Then the guessing began.
“Maybe we were practicing how to immobilize, I don’t know, cavalry or something. With like sleeping drugs.”
“Shee-it, man! What cavalry?”
“Well—race horses, maybe. Sometimes they give you anesthetics through an enema, don’t they?”
“Or maybe it was going to be some kind of poison, to kill off somebody’s beef supplies.”
“Come on, Beth! You think the Team’d send people around to massage ten or twenty million cows’ asses? Wait a minute. Maybe in a real job it wouldn’t be paint but—I don’t know. Honey? And it would attract flies, and they’d spread disease—?”
Fanciful ideas. The group seemed to generate a lot of them. Sprawled in the sun, under the shadeless wire, Hake’s tired brain was not up to the task of trying to guess whether any of those ideas were more fanciful than what he already knew the Team had done. Sitting near him, Mary Jean leaned over and whispered in his ear. “You got any better ideas?” He shook his head. “Then maybe we should start on the other project, I mean thinking up a real job. Wait a minute, I’ve got some paper.”
While she was rummaging in her shoulder bag Hake leaned back and closed his eyes, letting the talk drift over him. Some of the things they had guessed as explanations for the mission last night might work as project proposals, he thought. They were still going at it avidly—as though each and every one of them had taken it as a personal challenge. How had they all become so bloodthirsty?
“—some kind of irritating acid, make them stampede—” “—constipate them till they bloat up and die—” “—smells bad to the bulls, or, heyl Maybe bulls get turned off by green paint!”
“No, wait a minute, Tigrito. Look at it the other way. Suppose it was some kind of chemical that interfered with intercourse. Maybe made the bull lose its, uh, erection.”
The Hawaiian woman sat up straight. “Better idea!” she cried. “Why waste it on bulls? I’m going to try that out for the other assignment: some kind of chemical that you give women, I don’t know, put it in their food maybe, that sterilizes them. Or makes them unattractive to men.”
“Or it wouldn’t have to be a chemical, Beth,” said the black professor. “Subsidize the fashion industry, get them to go back to the bustle or the maxiskirt or something like that.”
“Or better! How about starting a back-to-religion thing? Get all the women to become nuns.”
The professor said thoughtfully, “That actually happened, you know, back in the Middle Ages. So many people taking vows of celibacy that the French kings got worried about the population drop. Only that would take pretty long to be effective—twenty or thirty years before it mattered much, and who knows what the world would be like then?—Oh, hi, Sister. We were just talking about nuns—”
Sister Florian sat down, looking pleased with herself. “I heard what you were talking about.” Her usually severe face was conspicuously good-humored.
“Okay, Sister,” said Tigrito. “You got something goin’ for you. What is it? You figure out what we was up to last night?”
“No,” she said cheerfully, “I didn’t figure it out. I found it out. You all took off and left me alone with the computer. I gave it the unlock command and ordered it to look up Team projects involving large-mammal genital areas.”
“Come off it, Sister! How’d you do that?”
“Well, I set up a matrix of large-mammal genitals, chemical or biological agents, Team projects—•”
“No, no! I mean about the unlock command.”
She smiled sunnily. “I watch what she does, Tigrito. She types out the date of the month, plus two, and then her own last name. Then it’s open. So I did exactly the same thing. It took it a little while to hunt, but it came up with equine gonorrhea.”
“Equine gonorrhea?”
“There was an epidemic of it in America back in the 70s. Now there’s a new strain that’s infectious for all large mammals, and antibiotic-resistant, too. I guess what we’re going to do, some of us, sometimes, is infect breed cows, so that they’ll infect stud bulls, so we’ll knock out a big chunk of a cattle-breeding program. Somewhere. My own guess is maybe Argentina. Maybe England or Australia? Could be anywhere. Anyway,” she said, “I wrote it all down and time-stamped it and left it on Deena’s desk, so that’s that.” And she folded her hands in her lap and beamed around at them.
But Hake was no longer listening. A chain of associations had formed in his mind. Nuns. Convents. People flocking to religious orders. A back-to-religion movement. He began to write quickly with the stub of a pencil Mary Jean had provided him: “Religious leaders like Sun Myung Moon, Indian gurus, Black Muslims and others have effectively taken significant numbers of persons out of the work force in America. Proposaclass="underline" Charismatic religious leaders be identified and evaluated. Where they may be effective they can be subsidized or—”
He pulled his feet back just in time to avoid having them stepped on as Tigrito, stalking furiously around the scuba pool, stopped in front of him. The youth grinned down at Mary Jean. “Hey, let’s pick up where we left off,” he said, clumping himself down between them. Hake instinctively made room as the boy took Mary Jean into his arms.
“Watch it,” Hake said irritably.
“Oh, man! I am watchin’ it, been watchin’ it a long time, now I’m ready for touchin’ it and squeezin’ it— Shit, lady!” He went sprawling into Hake’s lap as Mary Jean’s elbow, traveling no more than eight inches, got him just under the ribs. Hake shoved him away.
“Fuck off, Tigrito,” said Mary Jean.
“Yeah,” said Hake. The youth glared at him, then rolled to his feet and came up with his arms spread and curved.
“Lady tells me to fuck off, that’s her business,” he said, moving toward Hake. “Ain’t yours, mother-fucker.”
Hake was on his feet by then too, his arms automatically responding by coming to the grappling position, but he took a shuffling half-step back. It wasn’t really his fight, he told himself. If anyone’s, Mary Jean’s, who could handle it fine by herself.
“Chickenshit too,” jeered Tigrito, and feinted a kick at Hake’s belly.
Hake had an immense respect for Tigrito as a brawler, having lost a dozen falls to him in the ritualized hand-to- hand on the training field. But the part of his mind that evaluated and weighed was not operative then. When Tigrito’s foot came up Hake sidestepped and caught it; as Tigrito spilled backward he gripped Hake’s arms and pulled him over his head, flying; Hake twisted in mid-air and kneed the boy in the chin. In ten seconds it was all over, Hake kneeling on the boy’s chest and lifting his head to thump it on the rough cement.
“Dear God,” came Deena’s voice from behind. “Leave you guys alone for a few minutes and what do I find? Hold it right there, killer. Fight’s over. You’re all on punishment detail tonight.”
When he finally reached his bed that midnight Hake was so exhausted that sleep was out of reach. He tossed for a while and then stumbled into the latrine to write his compulsory postcards. One for Jessie Tunman, a picture of a gorge on the Pecos River: Having a fine time, getting a lot of rest, see you soon. One to go on the church bulletin board: Miss you all, but will be back full of energy for the church year; that was a picture of a herd of three-five hybrids, with a cowboy in a helicopter moseyin’ them along. They were each supposed to send three postcards a week, but Hake had fought it out and got the number reduced. He didn’t have three people to send postcards to. Apart from the church, he hardly had anybody.