evening, and they spoke of having to inactivate certain monitoring devices in their rooms in order to be assured of privacy. This was an amusing game, to people of such confidence and technical abilities."

"Ah, yes," Bentley said with a little smile. "My security people would have made the bugs tamper-proof if they could, but I remember going through this little dance myself at scientific symposia, and how I'd have reacted if somebody had made 'the game' too hard."

"You'd have left without participating?" Mal blurted out, before remembering that he wasn't supposed to interfere casually. Inara shot him a very dark look, and he shrugged an apology.

"No, I wouldn't have left the premises in all likelihood - but I wouldn't have participated much in the panels. It would have been a point of intellectual pride, to not rest until I had found vulnerability in the supposedly 'tamper-proof' systems and destroyed them utterly."

"The devices you use now might as well be tamper-proof to us, Bentley, for we have no skills to disable or even recognize them with," Inara told him. "I realize that you have no particular reason to keep us contented, but I must have assurances. It is a matter of the strictest Guild policies, that what goes on between a Companion and her client at certain times is strictly between the two of them, known to no-one else. If you cannot tell me that the cameras and microphones are turned off and will not be reactivated while we are here..."

"Rest yourself assured on that point," Bentley told her. "They were never turned on, from before this morning. I know that particular detail of the Guild policies, and have in fact been the beneficiary of it often. Will there be anything else?"

Inara paused just a moment, and then shook her head. "Sorry to intrude on your time, Bentley," she said quietly. "You must be very busy with details for tomorrow."

"Actually, I hope that I'm very nearly near the end of the to-do list," he said with a slight smile. "Good night."

Inara nodded, and Bentley's image winked out with no more ceremony. "Hmm..." she muttered.

"Do - do you think that it's safe to..." Mal started.

"Oh, yes, I'm pretty sure that he was telling the truth about that." Mal had suspected that himself, but getting Inara's certain opinion reassured him considerably. "There's something that's bugging me about that conversation, though."

"Maybe he wasn't right about the cameras being turned off from the start, but they're off now?" Mal suggested. "Could that be it?"

She seriously considered that explanation for a moment, and then discarded it. "No, I don't think so." After a little more thought, she appeared to get it. "He might be suspicious of the fact that I asked, that I didn't just take privacy for granted. It might suggest to him that we do indeed have something to hide. If that's it, then I'm sorry... but I didn't feel sure that we could count on the Guild's protection if I didn't invoke it out loud. It's a poor enough shield anyway, against people who might feel that the Companions will never know that they spied."

"Yes, well... you did what you could, and I wouldn't consider the outcome that bad, even if Bentley's a little mistrustful now. He hasn't got anything specific to pin against us."

"No, just a huge security array in the rest of the building, including the security labs, to train on us," Inara pointed out. "And if we associate closely with Simon and Kaylee, despite having no obvious prior relationship with them - then the taint might fall on them as well."

"Hmm." Mal considered. "Should I clear out and get ready to sleep on the sofa?"

"No, I don't really see a need for that," Inara replied airily. "We can take separate sides of the bed easily enough."

"Well, alright, but I will give fair warning. Those who I've shared a bed with do complain that I have a tendency to crowd or push them around. I can't help it."

Inara rolled her eyes. "Well, if put to it, I might need to fall back on my own little habit of pinching in my sleep. That one I *can* help, but I'll use it if I'm forced to."

"Oh, great for you, but I'm not entirely sure that it'll help me."

"What might, then?" Inara considered this. "Perhaps you just can't relax well enough to sleep still. I can try a massage."

"Well, worth a go, I suppose," Mal said, though he didn't hold out too much hope for this.

"Alright, stretch yourself out, with your head on the pillow." Both of them were already changed for bed at this point, though Inara's nightgown was much fancier than the pyjamas she had approved for 'Nathaniel.'

"Should I turn over onto my front?" Mal asked, complying with that first instruction.

"No, I'll do your front first, and then the back. Why?"

"Umm... no reason." Mal closed his eyes, and though he tried to concentrate on anything but the sensation of smooth feminine hands touching him through the fabric, a wave of sleepiness seemed to hit him so that he could hardly focus on anything but that one thing. He didn't even remember turning over, though Inara said later that he was still awake enough to comply with that request when she was ready to make it.

What he did experience, in the depths of the night, was an unusual dream. At first it seemed like a dream memory of the past, of battles in the war and other missions taken with the crew of his ship. But there were other parts that he couldn't figure out - two different dark-skinned men who each wanted something from him, or maybe the same thing, but it was hard to tell that because he never saw them together. A lady whose face or features he never saw, but could tell that she was lovely beyond compare, and a fight of some kind, and being afraid of losing her. A coffin, with all of his friends gathered around it, except then they all had his own face. Looking out of Serenity's viewport and seeing that they were coming in for a landing on some world that he'd never seen or even viewed in an atlas. And a pretty girl dancing by herself in a dark and smoky tavern.

When he woke up, the chrono read 7:46 local time, which was later than he'd meant to let himself slumber. There was a lump wrapped up in covers next to him that he couldn't identify except for a bit of dark hair poking out, and he was laying on his stomach, exactly where he'd been the night before, as far as he could tell.

------------

"How's it going?" Zoe asked Wash softly. He turned up from the controls, startled.

"Hey, I didn't even here you come up," he admitted.

"You're half-way to dozing up here," she teased. "How long have you been up here?"

"Only about three and a half hours."

"Which meant you got up halfway through the night."

"That's by ship's time," Wash insisted, "and I don't have the luxury of sticking to a steady schedule that way, you know. Figured that it made sense to get up when dawn was breaking at Bentley's mansion, just in case there was anything we needed to pay attention to."

"And has there been?"

"Well, no," Wash admitted. "Nothing but the usual items in the news, including one small puff piece about the conference, not mentioning anybody we know. Nothing at all on the emergency beacons, obviously, or through the top-secret high encryption Cortex streams that Rickard and Kaylee set up for anybody who needed to communicate out of the conference without being detected."

"That ain't worrisome?" Zoe said. "Filing regular status reports wasn't the plan."

"No, I remember that part," Wash agreed a bit huffily. "This channel is pretty safe, but still, somebody might notice if it gets used regularly and sets a pattern. Better to stay in radio silence unless there's a real need. Over the more regular encrypted communicator, Book reports everything pretty quiet and peaceful back at Maren cabin. Jayne is staying up all night, but not being much of a pest otherwise. And the Marens seem to still be delighted to have company."

"Makes you wonder if they're really cut out to be hermits after all," Zoe mused. "Well, I won't deny that I'd rather have some idea what's going on at the conference, but that's probably a foolish wish. Oh - is there any indication of trouble out here?"

"Nah, we're pretty much invisible where we are," Wash allowed. "There are Alliance ships in a lower orbit, they could spot us if they were really looking, but I don't think any of them are paying so much attention."

"There's something rumbling up in the dreams," River announced, nearly making Wash jump up out of the chair. She often spoke in an oddly creepy voice, though he couldn't put his finger on what made it so weird. At this point, he just caught a glimpse of her face behind Zoe's side. "Probably nothing that I have the context to exactly sort out. One single moment, last night, and then... a frustrated longing, a yearning - through the night and all of the day so far. Not even paying attention to what he's doing, we'll be lucky if he doesn't blow the whole place to the kingdom gone."

"Well, whatever that's all about," Zoe drawled. "River, do you want to go have breakfast?"

"You don't need to act like I'm stupid whenever I'm talking about something that you don't understand, by the way," River complained, shifting from crazy prophetess to bratty little girl in a moment's time. "But yeah, some cereal and cold soya milk won't entirely suck." She cocked her head slightly. "Strawberry strudel pastries for the pilot."

"Umm... yeah, thanks, that'll hit the spot," Wash muttered, once again spooked by the way her suggestion had struck a chord in him. Had he been just thinking that would be a good way to grab some food without having to leave the controls?

No, couldn't be. He just knew a good idea when he heard it.

-------------

Kaylee sighed and sat back into her chair, but not too far back because it would tilt and maybe make her distraction too obvious, like she was slacking off. She felt like it was obvious that she wasn't speaking up more, but Simon's advice had been clear on this subject - piping up when she wasn't sure what to say would be a much more obvious way of attracting attention than staying silent.

It was a large group session, after all, and a handful of the group members were really dominating the discussion. It might seem a bit strange that Juli Maren wouldn't be one of those bright stars, but then, considering that she'd been out of the limelight for two years, probably not that strange. And paying attention, Kaylee had identified several people who had not spoken up at all, except to introduce themselves at the beginning of the morning.

Of course, when she wasn't speaking up, it was harder to stay motivated on the group discussion, and harder still to avoid thinking about Simon. Kissing Simon last night - it had been every bit as good as she'd hoped, and fantasized... well, possibly a very small letdown from everything that she'd built him up into over the months of mostly unrequited longing, but -- 'the higher you fly, the harder you fall', as the saying went. To get told so bluntly that she'd made her move at the wrong time - and yet, could she really disagree with the sentiment? If he realized that she liked him and wanted to... to be with him, then wouldn't it happen when they got back to Serenity? He liked her, and he wanted her too.

But, back on Serenity, there was River, and as much as Kaylee liked the younger girl, (loved her, in point of fact, as a friend or a sister of her own blood,) there was no denying that when it came to herself and Simon, River was a problem. She needed so much of her big brother's attention, just to stay out of trouble, and keep the crippling pain of what she had been through away. Kaylee didn't begrudge her that, but how could she ever have enough of Simon's heart at the same time?

And then, on a more practical level, was he obsessing over her and what they'd said, and hadn't said, and all of the baggage it held? Kaylee was having a tough enough time, but she was essentially just in a big jaw session here. Simon had to work on a nuclear reactor, making adjustments to it and demonstrating a familiarity with the principles involved. (If Badger really wanted to figure out how to copy the Baty engines, maybe he needed the kind of information that was being given to conference delegates more than he actually needed the unprotected sample reactor. But that was his problem - he'd offered to pay for the reactor, and they would do their best to get it to him. And negotiate for the information and training with whoever was willing to pay the most for it, perhaps. She'd have to talk to Mal about that at some point...)

In the meantime, the brainstorming session seemed to be running into a bit of a problem in that there were two different people who had more or less appointed themselves as being in charge of running it, and each of them had different priorities. A guy around her own age, Mihael Corrist, had taken the point of view that they needed to start 'from the first place' and talk about the kind of things that could introduce health risks in nuclear refinement, and establish tests and troubleshooting strategies for each one, while an older woman, Shenae Bowlson, was continuing to bring up things that she anticipated might go wrong, and how to deal with each one. The two of them were already snapping at each other, and if things got any worse there would be a full-blown science hissy fight, Kaylee expected.

And then, suddenly, she knew that the time was right to speak up. "Hello, excuse me, could I have the floor for a moment?"

"Umm... yes, Miz Maren?" Mihael said. Shenae glared at her, but made a kind of nod. Kaylee guessed that both of them hoped that she would take their side.

"It seems pretty obvious that we need to have just one person in charge of running the meeting, deciding what goes on the agenda first, so that we don't keep running into cross-purposes the whole time. Obviously, what everybody is bringing up should be addressed, time permitting, but prioritization is necessary so that we make efficient use of our time."

"Yes, I would agree," Shenae said. "And therefore?"

"Put it to a quick vote, by show of hands," she continued. "Is there anybody who wants to volunteer, or nominate somebody, as our chairperson, aside from Mihael and Shenae?" There was a restless moment, but no obvious contenders, which Kaylee was just as glad about. "Okay, who's for Shenae?" There were a lot of hands raised, but as I took a quick count, it seemed fairly evident that she didn't have majority support. "And who wants Mihael?"

There were more hands raised in support at this point, and even though not everybody had committed themselves, Kaylee thought that he was going to be the winner. "What about you, Maren?" Shenae grumbled. "Ain't you voting for anybody?"

"Not when I'm running the vote," Kaylee explained. "Unless a tie break was necessary, which umm, no, it doesn't seem to be. Twelve votes to ten, in favour of Mihael."

"With five people not voting, not counting the two of us," Shenae counting up. "You put me up first, with hardly any warning. Maybe there were people who were still making up their minds to..."

"Oh, come on, Shenae," a red-haired lady who'd been one of her staunchest supporters during the discussion grumbled. "Stop wasting so much time. We can go through the young turk's cautious step by step plan, before getting to the good stuff."

"All right, all right," Shenae muttered.

"Thank you very much, Miz Maren," Mihael said.

"Please - Juli," Kaylee insisted. "And no thanks are necessary... I just saw what I thought was necessary and jumped in to do it."

"Right, well... let's continue on with the testing procedures, if nobody has thought of a new risk factor..."

After that, she pretty much sat back and let that procedural suggestion be the balance of my contribution to the meeting. Shenae tried to draw Kaylee out into something talking in detail about customized remedies to genetic damage, but she didn't really want to try and ride the real Juli Maren's hobby-horse, and in any event, it did seem to be something of an off-topic side track, so someone else was able to bring the discussion back on course.

And then, we broke for lunch. Kaylee asked about Simon, under Rickard Maren's name, hoping that she'd get a chance to see him, even if they couldn't go back to the room and talk privately, but found out that they'd already finished their own noon rest session, and most of them hadn't come back through security from the south wing. So she munched away on a fowl sandwich and some casserole dish with pasta, and stewed beef, and plenty of mushy veggies.

------------

"Bentley, I'm glad that I got caught up with you," Inara muttered, power-walking across the hall to meet her host. "I... I wanted to apologize, if I offended you with my request last night."

"No, that's quite all right," he insisted. "You had every reason to be concerned, since I hadn't said anything about the privacy issue. The mansion *is* wired for completely security coverage, and what with leaving it on in the scientists' rooms... well, I do understand."

"Good, I'm glad that we're both okay about it, then," she said. "In fact, I'd be interested in seeing some of the security 'behind the scenes' stuff, if I could possibly be so bold as to ask about it."

"Hmm, really?" Inara felt some of her insides clench, as she wondered what would happen next. Mal would *not* have wanted her to do or say any of this, if he'd have known what she had in mind. She'd mentioned something of the sort, in the vaguest possible terms - and his opinion had been that she would risk multiplying Bentley's suspicions, or at least adding to them.

For her own part, Inara hoped that she could actually do damage-control on the situation by providing a rationale for why she'd brought up the topic of surveillance - or at least turn the whole situation into some useful information. The mansion security system was the biggest obstacle to getting anything as big as the engine out into the landing field without being caught at it - if she could possibly understand something of its strengths and weaknesses, well, who knew?

"I suppose that would be alright." Bentley gestured to the uniformed men who he had been about to leave with, part of his household staff. "However, I do have pressing business at the moment. Let's see... can you meet me at three o'clock in the Seaver hall upstairs?"

"Umm." Inara forced out a girlish giggle. "Do you have another one of those direction finders? M- Nathaniel has ours, and I don't think I'd even be able to find my way back to the debate theatre where I last saw him."

Bentley let out a little smile, and turned to household staff member number two. "A light pointer for Lady Companion Serra?" The other man immediately produced a pointer, Inara brought up her hand, and he easily tossed it over to her. Inara and Bentley both smiled at the interplay, while the... was he a butler or a manservant or what? He didn't let anything crack his impassive face, in any event.

Once Bentley had left, though, Inara started to get worried. If Bentley *had* suspected the real reason that she wanted to get a good look at the security nerve center, then waiting until three of the afternoon would give him plenty of time to prepare... an unpleasant surprise for her. He couldn't really do anything to her, of course, not while the status of the Guild protected her. All registered Companions held the equivalent of diplomatic immunity, anywhere that the Guild was recognized and treated with. But - like a diplomat, if this criminal scheme was exposed, she could be deported back to the nearest Companion's temple in disgrace - and the others would have to face Alliance justice. The thought of being unable to help, or even stay with them, as Mal went through that, and maybe Simon and Kaylee... and might the others be caught too? An Alliance cruiser sent out to chase Serenity down - an armed team descending on the Maren cabin to attempt to defuse the 'hostage crisis...'

No, she told herself. That's just being silly. Nothing of the sort is going to go wrong, especially not so quickly.

------------

"This is all wrong," Derrial said, frowning at what he surveyed.

"Are you sure?" Rickard said, considering the details himself. "I know that there's a while to go, but I think that we're on the right track."

"No, I hesitate to argue with such a brilliant mind as yours, but... if the result is to be anything like what is pictured on the box, then this spire is already far to long to fit anywhere within the finished castle. We may perhaps have managed to conflate two towers together, do you see?" He gestured. "And the Green outer wall is not intended to be adjacent to the red."

"Then why are they fitting together so well?" Rickard grumbled, considering the puzzle pieces.

"Simply to provide potholes for us to stumble into as we work to complete it," Juli grumbled. "I told you, I was in school with Baryan L'rime, and that is exactly the sort of devious twist that his mind would seize upon. 'Most existing assembly puzzles can be worked out far too easily by a simple, if time consuming, trial and error algorithm. Providing a high but not extravagant number of false positive connections would force puzzlers to also apply a faculty of logical deduction in order to reach the ultimate goal.'" She looked from Rickard to Derrial, both of whom were staring at her. "Okay, neither of you know Baryan, I guess, but that was a *very* good imitation of him."

"I reserve judgment on that one until we can get somebody else's opinion - which might be a very long time," Rickard said, taking the red and green sections that Book had indicated and fiddling with them. "Sorry, darling, but experience has proved that your vocal impersonations are not nearly as apt as you invariably seem to think that they are. Is there a possibility that these are INNER walls?"

"Hmm... conceivably yes," Derrial replied, as Juli sulked for a bit. "We can proceed under that possibility until proven otherwise, as no information was given on the coloring of the inner walls. But the tower turrets needs must be separated."

"At what point, then?"

"Hmm..." Juli picked up the cylinder, which at the moment had a few vaguely Freudian aspects to its look, and observed the joins carefully before detaching it into two separate parts. "We can try with that, and adjust as needed to actually join up other pieces."

"Okay I suppose." Rickard considered. "Aside from the task of building this fortress, there are two thoughts on my mind. One being when people will want to have some supper, and the other being Charles waking up." Juli seemed to react with a sort of a tremor. "Well, I know that the latter is something that will simply happen when it happens, but..."

"Yes, probably," Derrial admitted. "As far as supper, I must say that I'm still feeling no hunger pains after that impressive luncheon." Juli nodded an obvious agreement. "So, did you get this puzzle before retiring away to a hermit's life?"

"Not quite," Juli said. "Or maybe it was at nearly the same moment. We held - a sort of party here, I guess. Partly a housewarming, but more a farewell to several good friends that we didn't intend to 'have over again' anytime soon. It was nice, if a bit bittersweet - like a wake for us, even though we weren't really dying. Good liquor and wine, a monstrous roast of beef, and gifts that would do well for our new solitary lifestyle."

"And yet, it's taken you two years to get to this particular puzzle," Derrial noticed with a lifted eyebrow.

"Well, we have been pretty busy with work," Rickard said. "Among other things."

"Fair enough."

They kept working at it, with more little 'logical traps' continuing to eat up time, though a number of pieces of the castle did start to get assembled, and Rickard made a stab at a ground-up construction. It wasn't too long before Jayne poked his head into the living room, said good afternoon, and immediately sloped off to the kitchen to begin fixing his breakfast. Juli invited him in to participate while he ate, and he did bring a plateful of scrambled orange-eggs and ham into the living room, but didn't bother with the castle puzzle, just making light-hearted conversation, and pretty effectively distracting Juli from getting much done on the puzzle either. Derrial kept an eye on Rickard, wondering if the man cared how much attention his wife was paying to a virile stranger, but if the matter had any significance, then Rickard was staying very silent and poker-faced about it, continuing to build up until Jayne had finished eating and said that he would go outside to take a little target practice while there was still light enough for it.

"Okay, I think that I want something to eat too," Rickard finally said once Jayne had made his exit. "Nothing too big or too fancy. How about a vegetable rice soup or something of the sort?"

"I think that you could convince me," Juli admitted. "Oh, and I know something that would go great with that..." Without elaborating further, she got up and hurried toward the kitchen.

"Let me know if I can help out," Derrial said, continuing to work on assembling some of the little outbuildings, but his heart was heavy with other thoughts. One of the problems was, as much as the Marens did seem to honestly care for each other, they certainly didn't have what he would generally think of as a strong and open partnership in marriage. Was it possible that Juli was desperately unhappy out here in the woods, and might seize on some opportunity to relieve the loneliness, even use that as a way of testing the waters before leaving Rickard? As preoccupied as he could be, that sort of development would surely devastate the proud engineer - and it would be all their fault for having intruded on the pair's solitude.

But then, perhaps if any of that happened, it would just have been accelerating something that was already going on. Juli had been on a days-long hike when they had landed, so perhaps she had already been flirting with these ideas. Perhaps, one of these times, she would simply have never returned to Rickard in the cabin, just hiked all the way to that nearby village and used the ID bracelet (which Kaylee now had,) to draw on personal credit and travel further on, looking for somewhere to start a life all her own.

'What God Almighty hath joined, let no man put asunder' was one of those other verses that Book had some moral issues with. Back on Earth-that-was, perhaps, in her ancient tribes and civilizations, the stability of a pairing between husband and wife had been very important as the bedrock of society as a whole, not to mention the question about the certainty of fathers taking care of their children, when they didn't have scientific blood tests to verify paternity.

Even then, Book suspected that church rulings against the possibility of divorcing a marriage that wasn't working had done a lot of harm, and now that there wasn't as much reason to think of that as an absolute prohibition, long-standing tradition was, as River might put it, troublesome. People got married for so many reasons, usually full of the flush of strong emotions, and that wasn't necessarily a good thing in terms of building a strong family that could reasonably be expected to be a blessing on all of those involved for a lifetime.

Whenever he could, Book counselled those young couples who came to him, or to a church or group of the brethren to which he was attached, asking to be married - telling them to look realistically at the pitfalls that might be expected to affect their marriage, to work through as many of those issues as they could BEFORE the binding vows were taken, but not everyone who took the label of 'man of the faith' upon them seemed to bother with that. And then, the 'verse being what it was, not everybody took vows with a man of the faith - men of law were also vested with the ability to make marriages, and that was probably for the best as well...

"Don?" Rickard asked.

"Um, yes?"

"Could you please set the table?"

He laughed silently. "Of course." Getting up carefully, so as not to disturb the construction progress of Castle Maren, he headed off to the dining table in the kitchen.

-----------

As hard as he might try, Simon couldn't sleep.

When he woke up, he had dreaded getting through the day, working on a fusion reactor, but that part had actually been fairly painless. He'd been working with a group of other scientists, various ages and all kinds of backgrounds, all of them without any particular experience on this particular type of engine. It had reminded him quite a lot of science labs back at the University of Toth on Osiris, working with friends and classmates on experiments in chemistry and dissecting, (or vivisecting,) animal specimens. (Later on, in medical school, it had of course been human cadavers.)

He had somewhat expected that connection beforehand. What he hadn't thought of until the session had been well along, had been the idea that working with an active reactor might be like performing surgery in a busy city operating room. The machine, once operating, was uncommonly like a living system as opposed to a simple device that could be shut off and started again - yes, it could be brought down to a state of inactivity, carefully, if everything was in proper order. Otherwise, attempting to just 'turn it off' could easily result in some sort of a containment breach, which was even worse than a patient dying on the table - if only because it would probably kill all of the 'surgeons' as well.

He'd gotten a few unimpressed looks and even nearly caused a very minor accident himself early in the morning, after being called on specifically to put what they'd been learning into practice, and before he'd managed to 'hit his mental stride' as it were. By afternoon, though, he'd found himself doing well, and even been in the top quarter of the evaluations given out, which was as high as he would want to be in terms of not attracting unfortunate attention.

No - it had been seeing Kaylee at dinner and during the evening that had been the truly torturous part of his day. He'd seen her in the morning, of course - they'd gotten washed and dressed at around the same time, (taking turns in the Privacy room,) and had gone to the breakfast room together; he'd even given her a peck on the cheek for show before they had to go their separate ways. But that had been rushed, and hurrying, and he'd been able to focus on what he had to do during the day instead of on her.

But afterwards... Kaylee had been lovely in a way that she never seemed before, (she was always very pretty, but not usually 'lovely' as such,) and sparkling with wit, and dreadfully cold to him in a private way that nobody else could pick up. Part of that was that only he knew that she was playing a role as 'Juli Maren', and he was used to the silent recognition of their shared facade every time they made eye contact. Somehow that was gone. She was nobody else but Juli to him now, and he knew that Juli was hollow. (Or, well, Juli Maren was a real person, but she wasn't truly here, and Kaylee's act of putting on Juli's face was hollow.)

It had gotten so bad that he'd urged her to go back to their room. For a moment Kaylee had refused to go, but some part of her must have realized that this was a better opportunity to reach their objective than to continue socializing with him. In the room, she could continue the work of accessing and attacking the household Cortex network, which it seemed like they would need. And in meeting people and chatting without her, Simon was able to relax somewhat and even picked up a few tidbits of information that might be valuable.

He'd come back to their suite a bit on the early side, (finding his way without the light pointer, since Kaylee had borrowed it.) Kaylee had asked him a few questions about the genetic component to radiation burn therapy, mentioned that Inara had posted private comments to them on the local Cortex, (based on the real Maren's suggestions for doing that much without being traced, an aspect of the encrypted link back to their cabin and to Serenity,) and wished him good luck for tomorrow. More than anything else, Simon wanted to stay up late and joke with her as a friend, because they had been good friends, and he really needed one right now.

But after everything that had happened, he knew that he didn't have the right to ask it of her, that being his close friend and confidante was the one thing that Kaylee *couldn't* do for him now, as much as she might want to. So he had wasted little time in laying himself down to bed, and here he was with his free-floating anxieties, completely unable to get to sleep.

Had the two of them managed to completely bungle their entire future relationship, just because she did what she did and he said what he said? Would it be impossible for them to ever become friends again, or lovers or something in between? Perhaps Serenity would have to become a segregated zone when they got back.

When he had been an intern, two of the surgical residents had been in the middle of an affair, and then undergone a messy breakup, and for nearly a month they hadn't been able to be in the same room without snapping at each other. It had gotten increasingly touchy - the attending surgeons and then the chief of surgery had read them both the riot act without any lasting results, and the head resident had taken to juggling their schedules so that they would never be assigned to the same cases. Finally the cardiologist had managed to get a transfer to a prestigious fellowship hospital on the southern continent of Liann Jiun, and that had ended the whole business. They had never really resolved anything, and one of them left forever to keep everyone around them from going crazy or hurting them both.

If it came to that, of course, Simon would volunteer to leave the ship, rather than worry about driving Kaylee from it. She loved Serenity so much that Simon doubted he could ever really come between them in any case, and a little voice in the back of his head had been saying that as comfortable as the ship was for him, and as much as River seemed to like it, this was the time to be moving on.

But then, possibly he was just inventing trouble. This was obviously a stressful situation, and maybe Kaylee would forgive him, and they'd make the choice to move forward to something new or back to their old friendship, once the heist was resolved. That seemed reasonable, didn't it? He should probably make a point of not letting himself resent Kaylee for a bit of coldness, if the silent treatment was what it took for her to get through this situation.

From there, his thoughts flew further afield into guilty and fevered imaginings, what might have happened with Kaylee if he hadn't done the brake-squealing stop thing, or what just might develop later on if things went very well when they got back to the ship. More kisses, longer embraces, hearing her pant with passion and eagerness as he brought his hands into play, the deftness that she might show in stripping him of his clothes. He vividly pictured what she would look like without anything concealing her own nudity, how her skin might taste when he brought his lips to her, and if she would shudder in reaction to the contact the first time. He even went so far as to preview their first occasion making love, very sensitively, with rose-strewn clean sheets and doing what he could to show her he respected her and wanted her to be comfortable - before Kaylee's own exuberance managed to drive him a little bit out of his mind with passion...

Simon looked up, startled by the door clicking, and saw a thin stream of light spilling into the room from the open bedroom door. Kaylee stood across the threshold, a figure partly lit and partly shadowed, wearing only her appealingly thin delicates. "You - you shouldn't have come here, Kaylee," Simon muttered. He knew, beyond a doubt, why she had opened the door.

"Are - are you going to ask me to go away again, Simon?" she asked simply.

Simon did actually try to force the words out, but the sudden realization of how eager and ready his body was for her, just from mental imagery, defeated all of his willpower. "No," he admitted in a throaty whisper. "I'm going to ask you to come here."

She did, stepping towards the cot, and Simon reached out to her, not to her hand, which would have been well within his grasp, but for the sliver of bare skin between undershirt and boxer-style shorts. Just at that moment when he would have felt the smoothness of her, that sensation of skin on less-than-casual skin that he would happily have died for - his fingers stubbornly refused to make contact. But they weren't falling short, they - were they passing THROUGH Kaylee??

Everything went swimmy and vague for a few seconds, and then Simon's world reassembled, in darkness except for starlight through the small window in the living room. (Because of the way the mansion was laid out, the bedroom had large windows and a view of the landing field, but the living room faced only onto a small interior courtyard above a dining hall. If they were several floors further down there would have been no window for the room at all.) Had his eyes been playing tricks on him when Kaylee closed the bedroom door?

He stared all around the dim room, looking under the cot, even activating a small portable light before he could admit the truth. Kaylee had never been here, had not opened the door. He had been far enough gone in lust and sorrow that he had actually imagined her and thought that it was really happening, until he had touched the phantasm of her and broken the spell. This would NEVER do. He had to find some way to put her out of his head, like she had apparently done for him.

He simply didn't know how she'd done it. Would Kaylee tell him the secret if he asked?

He lay back, hoping that sleep would eventually come. He *couldn't* go and talk to her now, in this state of mind. That would obviously lead to something incredibly bad...

TO BE CONTINUED...