She looked at her watch: 0145. “Send in Dr. Arkashvili,” she called, and the medic came in on cue, bearing a cup of steaming black coffee.
“Medical supplies, Margie. But a little sleep would do you more good.”
Marge sniffed the aluminum cup rapturously and took a scalding sip. “I wish they’d land,” she said fretfully. Among the goodies on her shopping list were coffee beans, or seeds, or whatever it took to try to grow coffee for themselves. Otherwise the next couple of years, anyway, might be coffee-free. Of course, the Greasies probably had some growing already, to make that vile stuff they handed out in the little brass pots, but they weren’t likely to give any away. They weren’t giving anything away now, not even information over the radio; and the Peeps simply were not answering at all.
At least the camp was gratifyingly healthy, according to the medic’s report. The antiallergens were standing up well, and there was nothing else in the Jemman environment to make a human being sick. A few headaches, probably from the climate and from the switch to a twenty-four-hour day; some dentistry; an appendix that needed watching; a request for a vasectomy -
“No,” said Margie sharply. “Don’t do any vasectomies. Or laparoscopies, either.”
The doctor looked thoughtful. “You’re going to have some knocked-up personnel.”
“You’re supposed to be able to handle that, right? Anyway, give them the pill, diaphragms, condoms — anything reversible or temporary. I get along fine with an IUD, and I can always take it out if I want to have a baby.”
“Which you might?”
“Which all of us females may damn well have to, Cheech. That’s an order: everybody capable of breeding stays capable. How’s the baby bank?”
“Coming along fine. I’ve got twenty-eight ova in cryonic hold, and about a hundred sperm samples.”
“Good, Cheech, but not good enough. I want a hundred percent compliance with that. If anything happens to anybody, I don’t want his genes lost. Or hers. They don’t take up much space, do they? Then I want, let’s say, four samples from each, and — what are you grinning about?”
The medic said, “Well, it’s just that a couple of the ova turned out to be prefertilized. They’re fine. They’ll keep in the deep-freeze indefinitely, but whenever you want them reimplanted we won’t have to go to the bother of getting them started.”
“Hum.” Margie scratched thoughtfully. “I’m almost sorry you took the sample; we could start having kids any time now. Who were they? Come on, Cheech, none of this medical confidentiality; I’m your commanding officer.”
“Well, one was Ana Dimitrova.”
“No shit! Whose kid?”
“You can ask her if you want to. I didn’t.”
Marge shook her head wonderingly. “I would have guessed her about last,” she said. “And the other one? Now, wait a minute! It couldn’t be me! The IUD—”
“The IUD doesn’t keep an ovum from getting fertilized; it only prevents it taking root and developing.”
Margie sat back and stared at the doctor. “I’ll be damned,” she said.
Nguyen Dao Tree was ten minutes late for his 0200 appointment, and he arrived sleepy-eyed and irritable. “This twenty-four hour day of yours is not comfortable, Margie,” he complained.
“You’re not the one to bitch, Guy. I took the midnight-to-eight myself. If you’d spend your sleeping time sleeping instead of tomcatting around with every woman in the camp—”
“As to that, Marjorie,” he said, “I much preferred when you and I slept on the same schedule.”
“Yeah. Well. Maybe we’ll have to do something about that, Guy, but right now we’re late for inspection.” She swallowed the last of her coffee, now cold but still delicious, and led the way.
Complaints aside, the three-shift day was working well. On the plus side, the perimeter was well guarded, the hectarage under cultivation was growing by nearly two thousand square meters every day, the each-one-teach-one training schedule Santangelo had set up so that the skills of the community were shared among several persons (what if Chiche Arkashvili died? or their one and only surviving agronomist?) was on track. On the minus, aerial surveillance showed large numbers of Krinpit roaming around the woods, coffee was not the only food item to be running low, and the resupply ship still could not give a firm landing time.
Margie allowed one hour of each day for her inspection, and she used every minute of it. No white-glove chickenshit. The inspection was rough and dirty; if everybody was doing their job and the jobs were being done, that was it. Her Bastogne grandfather had not cared if the troops were shaved, only if they could fight. And Margie had learned the skills appropriate to a fortress under siege.
That was what they were. No one had attacked the perimeter, not even a wandering Krinpit. But they were isolated in a world of enemies. From spy satellites and balloonists, from the breaking of codes and from what little could be gleaned from their infrequent radio contacts, above all from the contents of the Indonesian’s pouch, Margie had formed a pretty good idea of what the Greasies were up to. Or had been up to a few weeks earlier. They had occupied the Peeps’ camp; they had requisitioned quantities and varieties of personnel and equipment that made her drool. Even her letter to Santa Claus (who might or might not be hanging in orbit, waiting to come down her chimney) had not been so greedy. They had subdued the local autochthons, apparently by killing off all the nearby Krinpit and shooting down any balloonist who came near. Their burrowers they seemed to have tamed. And they were using them for minerals exploration, because it seemed the Greasies had perched themselves on a Kuwait of oil and a Scranton of other fossil fuels. They had devised an enzyme, or possibly it was a hormone — the information had been unclear — which took Krinpit out of action as effectively as 2, 4-D had dried up the jungles of Vietnam, by causing them to molt. They had acquired something from their Creepies that let them make building materials out of dirt, as the burrowers themselves hardened the interior surfaces of their tunnels. They had — Christ, what had they not done! If only her father had listened to her and given her the support she demanded, how gladly and competently she could have done the same!
Not that she had done badly. But for Marge Menninger there was no such thing as second best, and the Greasies at that moment controlled the entire planet. Barring the dozen hectares her colony sat on, it was all theirs. Their aircraft roamed it at will, so the spy satellites said. They had three separate colonies now, counting the one that had once belonged to the probably no longer surviving Peeps. And apart from the rare occasions when she dared send Kappelyushnikov on a quick survey flight (what would she do if there were some unexplained “accident” to her one and only aircraft?), she was blind except for what the satellites and the few living balloonists could tell. She had even grounded Danny Dalehouse. Not only because of the risk to him — but that was a reason in itself, she admitted privately; she did not want him killed — but because the electricity that made his hydrogen was better used for floodlights to protect the camp and make the crops grow. Also she had apprenticed him to the agronomist, along with Morrissey and the Bulgarian girl — wait a minute, she thought to herself; Dalehouse and Dimitrova? Maybe so. Probably not. They had been friendly, but not that friendly. But then who?
For that matter, she thought, looking at Guy Tree as he chattered away about contingency plans in the event of a major Krinpit attack, who was the father of her own sort-of child? Dalehouse? Tree? That son of a bitch Sweggert, with his cute little tricks? They were the most likely candidates, but which?