Rosaleen was talking to her. “Do you notice anything about the apples?”
Pat looked at the fruit, puzzled. “Well, I think that’s the second or third I’ve had with a bruise in the same spot.”
“Really,” Rosaleen said thoughtfully. “That I hadn’t noticed. What I was talking about was how many are there. I never packed that many.”
“And actually I only had one package of corn chips,” Pat said.
“I don’t understand. Are they raiding a supermarket somewhere?”
“If they are, they could give us a little more variety,” Martin said sourly.
Dannerman speculated, “Maybe they figure that’s all we need, since that was all they found on us.”
“Or maybe they have some way of multiplying the food- you know, loaves and fishes,” Rosaleen said. “But they could find something better to multiply. There’s stored food in Star-lab. If Dopey-“ She hesitated before she said it, but they did need a name for the creature. “If Dopey can bring the potable water still from the orbiter he can bring us some of the food, too.”
“Or,” Jimmy Lin said, “he could bring us a bed, maybe one of those four-posters with curtains that come down? So we could get on with that breeding he was talking about?”
Pat gave him a freezing look. It was nice that Jimmy seemed to be coming out of his funk, but she didn’t want him starting anything that could not be properly finished. As a matter of fact, the subject had been on her mind from time to time. This enforced intimacy was stimulating glands that she didn’t really want stimulated just then. She thought almost wistfully of ex-husband Ferdie Adcock-not of that son of a bitch of another ex-husband, Jerry Metcalf, who had been a disappointment in all areas, including the bed. Ferdie, on the other hand, had been a truly rewarding lover, in almost every way a fine choice for a mate . . . if only she had been able to overlook his unfortunate habit of keeping his amatory skills current by constant practice-on two of their maids, on the assistant cook, on an occasional picked-up professional and, most troublesome of all, on several of her (formerly) best friends.
But Ferdie was far in the past and even farther away in space.
As to the nearer candidates-well, she thought, simply as a speculation; there was no intention to do anything about it, of course-there was General Delasquez. Not counting the flab, he was a powerfully proportioned man, though too bossy in his disposition to be a really first-rate choice. Jimmy Lin himself? Yes, she admitted to herself, under some circumstances the Chinanaut might have been a definite possibility. Even on Earth it had once in a while crossed her mind to wonder just how much of the know-how of Jimmy Lin’s great-great he might have inherited. Of course, there were problems with Jimmy, too, one of the most annoying of them being the prospect of becoming just one more scalp on his boastfully long list. That wasn’t necessarily a total disqualification. Pat Adcock was not a jealous woman, except with husbands. In the case of a casual lover that sort of thing might have been bearable-under normal conditions. However, under normal conditions they wouldn’t be stuck with an audience of three interested onlookers while they got it on.
Which left only one-still purely theoretical-contender. Dan.
Actually, she conceded to herself, watching Dannerman move about the enclosure out of the corner of her eye, there wasn’t really much wrong with her cousin, if you overlooked his habit of thinking private thoughts he didn’t choose to share with anyone. Dan wasn’t a bad-looking man. He wasn’t a stranger, either. They had been pretty close at one time, and if they hadn’t gone off to separate schools the two of them might sooner or later have decided to become a lot closer. Dan was a definite possibility, she thought-still purely theoretically, of course.
But, under the circumstances, she was determined that it had to be theoretical. Without privacy, making love with him or with anyone at all was simply out of the question-at the moment, anyway, she added to herself. . . and then noticed Jimmy Lin’s knowing grin as he watched her covertly eyeing Danner-man.
They kept making small, but inexplicable, discoveries about their cell. Rosaleen pointed out a curious thing about the floor. It not only soaked up and removed their biological wastes, it did the same for trash of all kinds- their apple cores, for instance. Throw them on the floor, and an hour or so later they were gone. Yet the floor was selective about what it caused to disappear. Their food supplies were scattered on the floor, for lack of any better place to put them, and they were never touched. “It discriminates,” the old lady said, sounding pleased-well, the cell was, after all, an interesting machine. “Also we must have used all the water the tank could hold by now, but if you notice it’s not empty. Somehow the water is being replenished.”
“Have you noticed that we don’t stink very much, either?” Jimmy Lin put in. That was also true, Pat realized. Add the open “toilet” to the fact that bathing was impossible, and the air of their cell should have been pretty ripe. It wasn’t. Their air was constantly being changed. The shadowless light that came from the ceiling was less of a puzzle-even on Earth there were such wall installations that glowed in much the same way-but the greater mystery of the walls resisted all explanation. “Talk about making money from alien technology,” Martin said bitterly. “Do you have any idea what that kind of hardware would be worth for prisons? Let the guards walk in and out, but keep the convicts secure?”
Rosaleen, doing leg lifts with her hands pressed against the wall in lieu of a barre, gave him a look. “It would be worth a great deal for many things far more useful than prisons, actually.”
Jimmy Lin laughed. “You have something against prisons, Rosie?”
“Yes,” she said. “Now more than ever, but always. We had enough experience of prisons in Ukraine. My mother’s uncle was taken away to one when he was fourteen years old; he didn’t come back until he was sixty-two, and dying. Also my mother’s father, my grandfather, who died there. We learned much about prisons in my family from my great-uncle, because he had many stories to tell.”
“Did he have any good advice to give?”
“About escaping? No. About how to survive, yes; my great-uncle said the important thing was to go on doing what you should be doing if you were free-as much as you possibly can, that is. Some things would naturally be impossible.”
Pat made the connection. “That’s why you do your exercises every day?”
Rosaleen hesitated. “That is one reason, yes. The other reason- Well, that is not important. What is important is to keep a sense of purpose. In my great-uncle’s case he constantly continued his education; he had been taken right out of school when they arrested him. He organized classes with the other prisoners and at night, instead of sleeping, they taught each other what they knew. Before he died he could speak French, German, Georgian, some English and Japanese and even a little bit of Hebrew. He was pretty nearly in Dopey’s class as a linguist, almost, and that wasn’t all. He could recite poetry for hours-Mandelstam, Okujawa, Shakespeare, Petrarch-and he knew the names of all the kings of England and France, in order. And much more. But he didn’t spend much time thinking about escaping. There would have been no point in running away from the camps, you see, when the whole country was a prison.”
“Much like our own situation,” Jimmy Lin said sourly; and no one had anything to say to that.
When Dopey came again the three men were sleeping restlessly on one side of the cage, and Rosaleen was teaching Pat tai chi. They were trying to be as quiet as possible, but when Pat saw one of the wall panels begin to cloud she called out at once. By the time Dopey was inside the men were getting up, bleary-eyed but curious.
“You asked for the food from Starlab,” Dopey said. “Also blankets so that you may sleep in more comfort.” The parade of Docs that followed him began setting down racks and cases of objects.
“Hey,” said Jimmy Lin, for the first time in their captivity looking almost pleased. He began sorting through the new rations even before the Docs had set their burdens down and trooped out. Besides the blankets, the Starlab ones hemmed with metal rings to keep them from floating away, there were scores of food packets of all kinds. Some were in pop-open cans, some sealed in plastic. Freeze-dried, radiated or canned, they needed no refrigeration, and they came in many varieties. Pat saw packages labeled “omelette” and “fried tomatoes” and any number of vegetables: green beans, white beans, red beans, pickled cabbage, raw cabbage, beets. There were soups, stews and quiches; there were powders that were dehydrated fruit juices or coffee, and Pat was suddenly aware of just how hungry she was. She wasn’t the only one. Martin held up one opaque plastic sack, reading the label wonderingly: “What is ‘hassenpfeffer’?” he demanded, and Jimmy Lin exulted: “Look! There must have been some Chinese on Starlab; there’s bok choy! And rice, and I think these other things are dim sum!”