He noted, with almost shocking surprise, that some one had been able to serve him thus without waking him.
He put on his shorts and shoes and went out. Thalia and her companion had left while he dressed. No one was about and he found the dining room empty, but three places were set, including his own of supper, and hot dishes and facilities were on the sideboard. He selected baked ham and hot rolls, fried four eggs, poured coffee. Twenty minutes later, warmly replenished and still alone, he stepped out on the veranda.
It was a beautiful day. He was drinking it in and eyeing with friendly interest a desert lark when a young woman came around the side of the house. She was dressed much as he was, allowing for difference in sex, and she was comely, though not annoyingly so. “Good morning,” he said.
She stopped, put her hands on her hips, and looked him up and down. “Well!” she said. “Why doesn’t somebody tell me these things?”
Then she added, “Are you married?”
“No.”
“I’m shopping around. Object: matrimony. Let’s get acquainted.”
“I’m a hard man to marry. I’ve been avoiding it for years.”
“They’re all hard to marry.” she said bitterly. “There’s a new colt down at the corral. Come on.”
They went. The colt’s name was War Conqueror of Baldwin; hers was Gail. After proper protocol with mare and son they left. “Unless you have pressing engagements,” said Gail, “now is a salubrious time to go swimming.”
“If salubrious means what I think it does, yes.”
The spot was shaded by cottonwoods, the bottom was sandy; for a while he felt like a boy again, with all such matters as lies and nova effects and death and violence away in some improbable, remote dimension. After a long while he pulled himself up on the bank and said, “Gail, what does ‘tsumaeq’ mean?”
“Come again?” she answered. “I had water in my ear.”
He repeated all of the conversation he had heard. She looked incredulous, then laughed. “You didn’t hear that, Joe, you just didn’t.” She added “You got the ‘New Jersey,’ part right.”
“But I did.”
“Say it again.”
He did so, more carefully, and giving a fair imitation of the speakers’ accents. Gail chortled. “I got the gist of it that time. That Thalia; someday some strong man is going to wring her neck.”
“But what does it mean?”
Gail gave him a long, sidewise look. “If you ever find out, I really will marry you, in spite of your protests.”
Some one was whistling from the hilltop. “Joe! Joe Greene — the boss wants you.”
“Gotta go,” he said to Gail. “G’bye.”
“See you later,” she corrected him.
Baldwin was waiting in a study as comfortable as himself. “Hi, Joe,” he greeted him. “Grab a seatful of chair. They been treating you right?”
“Yes, indeed. Do you always set as good a table as I’ve enjoyed so far?”
Baldwin patted his middle. “How do you think I came by my nickname?”
“Kettle Belly, I’d like a lot of explanations.”
“Joe, I’m right sorry you lost your job. If I’d had my druthers, it wouldn’t have been the way it was.”
“Are you working with Mrs. Keithley?”
“No. I’m against her.”
“I’d like to believe that, but I’ve no reason to — yet. What were you doing where I found you?”
‘They had grabbed me — Mrs. Keithley and her boys.”
“They just happened to grab you — and just happened to stuff you in the same cell with me — and you just happened to know about the films I was supposed to be guarding — and you just happened to have a double deck of cards in your pocket? Now, really!”
“If I hadn’t had the cards, we would have found some other way to talk,” Kettle Belly said mildly. “Wouldn’t we, now?”
“Yes. Granted.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that the set up was an accident. We had you covered from Moon Base; when you were grabbed — or rather as soon as you let them suck you into the New Age, I saw to it that they grabbed me too; I figured I might have a chance to lend you a hand, once I was inside.” He added, “I kinda let them think that I was an FBS man, too.”