"Not having to pee in a bucket is not indolence," Savitri said.

"It's one of the hallmarks of civilization, along with having solid walls. And taking baths, which everyone in this colony has taken too few of recently, I'll tell you that."

"Now you know why the planet smells like an armpit," I said.

"It smelled like an armpit to start," Savitri said. "We're just adding to the funk."

I stood there and inhaled greatly through my nostrils, making a show of enjoying the air. Rather unfortunately for me, however, Savitri was right; Roanoke did, in fact, smell all too much like an armpit, so it was all that I could do not to gag after filling my lungs. That being said, I was enjoying the sour look on Savitri's face too much to admit to swooning from the smell.

"Aah," I said, exhaling. I managed not to cough.

"I hope you choke," Savitri said.

"Speaking of which," I said, and ducked back into the tent to retrieve my own nightpail, "I've got some business of my own to take care of. Walk with me to dump this?"

"I'd prefer not to," Savitri said.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I made that sound like a question. Come on." Savitri sighed and walked with me down the avenue of our little village of Croatoan, toward the waste digester, Babar tagging along at our heels, except when he broke off to say hello to kids. Babar was the only dog in the colony who was a herding dog; he had the time to make friends. This made him both popular and chunky.

"Manfred Trujillo told me that our little village is based on a Roman legion camp," Savitri said, as we walked.

"It's true," I said. "It was his idea, actually." And a good one. The village was rectangular, with three avenues running the length of the camp parallel to each other and a fourth avenue (Dare Avenue) bisecting them. In the center was a communal mess hall (in which our carefully monitored food supply was doled out in shifts), a small square where the kids and teens tried to keep themselves occupied and the administrative tent that doubled as home for me, Jane and Zoe.

On either side of Dare Avenue were rows of tents, each housing up to ten people, usually a pair of families plus any additional singles or couples we could stick in. Sure, it was inconvenient, but it was also crowded. Savitri had been bunked in a tent with three families of three, all of whom had infant and toddler-aged children; part of the reason for her sour disposition was that she was running on about three hours of sleep a night. Since the days on Roanoke were twenty-five hours, eight minutes long, this wasn't a good thing.

Savitri pointed to the edge of the village. "I guess the Roman legions didn't use storage containers as a perimeter barrier," she said.

"Probably not," I said. "But that was their loss." Using the storage containers as a perimeter had been Jane's idea. In the Roman days, the legionnaires' camp would be encircled by a ditch and a palisade, to keep out the Huns and the wolves. We didn't have any Huns, or their equivalent (yet), but there had been some reports of large animals wandering out in the grass, and we also didn't want kids or teens (or certain incautious adults, who had already made their presence known) wandering off into the vegetation a klick away from the village. The storage containers were ideal for this purpose; they were tall and sturdy and there were lots of them—enough to circle the encampment twice, with appropriate spacing between the two layers to allow our angry, marooned cargo hold crew to unload inventory when needed.

Savitri and I made it to the western border of Croatoan, beyond which lay a small and fast stream. For that reason this edge of the village held its only plumbing so far. In the northwest corner a pipe carried in water to a filtration cistern, which churned out potable water for drinking and cooking; it also fed into two shower stalls at which a one-minute time limit for individuals (and three minutes for families) was strictly enforced by everyone else waiting in line. At the southwest corner was a septic digester— a small one, not the one Chief Ferro pointed out to me—into which every colonist dumped their nightpails. During the day they availed themselves of the portable toilets that surrounded the digester. There was almost always a line at these, too.

I walked over to the digester and poured the contents down a chute, holding my breath as I did so; the digester did not smell of roses. The digester took our waste and processed it into sterile fertilizer that was being collected and stored, and also into clean water, most of which was dumped into the stream. There was some discussion about whether to reroute the processed water back into the camp's supply; the general feeling was that clean or not, the colonists were under enough stress without having to drink or bathe in their own processed pee. It was a fair point. A small amount of the water, however, was held back to rinse and clean the nightpails. It's life in the big city.

Savitri jerked her thumb down the west wall as I walked back to her. "Planning to shower anytime soon?" she asked. "I mean, no offense, but for you smelling like an armpit would be a step up."

"How long are you planning to be like this?" I asked.

"Until the very day I get indoor plumbing," Savitri said. "Which, in itself, would imply I had an indoor in which to put it."

"It's the Roanoke dream," I said.

"Which isn't going to be able to start until we get all these colonists out of this tent city and into their homesteads," Savitri said.

"You're not the first person to mention this to me," I said. I was about to say more but was interrupted as Zoe' crossed our path.

"There you are," she said, and then thrust her hand at me, which was filled with something. "Look. I found a pet," she said.

I looked at the something in her hand. It stared back. It looked a little like a rat that got caught in a taffy puller. Its most distinguishing characteristics were its four oval eyes, two on either side of its head, and the fact that it, like every other vertebrate creature we'd seen on Roanoke so far, had opposable thumbs on its three-fingered hands. It was using them to balance on Zoe's hand.

"Isn't he cute?" Zoe asked. The thing appeared to belch, which Zoe took as a sign to feed it a cracker she had stored in a pocket. It grabbed it with one hand and started chomping away.

"If you say so," I said. "Where did you find it?"

"There's a bunch of them outside the mess hall," Zoe said, showing it to Babar. He sniffed at the thing; it hissed back. "They've been watching us as we eat." This rang a bell with me; suddenly I was aware I had been seeing them too over the last week. "I think they were hungry," Zoe continued. "Gretchen and I went out to feed them, but they all ran away. Except for this guy. He came right up and took a cracker from me. I think I'll keep him."

"I'd prefer you didn't," I said. "You don't know where it's been."

"Sure I do," Zoe said. "He's been around the mess hall."

"You're missing my point," I said.

"I got your point, ninety-year-old dad," Zoe said. "But come on. If it were going to inject me with poison and try to eat me, it probably would have done it by now." The thing in her hand finished its cracker and burped again, and then suddenly leapt out of Zoe's hand and scurried off in the direction of the storage container barricade. "Hey!" Zoe cried.

"Loyal like a puppy, that thing is," I said.

"When he comes back, I'm going to tell him all the horrible things you've said," Zoe' said. "And then I'm going to let him poo on your head."

I tapped the nightpail. "No, no," I said. "That's what this is for."

Zoe curled her lip at the sight of the nightpail; she was not a big fan. "Yuck. Thanks for the image."

"Don't mention it," I said. Out of the blue, it struck me that Zoe was missing a couple of shadows. "Where are Hickory and Dickory?" I asked.