By March ’76 catapult was almost ready, lacking only installation of stator segments. Power plant was in and a co-ax had been strung underground with a line-of-sight link for that thirty kilometers. Crew was down to skeleton size, mostly Party members. But we kept one spy so that Alvarez could have regular reports–didn’t want him to worry; it tended to make him suspicious. Instead we worried him in warrens.
10
Were changes in those eleven months. Wyoh was baptized into Greg’s church, Prof’s health became so shaky that he dropped teaching, Mike took up writing poetry. Yankees finished in cellar. Wouldn’t have minded paying Prof if they had been nosed out, but from pennant to cellar in one season–I quit watching them on video.
Prof’s illness was phony. He was in perfect shape for age, exercising in hotel room three hours each day, and sleeping in three hundred kilograms of lead pajamas. And so was I, and so was Wyoh, who hated it. I don’t think she ever cheated and spent night in comfort though can’t say for sure; I was not dossing with her. She had become a fixture in Davis family. Took her one day to go from “Gospazha Davis” to “Gospazha Mum,” one more to reach “Mum” and now it might be “Mimi Mum” with arm around Mum’s waist. When Zebra File showed she couldn’t go back to Hong Kong, Sidris had taken Wyoh into her beauty shop after hours and done a job which left skin same dark shade but would not scrub off. Sidris also did a hairdo on Wyoh that left it black and looking as if unsuccessfully unkinked. Plus minor touches–opaque nail enamel, plastic inserts for cheeks and nostrils and of course she wore her dark-eyed contact lenses. When Sidris got through, Wyoh could have gone bundling without fretting about her disguise; was a perfect “colored” with ancestry to match–Tamil, a touch of Angola, German. I called her “Wyma” rather than “Wyoh.”
She was gorgeous. When she undulated down a corridor, boys followed in swarms.
She started to learn farming from Greg but Mum put stop to that. While she was big and smart and willing, our farm is mostly a male operation–and Greg and Hans were not only male members of our family distracted; she cost more farming man-hours than her industry equaled. So Wyoh went back to housework, then Sidris took her into beauty shop as helper.
Prof played ponies with two accounts, betting one by Mike’s “leading apprentice” system, other by his own “scientific” system. By July ’75 he admitted that he knew nothing about horses and went solely to Mike’s system, increasing bets and spreading them among many bookies. His winnings paid Party’s expenses while Mike built swindle that financed catapult. But Prof lost interest in a sure thing and merely placed bets as Mike designated. He stopped reading pony journals–sad, something dies when an old horseplayer quits.
Ludmilla had a girl which they say is lucky in a first and which delighted me–every family needs a girl baby. Wyoh surprised our women by being expert in midwifery–and surprised them again that she knew nothing about baby care. Our two oldest sons found marriages at last and Teddy, thirteen, was opted out. Greg hired two lads from neighbor farms and, after six months of working and eating with us, both were opted in–not rushing things, we had known them and their families for years. It restored balance we had lacked since Ludmilla’s opting and put stop to snide remarks from mothers of bachelors who had not found marriages—not that Mum wasn’t capable of snubbing anyone she did not consider up to Davis standards.
Wyoh recruited Sidris; Sidris started own cell by recruiting her other assistant and Bon Ton Beaute Shoppe became hotbed of subversion. We started using our smallest kids for deliveries and other jobs a child can do–they can stake out or trail a person through corridors better than an adult, and are not suspected. Sidris grabbed this notion and expanded it through women recruited in beauty parlor.
Soon she had so many kids on tap that we could keep all of Alvarez’s spies under surveillance. With Mike able to listen at any phone and a child spotting it whenever a spy left home or place of work or wherever–with enough kids on call so that one could phone while another held down a new stakeout–we could keep a spy under tight observation and keep him from seeing anything we didn’t want him to see. Shortly we were getting reports spies phoned in without waiting for Zebra File; it did a sod no good to phone from a taproom instead of home; with Baker Street Irregulars on job Mike was listening before he finished punching number.