Jem

Why are you doing this? she asked herself; but she knew that she could not accept more sympathy without crying, and she was not ready to cry before these men. At least she had diverted them. Dalehouse was frowning.

“We don’t have any nuclear weapons,” he objected.

“Softheaded person!” she scoffed. “Your mistress has what she wants to have. I should not be astonished if she had a fleet of submarines or a division of tanks. She wears weapons as she wears that cheap perfume. The smell of them is always around her.”

“No,” he said doggedly, peering up at her, “you’re wrong about the nuclear weapons. She couldn’t conceal that from us. And she’s not my mistress.”

“Do not flatter yourself that I care. She may have her sexual excesses with whomever she likes, and so may you.”

Kappelyushnikov coughed. “I think,” he said, “dance has suddenly become more attractive.”

As he stood up, Ana put her hand on his arm. “I am driving you away. Please forgive me.”

“No, no, Anyushka. Are difficult times for all, nothing to forgive.” He patted her hand, then gri

They watched him walk steadily toward Marge Me

The Krinpit, in his random stagger around the beach, was coming closer. It was true that the stench of his exudations was strong. So was the sighing, droning sound of his presence. Ana listened, then said gloomily, “This one is muttering about his love now,” she said. “It was killed somehow, I ca

Dalehouse stood up in his shallow rifle pit, looking up the hill toward the dancers. “She’s coming this way,” he said. “Listen, before she gets here. About her being my mistress—”

“Please, Da

Clearly he was not satisfied and would have pursued the subject, but Margie was now too close. She paused to light a cigarette, studying the Krinpit and its guard, now a model of military deportment, his recoilless at port arms as the colonel approached. Then she came smiling over to Da

Guiltily Dalehouse clapped the phone to one ear. He had been neglecting the buried microphone probes, which were supposed to warn of burrowers digging toward him under the ground. There was no sound. “Sorry, Margie,” he said.

She shook her head. “When you’re on duty, that’s colonel. And when I say frog, you hop. Now that that’s understood,” she said, smiling su

“I am not in the habit of using narcotics,” Ana said.

“Pity. Da

Dalehouse coughed and spluttered. “He — he can’t—”

“Take your time, Da

“Charlie can’t fight!”

“Well,” she said reasonably, “come to that, I don’t figure you for your real Geronimo trained killer, either. But I don’t expect it of you. You communicate. Charlie observes. The Greasies won’t pay any attention to one more fartbag hanging around—”

“Bullshit they won’t! They’ve been shooting balloonists down all along.”

“Da

“Well, sure. But — shit, Margie. He’s almost the last survivor. It’s a lot to ask—”

“But I’m not asking, Da

“To atom-bomb the Fuel Bloc,” said Ana bitterly.

Marge Me

“Holy Christ,” Dalehouse said. “You really have a nuclear bomb?”

“Bet your ass, Da

“Where? You mean the plutonium power-packs? That’s no good, Margie — colonel, I mean. There’s not enough of them. Even if there were, you couldn’t flange them together to make a bomb.”

“Wrong and wrong, Da

She looked serene and i

“Wrong, Dalehouse. That’s preemption. The Greasies don’t have a choice, either. They just haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Bullshit! It’s what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor all over again!”

She opened her eyes wide. “Sure, why not? There was nothing wrong with Pearl Harbor, except they fucked it up. If they’d gone on to take out the carrier fleet and follow up with a landing, history would be a lot different. You’d be saying ‘Pearl Harbor’ the way you say ‘Normandy’ now, only you’d be saying it in Japanese.”

She seemed quite pleased with herself, but then she hesitated. She sought a dry place on the ground and sat down before adding, “But I will admit to you two dear old friends from Bulgaria that right now I’m scared and tired and not what you’d call real happy with the way things are going. I — what’s the matter with that thing?”