He dried his hands with a paper towel, tossed it in the trash receptacle, went to the door. A coin-operated condom machine was on the wall beside it. He paused and checked the sign. Unsurprisingly, the machine’s contents weren’t rationed.

Nimec emerged from the rest room. A small group of men and women looked askance at him as they walked past. Puzzled, he turned to where Megan was waiting for him down the hall.

He asked her about the plainly disagreeable glances once the two of them were seated in her office.

“I followed the rules,” he said, making the Scout’s-honor sign with his right hand. “Not that I can see how they’d know if I didn’t.”

She regarded him with amusement from across her desk.

“That bunch was mostly OAEs,” she said.

He pulled a face. “Mostly what?”

“Old Antarctic Explorers . . . longtimers on the ice,” she said. “Sorry. The lingo here gets contagious after a while.”

“And exactly how’s that supposed to have something to do with their attitude?”

“Isolation breeds a clannish mentality. The crew can be prickly toward outsiders. Or perceived outsiders. Their consumption of water is one of the things that raises spines.”

“Gracious,” Nimec said. “I hope they’re better hosts to those politicos who’re due for a visit.”

Megan Breen smiled her smile. It was always real. And always measured. Over the years Nimec had found that people either got the combination or they didn’t. The ones who did were usually charmed to helplessness. The ones who didn’t thought her calculating and manipulative. In the predominantly male world in which she functioned as Roger Gordian’s next-in-line, the split was close to even.

He got the smile completely.

“Our desalinization plant turns out fifteen thousand gallons of usable water on a good day,” she said. “That’s for cooking, cleaning, machine and vehicle use, hydroponics . . . the whole show. I know that may sound like a considerable amount, Pete. But it takes two gallons to wash your hands under a running tap, as opposed to one gallon washing in a filled basin. I could rattle off the comparative stats for high-versus-low-efficiency showers—”

“And toilets, I’m sure,” he said.

“One and a half gallons for ultra-low flush. Three to five for standard models.”

“You had that notice posted, didn’t you?”

“Worded it myself.”

“Then I won’t beat the issue of my lousy reception to death.”

They were both smiling now.

“Just wait till we get you a name patch,” she said. “When those malcontents find out who they offended, they’ll want to go scampering under a rug.”