Just as well I didn't move, Captain Arteria thought. The Greens got there even faster than I'd have guessed. They'd have beat me in.

And now what? Call the helicopter, go down, and claim them. It's still an Air Force base. Wait… hell, now who's come to join the party? She swung the binoculars to the point of a dust plume just starting up the hill. More Greens? Oh, Lord, it's Earth First.

Black letters on the car's iridescent green flank read REMEMBER THE GREAT ALASKA OIL SPILL!

"They should change that bumper sticker," Sherrine said to C.C. "You knew one of them."

C.C. said, "Glen's ours, roughly speaking--" And then Glen Bailey had nearly reached them. C.C. yelled above the jet roar, "Where's your friend, Glen?"

"Hudson's still lecturing Hartwell. Some fur haters called in a violation in the Mojave, so I grabbed him and came. Hartwell was never in fandom, he just used to read the stuff, so I've got no strings on him, but he kind of caught the bug. He'd wipe out all the polluting factorties if we have to, but he'd rather put them in orbit and on the moon where they can't hurt anything and turn the Earth into a park like the good guys wanted to do in Spirals and--"

C.C. held, up both hands. "Okay, okay. Sherrine, what were you--"

"The bumper sticker," she said.

"So?"

"It looks… All right, the Great Alaska Oil Spill. I was in grade school," Sherrine said. "I remember my father shouting at the television and cutting his Exxon credit card into strips. He shouted in my face about greed and profit. The Sound was going to be polluted for years. So the next summer I asked him why the TV people didn't go back to Alaska and show people how polluted it still was. Daddy gave me a funny look and never mentioned it again. The Greatest Oil Spill in History, and it wasn't worth a one-year"later follow-up."

Glen was still looking at her. She said, "Then Saddam Hussein covered the Persian Gulf with oil and made it all moot. So our bumper sticker looks fairly silly, doesn't it, Inspector? And in ten minutes an Earth First police van is going to be up here and on our asses--"

C.C. was shaking his head and smiling while Inspector Bailey said, "You don't get it. Hussein doesn't listen. I mean he's dead, of course, but he didn't listen any better when he was alive, let alone to infidels from Satan's own United States. Why would anyone be yodeling in Iraq's ear when they don't listen? Corporations listen. McDonald's switched from paper to plastic even when it would hurt the environment, because the Greens told them to. Remember the boycotts against South Africa? The Soviets made them look like choirboys by any civilized standard, but they just didn't fucking listen, so what would be the point in-"

"Enough, Glen," C.C. said. "Did you get enough from Gary? Can you talk to Earth First about hydrogen experiments?"

"Yeah, have some faith, Cissy, I'll have them dying to put their support behind--"

"Yeah, good, good." Then they all ducked as the Earth First van pulled up in a wave of dust.

A boy and a girl, both tall and lean and dark-haired and well under twenty, spilled out of the van and pointed and jabbered. Noise! Smoke! See? See? Three uniformed Earth First cops, two women and a man, followed them out more slowly. Glen walked up to join them.

Sherrine said, "Those kids must be the ones who turned us in."

"Sherrine, I don't want to be recognized, but one of us should be there," C.C. said. "We don't want them thinking Glen's a flake."

"Perish the thought!"

"It's not like that. He's bright, but there's a glitch in his programming. Too much LDS in the sixties, like Mister Spock." Sherrine laughed, but C.C. went on earnestly. "He can't stop talking by himself. He has to be stopped."

Glen talked. The Earth Firsters nodded. The boy and girl listened, ready to offer what they knew.

Hudson and Hartwell came out of Hudson's office and sauntered toward the Earth First van.

The kids had moved closer to the compressors. The noise was horrendous, and the girl had put her hands over her ears as she stared at the spinning jet turbine. Sherrine watched as the girl moved around toward the front of the engine. The danger area was clearly marked off with a low rope barrier, but it would be easy to step over it. "Hey!" Sherrine screamed and ran toward the girl. "Stop!" The screen over the jet intake would keep out birds, but it might not be strong enough to hold a one-hundred-pound girl. Talk about mixed emotions! Sherrine thought.

The boy had moved closer to the exhaust, and now stood with his nose wrinkled as he held his hands over his ears. Eager to be offended. When he saw Hudson and the others gather near the police van, he got the girl and led her over. Good. They did not need an injured civilian.

An Earth First cop talked while Glen smiled and nodded.

Sherrine strolled up; but what would she say? How do you talk about hydrogen? The ashes are water vapor, utterly pollution free, and what else is there? Now Glen was talking again. "So, Michael. You were on your way from Las Vegas to L.A. for a, what, a demonstration?"

"Yeah, outside the premiere," the tall boy said. "Anyone wearing fur, she'll at least know what we think of her! The rest of us went on in the other car, but Barb and I thought we'd better report what we saw Jeez, you can smell it, the filth they're putting in the air--"

"Kid," said the male Earth First cop, "have you noticed it's getting chilly lately?"

"Sure, the Ice is coming." The boy named Michael looked elaborately around him at the heat of the desert. "Okay, I've seen them on TV, the glaciers, but they don't affect the principle, they don't affect the blood spilled. Wearing fur was murder when the goddam scientists were still whimpering about global warming, and it's still murder today!"

"I don't question that, but it seems to me," Glen said to the speaker, "that all of your targets are women. Isn't that sexist? I mean, men wear fur, too, not often, but--"

An Earth First policewoman said, "He has a point, kid. Sexism is politically incorrect, too. I think you need to target an equal number of fur-wearing males."

Now Barb was glaring at Michael. The boy said, "Uh…"

"And why just fur?" said Glen. "Leather is the skin of a dead animal, too!"

Earth First glanced down at their boots. So did both of the kids. Sherrine hadn't had to say anything at all. Glen let them argue--fur versus leather, wild free beasts versus beasts held prisoner until their deaths, hide and meat versus fur alone. The teens' respect for uniforms was fading. The cops were getting angry.

Glen said, "What we could do is, we should station teams outside biker bars and throw dye on leather-clad men as they come out."

The jet motor roared in a sudden silence.

"That would be more correct," the girl called Barb bellowed. "We'd include men as well as women. And it would show that we care as deeply about homely cows and other leather-producing animals as we care about cute, furry rabbits and minks."

Michael said, "Barb--"

Oh, that would be fun, Sherrine thought. Glen was right: the attacks on fur-bearing upper-class women were sexist. Let's see what leather-clad bikers do when Michael and Barb spit on their jackets. Sherrine was trying to swallow a grin… and Earth First turned to face Hudson and Hartwell with evident relief.

Nobody seemed to be under arrest. Just a shouting match. Lee Arteria still didn't see that her presence could swing events one way or another.