"Green. His shirts are on my desk. Green with orange lettering. Very vivid."
"Green, eh?" Well, if one cared about such things, Green was the lowest in the unofficial hierarchy of teams. It was one of those things that was understood without anyone's saying anything about it. Having looked this far into the piddling matter, Paul congratulated himself for having been named captain of the Blue, which, again, everybody seemed to feel was the team with the most tone. Not that it made any difference at all any more. Made none. Silly. To hell with it.
"They certainly give you enough shirts," said Katharine, counting. "Nine, ten, eleven, twelve."
"Nothing like enough. For two weeks you drink and sweat, drink and sweat, drink and sweat, until you feel like a sump pump. This is a day's supply at the outside."
"Uh-huh. Well, sorry, that's all there is in the box except this book." She held up the volume, which looked like a hymnal.
"Hi ho - The Meadows Songbook," said Paul wearily. He leaned back and closed his eyes. "Pick a song, Katharine, any song, and read it aloud."
"Here's the song for the Green Team, Doctor Shepherd's team. To the tune of the William Tell Overture."
"The whole overture?"
"That's what it says here."
"Well, go ahead and give it a try."
She cleared her throat, started to sing softly, thought better of it, and lapsed into plain reading:
"That'll put hair on your chest, Katharine."
"Oh, gosh but it'll be fun! You know you'll love it when you get up there."
Paul opened his eyes to see that Katharine was reading another song, and her eyes shone with excitement and she rocked her head from side to side. "What's that you're reading now?"
"Oh, I wish I were a man! I was just reading your song."
"My song?"
"The Blue Team's song."
"Oh - my song. By all means, let's hear it." She whistled a few bars of "Indiana," and then sang, this time heartily:
"Hmmm."
"And you will win, too. I know you will," said Katharine.
"You going to be at the Mainland?" The Mainland was a camp for wives and children, and women employees whose development wasn't yet complete, across the water from the Meadows, the island where the men went.
"That's as close as I can get to the real thing," said Katharine wistfully.
"That's close enough, believe me. Tell me, is Bud Calhoun going to be there?"
She colored, and he was instantly sorry he'd asked. "He had an invitation, I know," she said, "but that was before -" She shrugged unhappily. "And you know what the Manual says.
"The machines can't stand him any more," said Paul heavily. "Why don't they build in a gimmick that will give a man a free drink before he gets the ax? Do you know what he's up to now?"
"I haven't talked to him or seen him, but I did call up Matheson's office to find out what was going to be done with him. They said he was going to be a project supervisor for the -" her voice caught " - for the Reeks and Wrecks." Emotion was giving her a rough going-over now, and she left Paul's office hurriedly.
"I'm sure he'll do well," Paul called after her. "I'll bet we won't know our city a year from now, with him thinking up things for the Reeks and Wrecks to do."
Her phone rang, and she relayed the information to Paul that Doctor Edward Finnerty was at the gate, wanting in.
"Bind his hands and feet, put a bag over his head, and have four men bring him up. Fixed bayonets, of course. And be sure and get a picture of it for Shepherd."
Ten minutes later, Finnerty was escorted into Paul's office by an armed guard.
"For heaven's sake - look at you!" said Paul. Finnerty's hair was cut and combed, his face was pink, shining, and shaved, and his seersucker suit, while worn and a poor fit, was crisp and sanitary-looking.
Finnerty looked at him blankly, as though he couldn't guess what the fuss was about. "I'd like to borrow your car."
"Promise to wipe off the fingerprints when you're through?"
"Oh - you're sore about that pistol business, I suppose. Sorry. I meant to throw it in the river."
"You know about it, then?"
"Sure - and about how Shepherd turned in a report on you, too, telling how you let me in the plant without an escort. Tough." Finnerty, after less than a week in Homestead, had taken on rough, swashbuckling mannerisms - glaringly synthetic. He also seemed to be getting a real kick out of being a liability as an associate for anyone respectable.
Paul was amazed, as he had been amazed at Kroner's, by how much others knew about his affairs. "How do you know so much?"
"You'd be surprised who knows what, and how they find out. Surprise the pants off you to know what goes on in this world. My eyes are just opening." He leaned forward earnestly. "And, Paul - I'm finding myself. At last I'm finding myself."
"What do you look like, Ed?"
"Those dumb bastards across the river - they're my kind of people. They're real, Paul, real!"
Paul had never doubted that they were real, and so found himself without any sort of comment or emotional response for Finnerty's important announcement. "Well, I'm glad you've found yourself after all these years," he said. Finnerty had been finding himself ever since Paul had known him. And, weeks later, he'd always deserted that self with angry cries of impostor, and discovered another. "That's swell, Ed."
"Well, anyway, how about the keys to the car?"
"Is it fair to ask what for?"
"This is a milk run. I want to pick up my clothes and stuff at your house and run them over to Lasher's."
"You're living with Lasher?"
Finnerty nodded. "Surprising how well we hit it off, right from the first." His tone implied the barest trace of contempt for Paul's shallow way of life. "Keys?"
Paul threw them to him. "How do you plan to use the rest of your life, Ed?"
"With the people. That's my place."
"You know the cops are after you for not registering?"
"Spice of life."
"You can be jailed, you know."
"You're afraid to live, Paul. That's what's the matter with you. You know about Thoreau and Emerson?"
"A little. About as much as you did before Lasher primed you, I'll bet."
"Anyway, Thoreau was in jail because he wouldn't pay a tax to support the Mexican War. He didn't believe in the war. And Emerson came to jail to see him. 'Henry,' he said, 'why are you here?' And Thoreau said, 'Ralph, why aren't you here?' "
"I should want to go to jail?" said Paul, trying to get some sort of message for himself out of the anecdote.
"You shouldn't let fear of jail keep you from doing what you believe in."
"Well, it doesn't." Paul reflected that the big trouble, really, was finding something to believe in.