"I think we're in for a rough winter," Justin said.

We stood there on a grassy slope, late that October afternoon, he and I,
overlooking a farm which had been harvested very nearly bare. I looked up at
him and grinned. "Been reading the Old Farmer's Almanac, have
we?" I asked.

He smiled and shook his head. "Not exactly," he said. "But I have
been applying some of its principles. Mark my words, Jonathan." He nodded
down at the ragged farm. "The snow is going to come early--and hard. I
just hope we're ready."

At that moment, on such a glorious fall day, it was hard to imagine that the
snow would ever come; although--now that he mentioned it--there was a
definite chill in the air, making me glad of the cloak I had thrown over my
shoulders. Autumn in Thorn Valley was--if possible--even more spectacular than
summer. Sprinkled liberally through the forest, the deciduous trees were a riot
of color, red, orange and gold; the sky was hazy, the horizon smoky, and the
ends of the valley were lost in clinging, luminous mist. The sun, near to
setting now, was a huge flattened orange disk, so diffused by the haze that I
could look directly at it. Days like those were among my favorites; sometimes
it seemed that they would last forever. Still, Justin had a point: after
October comes November, and beyond that December. The year--at once the worst
and best of my entire life--was dying.

"You know we moved in months earlier than we planned," Justin was
saying. "We had to dip a lot deeper into our food stores than I
liked."

"The harvest was good," I pointed out. "Better than expected,
according to Ralph."

"True," he agreed. He shook his head. "And maybe I'm worrying
needlessly. But still, I can't shake the feeling that there's going to have to
be some belt-tightening around here before this winter is over."

"Speak for yourself," I said, with dignity. "I already
consume half what you do."

"For which we are all profoundly grateful, I assure you," Justin
said. He paused for a moment, stroking his whiskers thoughtfully. "First
thing tomorrow morning I'd like you to start an inventory of our food stores. I
want to know exactly what we've got."

I sighed. Most of the time, these last four months, I'd enjoyed being
Justin's executive assistant; as he'd said when he'd talked me into taking the
job, it suited me. But there were moments... "You got it, boss," I
said, somewhat less than enthusiastically.

He grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. The sun had vanished now, and
deep shadows were descending over the valley. "Come on," he said.
"It's getting cold. And it's almost dinnertime."

When I arrived home I found, quite literally, a full house.

The three-bedroom apartment my family had been assigned (some sixteen weeks
ago, though that scarcely seemed possible) was a strange--but
comfortable--mixture of the old and the new. Some of the furnishings and
decorations had come from our old home on the farm, the cinder block which I
had located, but had barely gotten to live in before my troubles started. The
rest was new, courtesy of Arthur's skilled craftspeople. And of those new
items, a certain number were rat-sized. At first glance that seemed odd, almost
comical; but the reason for it was simple enough. Some (in fact most) of
our best friends were rats, when they came to visit they had to have someplace
to sit.

As I entered, I saw that my entire family was there; and as always, that
sight gave me a definite thrill of pleasure. Across the room, on the smaller
sofa, Timothy and Cynthia had their heads together, poring over books and
papers that were strewn across the coffee table; Timothy, it appeared, was once
again helping his little sister do battle with her number-one nemesis: math.
Nearer the door, on the much larger rat-sized sofa, Martin and Teresa were also
hitting the books, and no wonder, with their equivalency exams staring them in
the face. Poor Teresa: she sat with her right leg stuck awkwardly out before
her, swathed in white plaster from knee to foot. Her crutches were propped up
against the arm of the sofa. There was nothing a rat could do that she
couldn't, she'd often said; it had taken a fractured ankle to convince her that
maybe she'd better restrict that discussion to an intellectual, rather than
athletic, playing field. If you have to break a leg, I suppose fall is
the best time to do it: long before the first of the year she'd be healed.

And in the room's far corner, sitting at the desk which was tucked in
between the fireplace and the window, was Elizabeth. My wife wore a dark blue
skirt and a blue-and-white striped sweater; and her recently-acquired (but not
much-liked) reading glasses were perched on the end of her nose. The desk
before her was covered with papers, and her gaze darted back and forth among
them as she jotted quick notes on a clipboard.

As I entered they looked up--four out of the five, anyway--and smiled at me.
"Hello, everybody," I said, as I hung up my cloak on a peg beside the
door, amidst a crowd of similar items.

In the chorus of voices that greeted me: "Hi, Dad" (from three at
once) and "Hello, Father; how was your day?" only one was missing.
Too preoccupied, I suppose. The kids watched, smiling, as I tiptoed across the
room to the desk. Stepping up behind Elizabeth I suddenly wrapped my left arm
around her breast and nuzzled the back of her neck.

"Hello, Jonathan," she said blandly, proving that she'd been less
oblivious (and I less stealthy) than I'd thought. She turned, smiling as she
peered over the top of her glasses. "You're a little late," she
commented.

I kissed her and then released her, perching myself on the edge of the desk.
The papers that surrounded her seemed to be supply requisitions from every
department in the community--at least every one that she had control
over--which she was struggling to bring into some kind of order. I didn't envy
her the task. "Justin and I were taking a look at the farm," I
explained.

"And?"

"And, it's just about played out for the season. I think we've seen the
last of the tomatoes--and even the zucchini has just about had it,
finally."

She made a wry face. Zucchini plants have a tendency to go wild, and while
we were all grateful that they'd done so well, that particular squash--in
bread, or grilled, or steamed, or stir-fried, or in soup or salad--had found
its way into far too many meals that summer. Everyone in the community would be
glad to see the end of it.

"Justin's a little concerned about our food situation for the
winter," I went on. "He wants me to start an inventory
tomorrow."

She turned to look at me again; but this time her gaze was a little sharp,
her blue eyes flashing above the wire frames. "He wants you to do
an inventory?" she echoed. "Shouldn't that be my job?"

I hesitated for a moment. My dear wife's recent transformation--for lack of
a better word--had caused a certain number of behavioral changes, some more
obvious than others. Most of them I could cope with; some I even welcomed. But
there was one I was finding it difficult to endure, and I devoutly hoped it was
just a phase: a certain degree of touchiness, especially in regards to her job.
Which meant that I would have to tread carefully. "I suspect," I
said, "that Justin feels you've got enough to do already, and that it
would just be a distraction. And," I went on quickly, "of course I'll
be needing your input, when you have time."

She heard the placating tone in my voice, and suddenly her expression
softened. She reached up to stroke my cheek. "I'm sorry, Jonathan,"
she said. "I shouldn't have snapped at you. It's just...well, Justin wanted
me to take this job, he trusted me with it, and I want to succeed at it, by
myself. I don't want other people to have to cover for me."

Once again I wrapped my arm around her. "I understand," I assured
her. "You know that I hear about everything that goes on in this
community, sooner or later. From what I've heard, everyone is absolutely
satisfied with the job you've been doing. Despite their grumbling."

She chuckled; I felt the vibration through my arm. "Thank you,"
she said. Then, very deliberately, she took off her glasses and set them aside,
along with the clipboard. "That," she said, "is enough of that
for one day."

Art by LordDirk

The trouble with falling in love--if you happen to be the leader of a
community--is that you get no privacy whatsoever.

As I finally sat down at our specially-built family table in the dining hall
that evening (on my second trip from the counter, since I'd had to carry
Teresa's tray too) I glanced across the room and smiled. "He's at it
again," I observed.

"Jonathan," Elizabeth said chidingly, "it's not polite to
stare."

I waved a hand around the crowded room. "Don't tell me," I
said. "Tell them."

Indeed, if there was a pair of eyes in that hall which was not turned
toward Justin's table I don't know whose it was--unless perhaps children too
small for that particular kind of curiosity. Everybody else--including, I
noticed, my lady wife--was casting surreptitious glances at our beloved leader...and
his dinner companion.

One of the effects of the NIMH treatments was a tendency toward single
births--which is to say that our females, rat or mouse, gave birth to one child
at a time, as opposed to (as they say) "dropping a litter." (And if
you think it was easy to explain that to Elizabeth, without telling her
the full truth, think again.) The upside was that the children were born
larger, stronger and better-developed. The downside was that the births could
be difficult--as Elizabeth's had, most especially Cynthia. In our entire
history, so far, there had been just one multiple birth, a set of identical
twins...and Justin, for the third time that week, was having dinner with one of
them right now.

I had, of course, known those twins since the day they were born. In fact
I'd helped deliver them, as had Justin. That was back during our
"Wandering Days," as the members of the Original 22 put it; the many
months between NIMH and the founding of the rosebush community. In those days
births were both a joy and a problem. We rejoiced, of course, in the creation
of new life, and most especially in the knowledge that we could
reproduce; that the NIMH treatments hadn't rendered us sterile. (In my case
that took a little longer to determine.) Even better was the fact that the
children had so obviously inherited the genes that had been created in us.
But...well, in our darker moments we had to wonder what would become of those
children; every new life was another mouth to feed. That fact had led us to
settle down, to establish the rosebush community; and then, of course, to
develop the Plan. But I digress.

Of those twins, I knew one much better than the other; about as well as one
can, in fact, while still remaining just friends: Eileen. "Hacker,"
I'd called her, when she'd been one of my four companions on the NIMH
expedition. We'd given her that nickname because she knew everything there was
to know about computers; most especially, how to break into them. It was a
nickname which she'd had to give up, unfortunately, when we got back: there
wasn't a computer to be found in Thorn Valley. More recently she'd acquired
another: "Teach." She'd spent the last four months tutoring my
children, bringing them up to speed so they could join the adult world. Timothy
especially adored her; they spoke the same language, which is to say higher
math. Unfortunately for him, though, she was spoken for: less than a month
after the end of our expedition, she married Philip. At the time she'd still
been recovering from a fractured wrist; it was the first time I ever saw a
wedding dress with matching arm-sling. Guess who was best man?

The other sister I knew rather less well. Judith, her name was; if she had a
nickname I didn't know it, though it probably wouldn't have been complimentary.
Like her sister she had light brown fur, almost beige, and large dark eyes; she
was tall and slim, and yes, quite attractive. (Though I'm not permitted to
notice things like that.) Unfortunately the resemblance went only a little
deeper than that. Eileen was one of the three or four smartest people I'd ever
met. She had a sarcastic streak too, and a rather biting sense of humor...but at
the same time, she was one of the most caring individuals I'd ever known,
second only to my wife. I honestly don't think I would have lived through the
NIMH expedition if it wasn't for her. Time and again, in my depression, I
refused to eat; and time and again, she managed to cajole or threaten me out of
starving myself to death.

Judith, by all accounts, was not one bit less intelligent than her sister;
but her sarcasm had a hard edge to it that Eileen's never did, and had earned
her a reputation for being unapproachable and almost vicious. (Though
strangely, Elizabeth strongly disagreed with that assessment.) I myself had never
fallen foul of Judith's legendary temper...but I knew someone who had, more than
once: Ralph. You would think that the Master Farmer would get along famously
with the Chief Botanist, since they both had the same ends in mind: feeding the
community. Unfortunately that had never been the case. The botanist, it seemed,
regarded the farmer as an idiot and an incompetent, and didn't care who knew
it. Which is not the basis for a firm friendship.

All of which meant that Justin was simultaneously accomplishing two things:
he was breaking the heart of every unattached female in the community,
including my daughters; and he was making everyone else, including me, wonder
if he'd lost his mind.

But the really incredible thing about the situation was that Justin seemed
to be making headway. The two of them--leader and botanist--sat at a table for
two, tucked into a corner of the dining hall. They sat with their heads close
together, talking earnestly and all but ignoring their dinners; and on occasion
Justin was even able to coax a smile out of her. A real smile, too, and quite
nice; not the lopsided sardonic grin which she gave to most people. Justin had
charm and to spare; that I knew very well. It accounted for at least
one-quarter of the reason why he'd been able to hold the community together.
(The other three-quarters being talent and ability.) Obviously he'd turned the
thermostat on that charm as high as it would go--I could feel it, all the way
across the room--but that it was working, in the face of such opposition,
seemed nothing short of miraculous.

Suddenly then I heard a familiar voice behind me. "Who'd a'-thunk it,
eh?"

I turned--and for a instant it was as if I was seeing double. It was Eileen
who stood there, grinning, her arms crossed over her chest. "Hello,
Hacker," I said. Even though the nickname was a thing of the past, I had
called her that so many times that it still sometimes slipped out. She smiled
in acknowledgment.

"Hello, Jonathan," she said. Her gaze shifted. "Good evening,
Elizabeth. Hiya, kids."

"Won't you join us, Eileen?" Elizabeth asked graciously.

"Don't mind if I do," she said. She pulled a chair from a nearby
table and seated herself, between me and Timothy. As she did she reached over
to tousle my son's hair fondly. My erstwhile companion had, upon her return to
the community, exchanged the blue tunic and white shirt of her old Guard
uniform for more conventional female clothing. At the moment the skirt and
loose sweater she wore couldn't quite conceal the slight, but noticeable, bulge
in her abdomen.

Elizabeth noticed Eileen's empty hands, and she frowned. "Did you eat
dinner, dear?" she asked in concern.

Eileen smiled and rubbed her stomach. "He--or she--has got me a little
off my feed today," she explained. "I did manage a bowl of
soup."

Elizabeth's frown deepened, but she held her peace. As far as we'd been able
to figure out, Eileen was older than Elizabeth; but my dear wife never could
resist the temptation to be everybody's mother. Most people--including
Eileen--didn't mind.

"Where's that husband of yours?" I asked.

"The Captain of the Guard," Eileen said with a sigh, "is
currently taking an extra turn on duty at the main entrance, because Mark has a
date." She shook her head. "He's either soft-hearted or soft-headed,
I don't know which."

I grinned and pointed. "I'm beginning to wonder about our fearless
leader, too."

Once again Eileen sighed. "Frankly, I'm worried about him," she
said. "Though maybe I shouldn't be--he's a big boy. And he obviously likes
a challenge. But I can't help thinking that he's setting himself up for a fall.
I've got the creepy feeling that she's just playing with him."

"Me too," I began, but Elizabeth interrupted me.

"Really," she said in exasperation, "you two are terrible.
Isn't it possible that she genuinely cares about him?"

Eileen smiled humorlessly. "Oh, it's possible," she
admitted. "It's just not very probable."

To look at Judith right then, as she sat with Justin, you might have
wondered what he saw in her. She wore--as she almost always did--her work
clothes: a rough and much-patched tunic of blue denim over a plaid shirt, a
bandanna tied over her head, and a tool-belt around her waist. She alternated
her work days between the greenhouse--her own personal and inviolable
domain--and the farm, where she clashed often and spectacularly with Ralph. No,
in her work clothes she wasn't much to look at--but she cleaned up nice, as
they say. It was some two and a half months before, I think, when Justin first
took notice of her: on the occasion of our First Annual Thorn Valley Luau
Night. Eileen and Judith had appeared wearing identical flowered
sarongs--Eileen's idea--and only the fact that Philip had hung on tight to
Eileen had enabled the rest of us to tell them apart. I was standing next to Justin
at the time--he was looking remarkably silly in a banana-tree shirt and a
floppy straw hat--and when Judith appeared under the light of the tiki torches
he just about dropped his drink. It took him some time to get up the courage to
approach her--but the rest, as they say, was history. Had I been a betting man,
I would have lost the farm.

"Don't get me wrong," Eileen was saying. "I love my sister
dearly." She sighed. "Even though she hasn't been treating me
particularly well lately either. But she's never had much use for other people.
To her they're just obstacles."

"Why is she like that, anyway?" I asked.

"If you ever find out," Eileen said seriously, "be sure to
let my parents know. They've been wondering the same thing for years."

Elizabeth shook her head. "I don't agree," she said. "She's
been more than pleasant to me since the moment I met her."

Eileen glanced at her with a faint smile. "I don't say that you're
wrong," she said. "But I do say that if so, you're an
exception."

With a certain effort I pulled myself free from the subject, which was--when
all is said and done--really none of my business. I gazed up at Eileen.
"So, tutor," I said, "how are your students coming along?"

Eileen gazed fondly at her charges, and all of them suddenly became very
interested in their dinners. She said, "I think I'll be out of a job very
soon." She patted her stomach. "And just in time, too." She
nodded around the table. "Teresa, Martin and Timothy are ready to take
their exams. I've talked it over with Alice; she's ready for them any time they
feel comfortable. Cynthia is just about caught up with her age-group; she'll be
able to graduate with her class in January. Except," she went on sternly,
"she still needs to work on her math."

My younger daughter turned away, shame-faced, and Timothy laid a solicitous
hand on her shoulder. "I'll help her," he assured us.

Eileen smiled. "I'm counting on it."

"So--what will you do now?" I asked.

"Well, other than maternity," Eileen said, "Justin wants me
to run the library, and Alice wants me to work with some of her more
accelerated students. I'll have enough to do, I imagine." She winked.
"Until Justin figures a way to get me a new computer."

"Eileen," I said, "Hacker, I really want to thank you for
everything you've done. And not only here." Beside me, Elizabeth nodded
vigorous agreement.

Eileen reached down and clasped both my right hand and Elizabeth's left,
together in hers. "It was the least I could do," she said. She rose
then, with some slight difficulty. "Now, if you'll all excuse me, I've got
to go warm up the bed before Philip gets off duty."

"Jonathan," Elizabeth said, "there's something I don't quite
understand."

I looked over at her in some surprise. It had been quite a while since I'd
last heard those words from her. These days there wasn't much she didn't
understand; and what little there was, she figured out for herself. "Such
as?" I asked cautiously.

We'd spent most of the evening quietly, the entire family with the exception
of Cynthia, in the lounge, listening to young Julian play his guitar. (Timothy
was taking lessons from him, when he had the time, and was showing quite a bit
of promise.) I must confess that my attention had been somewhat divided all
through the concert, as had almost everyone else's. The situation, it seemed,
was escalating rapidly. Some time between dinner and the start of the concert,
Judith had cleaned up and changed clothes, putting on a skirt and a blouse in
place of her rough work tunic. That was unusual but not terribly alarming. What
was alarming, was the fact that she sat there in the lounge all evening
with Justin's arm around her--and her head resting on his shoulder. This was
indeed getting serious.

And now, two hours or so later, sitting up in bed with the pillows bulked
behind her, Elizabeth laid her book in her lap and gazed at me seriously over
the top of her glasses. "Ever since you and I were married," she
said, "you've been trying to sell Justin on the joys of matrimony,
right?"

I stood then, dusting off my hands and my knees. The squat little
alcohol-burning stove in the corner of our bedroom--the kids had them in their
rooms too--was a product of Arthur's mechanical genius. It was capable of
putting out a remarkable amount of heat--but only for a relatively short time.
It was possible to turn the burner low, so the stove would run all night,
producing just enough heat to take the edge off the chill. But it took some
fiddling to set the valve just right, neither so low that the stove would go
out, nor so high that it would run out of fuel or pressure before morning.

"That's true," I agreed. I shucked my bathrobe then, leaving it
lying across the blanket chest, and I hurriedly climbed into bed. I leaned over
and kissed her on the cheek. "And with good reason."

She smiled. "Flatterer," she said. "What I want to know is,
if you've been encouraging him to get married all this time, why are you so
worried now? It seems to me he's just trying to accomplish what you
suggested."

I turned over on my side, facing her. "That's not the point," I
said. "Ordinarily I'd be happy for him. But...well, you know Justin almost
as well as I do. He has a tendency to throw himself into things headlong,
without thinking about consequences."

"Not at all like anyone else we know," she said teasingly.

"I was lucky," I told her. "But I'm afraid he might not be.
If Eileen is right--if Judith is just playing with him--then he could be
terribly hurt. Because he--obviously--is serious about this."

"And if she's not playing with him?" Elizabeth said
challengingly.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that I don't think either you or Eileen understand Judith half
as well as you think you do."

"But you do?"

"Maybe I do at that," she said calmly. "Maybe Judith and I
understand each other. We had a lot in common when we met, four months ago. Our
situations weren't that different. We just handled them differently."

I hesitated for a moment. "I'll have to think about that one," I
said.

"I hope you do," she replied with a grin. "And in the
meantime, my darling, Justin's love life is none of our business. As Eileen
said, he's a big boy now. Agreed?"

I sighed. "Agreed," I said. I kissed her on the nose.

"Spoilsport."

It was getting late by then, and we turned in for the night. Elizabeth
marked her book and laid it on top of a tall stack of others, waiting to be
read, there on the corner of her nightstand. She set aside her glasses and blew
out the lamp; and then, in the darkness, she settled warmly and comfortably
into the welcoming circle of my arms. At times like those I honestly believed
that there could not be a luckier mouse in the world than me--or one less
deserving of his good fortune.

Art by LordDirk