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?
In other times, one part of Marge Menninger would have contemplated with sardonic amusement that other part of Marge Menninger which really, dammit!, wanted to know. At present she had no room for that sort of amusement in her mind. The thought of mentioning to Nguyen Tree that the two of them might be in the process of becoming somewhat delayed parents crossed her mind just long enough for her to dismiss it. It promised some good comedy, but it also promised complications she did not want to handle. First things first.
“Are there any archers in the camp?” she asked.
Tree stopped in the middle of explaining his proposal for arming a couple of canoes. “What?”
“People who know how to shoot a bow and arrow, dammit. We must have some. I’d like to organize a contest, part of the sports program.”
“Very likely so, Marjorie. I don’t believe there are any bows and arrows, however.”
“If they know how to shoot them, they know how to make them, don’t they? Or anyway, it’ll be in the microfiches. Get started on that, please, Guy. We’ll give prizes. Coffee, cigarettes. I’ll donate a bottle of Scotch.” The thought that had crossed her mind as he spoke of how he planned to mount a light machine gun in a canoe was that the supplies of ammunition for the guns would not last forever, either, but she wasn’t ready to say that even to her second in command.
Tree looked puzzled, but paused to make a note in his book. “It would be a useful skill for hunting, I suppose.”
Margie nodded without replying. Hunting what? Every animal they had seen on the surface of the planet was well enough armored to laugh off any homemade bow — a conspicuous blunder on the part of evolution in this place, she was convinced. But she let it go.
As they were inspecting the power plant a messenger from the communications shack trotted up. “Ship’s on its way in, colonel,” she reported, panting. “They’ve already retrofired. We ought to see them in a couple of minutes.”
“Thank God,” said Margie. “Put it on the PA. Guy, get twenty grunts for unloading. Tell Major Arkashvili to stand by in case they land rough.”