Yes, he thought. Of course. The ideal military base. Earth did not have that advantage. Eventually, every part of Earth swam into the sights of the watchers on the Moon.
Mrs. Keitelbein said, "All our crops are grown hydro -- hydroponies, in tanks under the surface. No way they can be contaminated by fallout. And we have no atmosphere to pick up and carry the dust. The lesser gravity permits much of the dust to leave completely... it just drifts away, into space. Our installations are underground, too. Our houses and schools. And--" she smiled -- "we breathe canned air. So no bacteriological material affects us. We're completely contained. Even if there're fewer of us. Only a few thousand, in fact."
"And you've been bombing Earth," he said.
"We have an attack program. Aggressive approach. We put warheads into what used to be transports and fire them at Earth. One or two a week... plus smaller strikes, research rockets which we have in quantity. And communication and supply rockets, small stuff good for a few farmhouses or a factory. It worries them because they can never tell if it's a fullsize transport with a full-size H-warhead, or only a little fellow. It disrupts their lives."
Ragle said, "And that's what I've been predicting."
"Yes," she said.
"How well have I done?"
"Not as well as they've told you. Lowery, I mean."
"I see," he said.
"But not badly, either. We've succeeded in randomizing our pattern more or less... you get some of them, especially the full-size transports. I think we tend to fuss with them to a greater degree because we have only a limited number. We tend to unrandomize them. So you sense the pattern, you and your talent. Women's hats. What they'll be wearing next year. Occult."
"Yes," he said. "Or artistic."
"But why'd you go over to them?" Vic demanded. "They've been bombing us, killing women and children--"
"He knows why now," Mrs. Keitelbein said. "I saw it on his face as he read. He remembers."
"Yes," Ragle said. "I remember."
"Why did you go over to them?" Vic said.
"Because they're right," Ragle said. "And the isolationists are wrong."
Mrs. Keitelbein said, "That's why."
When Margo opened the front door and saw it was Bill Black outside on the dark porch, she said,
"They're not here. They're down at the store, taking a rush inventory. Something about a surprise audit."
"Can I come in anyhow?" Black said.
She let him in. He shut the door after him. "I know they're not here." He had a listless, despondent manner. "But they're not down at the store."
"That's where I saw them last," she said, not enjoying telling a lie. "And that's what they told me." Told me to say, she thought to herself.
Black said, "They got out. We picked up the driver of the truck. They let him off a hundred or so miles along the road."
"How do you know?" she said, and then she felt rage at him. An almost hysterical resentment. She did not understand, but she had a deep intuition. "You and your lasagne," she said chokingly. "Coming over here and spying, hanging around him all the time. Sending that tail-switching wife of yours over to rub up against him."
"She's not my wife," he said. "They assigned her because I had to be set up in a residential context."
Her head swam. "Does -- she know?"
"No."
"That's something," Margo said. "Now what?" she said. "You can stand there smirking because you know what it's all about."
"I'm not smirking," Black said. "I'm just thinking that at the moment I had my chance to get him back I thought to myself, That must be the Kesselmans. It's the same people. Simple mixup on the names. I wonder who conjured up that. I never was too good on names. Maybe they found that out. But with sixteen hundred names to keep track of and deal with--"
"Sixteen hundred," she said. "What do you mean?" And her intuition, then, grew. A sense of the finiteness of the world around her. The streets and houses and shops and cars and people. Sixteen hundred people, standing in the center of a stage. Surrounded by props, by furniture to sit in, kitchens to cook in, cars to drive, food to fix. And then, behind the props, the flat, painted scenery. Painted houses set farther back. Painted people. Painted streets. Sounds from speakers set in the wall. Sammy sitting alone in a classroom, the only pupil. And even the teacher not real. Only a series of tapes being played for him.
"Do we get to know what it's for?" she said.
"He knows. Ragle knows."
She said, "That's why we don't have radios."
"You'd have picked things up on a radio," Black said.
"We did," she said. "We picked you up."
He grimaced. "It was a question of time. Sooner or later. But we expected him to keep sinking back into it, in spite of that."
"But someone came along," Margo said.
"Yes. Two more people. Tonight we sent a work crew to the house -- that big old two-story house on the corner -- but they're gone. Nobody there. Left all their models. They gave him a course in Civil Defense. Leading up to the present."
She said, "If you have nothing else to say, I wish you'd leave."
"I'm going to stay here," Black told her. "All night. He might decide to come back. I thought you'd prefer it if Junie didn't come with me. I can sleep here in the living room; that way I'll see him if he does show up." Opening the front door he lifted a small suitcase into the house. "My toothbrush, pajamas, a few personal things," he said, in the same dulled, spiritless voice.
"You're in trouble," she said. "Aren't you?"
"So are you," Black said. Setting the suitcase down on a chair he opened it and began to lay out his possessions.
"Who are you?" she said. "If you're not 'Bill Black.'"
"I am Bill Black. Major William Black, United States Board of Strategic Planning, Western Theater. Originally I worked with Ragle, plotting out missile strikes. In some respects I was his pupil."
"So you don't work for the city. For the water company."
The front door opened and there stood Junie Black, in a coat, holding a clock. Her face was puffy and red; obviously she had been crying. "You forgot your clock," she said to Bill Black, holding it out to him. "Why are you staying here tonight?" she said in a quavering voice. "Is it something I did?" She glanced from him to Margo. "Are you two having an affair? Is that it? Was that it all the time?"
Neither of them said anything.
"Please explain it to me," Junie said.
Bill said, "For god's sake, will you beat it. Go on home."
Sniffling, she said, "Okay. Whatever you say. Will you be home tomorrow, or is this permanent?"
"It's just for tonight," he said.
The door shut after her.
"What a pest," Bill Black said.
"She still believes it," Margo said. "That she's your wife."
"She'll believe it until she's been reconstructed," Bill said. "So will you. You'll keep on seeing what you've been seeing. The training is all there, on a nonrational level. Impressed on your systems."
"It's awful," she said.
"Oh, I don't know. There are worse things. It's an attempt to save your lives."
"Is Ragle conditioned, too? Like the rest of us?"
"No," Black said, as he laid out his pajamas on the couch. Margo noticed the loud colors, the flowers and leaves of bright red. "Ragle is in a little different shape. He gave us the idea for all this. He got himself into a dilemma, and the only way he could solve it was to go into a withdrawal psychosis."