"How was this news communicated to you?"

"In tears."

"Very good. You may return to your office."

Joe passed through the barracks and across the dining chamber, where there was no more meat, no more filthy innuendo.

In the office it was cold again. The clay walls were beginning to swell again. A deposit of gray water percolated to the base of his resource. He had told Sal to keep an eye on it, but Sal lay motionless, his jaw gaping like a scorched valley, his limb-segments stacked like logs upon his ergonomic torso.

"He didn't want to defecate in front of the brunette," James reported.

Joe looked across the office. The brunette was slumped in the corner, snorting, forehead on her knees, hair a quivering blur.

"It is finished!" Joe screamed and when the brunette looked up he noticed the four pencils jammed in her throat.

"Pull them out," Joe said. "Pull them out if you want to die. But," here Joe stepped forward, slowly hunching down to her level as he approached, "if you want to live a little longer," here Joe tipped her chin upward with his bayonet and looked coldly into her eyes, "take off your blouse."