Jenny insisted on staying on the land, even after most of the other protesters went home. “My baby is going to grow up knowing she helped keep all the world’s children safe from nuclear war.”

Oh, Jenny, precious young idealist. Lucinda had driven her into town for postpartum medical care, and to show little Cady to her grandmother. Gertrude tried to keep the baby—it wasn’t safe for a child to be camping out right next to a military installation—but Lucinda reswaddled her and helped Jenny back to the car.

That morning Doris had brought a care package with her on the tractor, as she did once or twice a week. Cheese for Jenny, who was nursing, fruit, things that wouldn’t go bad without a refrigerator.

This morning she saw the signs posted on her land without word one to her about putting them up or what was going on. danger: highly toxic, hazardous waste, keep out. Skulls and crossbones, the familiar radiation-hazard trefoil. She jumped down from the tractor and ran to the side of the silo where the tents had been. They were still there, but as Doris opened the flaps, she saw they’d been abandoned, including Jenny’s.

She marched to the silo’s front gate and confronted the soldier standing guard. “Who posted these notices on my land? When did they go up?”

The soldier couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, but he did summon someone with more authority. “Routine tests, ma’am, confirmed a hazard here. I’m sorry you weren’t notified. We were so concerned with getting the demonstrators out of harm’s way that we forgot to let you know. I’ll make sure Major Schreiber comes to see you as soon as he returns to the base. Just don’t try to pick any crops inside the posted area.”

She’d fought and railed and called them names: “pick crops,” as if alfalfa were apples growing on trees? They were condescending, they were ignorant.

“Yes, ma’am,” the junior officer said. “I’ll make sure Major Schreiber comes to see you.”

It was Lucinda who found Cady. When she came home from work that afternoon, home from injecting some bug into Dr. Kiel’s mice, and Doris told her what had happened, she drove down to the silo herself.

“I heard the baby. She was tucked under a sleeping bag, dehydrated and worn out, poor little mite. Best get her to a doctor and try to find what’s happened to Jenny.”