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"How do you like this?" she said, holding up the clippers. "I think they're real gold."
"Good to be the big boss," Valentine said, removing his boots. He stuffed them with New Universal Church propaganda. Dry reading would absorb the sweat, and the odor would only be improved.
She heard a scratching above and looked up, her arm instinctively reaching to her side, grasping for a weapon.
A ratbit blinked down at her. It dropped a pack of gum onto Valentine's pillow and crawled back across the beamed ceiling to the door.
He heard a thump as it startled Bee on its scramble out.
"I think that's a thank-you," Valentine said, picking up the gum.
Duvalier dropped the mass of paper she was about to fling at the ratbit. "God, those things give me the creeps."
"What's that rolled up in your hand?" Valentine asked.
"I found all these great old magazines in the attic. You hardly ever see them like this, usually they're crinkled from being wet and dried."
"For toilet paper?"
"No. Too slick, unless you Minnesota types are fans of skid marks up to your spine. I like looking at the women in the pictures. So beautiful."
"Thinking of changing your hair?"
"I can read, you know," she said, wrinkling her nose at him. "The articles are fascinating. Look at this! Fifteen ways to update your jeans."
"Only fifteen?"
"I only knew one. When they wear out, turn them into shorts. Then when those wear out, you have some patching material and an oil rag. Oh, mechanical dryer lint in a bottle of gasoline makes for a better Molotov cocktail, so I suppose that's two updates."
Valentine was deeply fond of Duvalier. She was like a sister to him, but there was a tiny frisson whenever they touched one wouldn't get from a sister. They'd been together so long, seen each other naked so often, the fact that they'd never made love had been made moot. They were partners on a level just as deep. Policemen who'd spent years together might understand. "That's my firebug. I thought you were going soft on me for a minute there."
"Never. I'm a good ol' rebel."
Valentine checked his teeth, went to work with brush and floss. Some said he set the standard for field hygiene at Fort Seng, but he'd have a long way to go to meet her choppers.
Duvalier threw down her magazine. "Val, you give a shit about the Old World. They sure had a lot of stuff. It's like they spent all their time figuring out what to do with their clothes and hair."
"I suppose some did."
"Why don't the Kurians do that? In Kansas, we were always looking for a set of kitchen knives with matching handles or new shoe heels. Made you think that the Peedee knuckleheads didn't know what they were doing."
"Peedee?"
"Pee and Dee. Production and Distribution."
"You think the Kurians wanted shortages?" Valentine asked.
"No, I can't figure out why they don't string up the people running that end of it. You'd think if everyone was worrying about which of the fifteen ways to update their jeans, nobody would be questioning where Gramma went after her foot operation. Spending two hours a day working on your makeup doesn't leave much energy for guerilla activity."
Valentine shrugged. "The churchmen never were big on material things. You might say that if you're spending two hours a day scrounging for socks and underwear, you don't have much time to be a guerilla either. And not producing something is a heck of a lot easier to organize than producing it."
"Thank you, George Orwell."
Duvalier showed flashes, every now and then, of being much better read than her "simple and corny as a Kansas field" attitude that got her through sentry checkpoints let on. The thing is, he'd never seen her pick up a book, though Valentine had carried Orwell with him in a couple of their relocations. Maybe she snuck a book out to cushion her dynamite when she went out into the field.
"You in the mood to head back south to that construction site? Or do you have a pedicure scheduled?"
She kicked the magazine off the bed, checked to see that her sword stick was within reach. "I only need six on my back and two hot meals. It beats learning nine ways to make yourself part of his fantasies."
