"Or we'll have a bit of luck and start to turn it around," Valentine said.
"Got a name for your op?"
"I was thinking 'Vendetta,' " Valentine said. He'd intentionally avoided anything that was evocative of destruction or a rescue. "Maybe it'll make a couple of Quislings nervous, if word gets out."
"Well, go make us some luck, Major," she said. She signed the order for Vendetta to go live and handed it to him.
Valentine decided to eat dinner in his room that night. The generously sized bedroom always made him feel a little guilty as a place to only sleep and get dressed, so he usually did some work at the old vanity table there as well.
Duvalier was cutting her toenails. She had gnarled, beaten-up feet thanks to the countless miles she'd walked in her exploits.
"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.