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Show the dockyard was hidden in haze, the Detachment houses snuggled in their greenery. Which revived her anger: the Engineers lived in the flats of Higashi (East) Oji, the Detachments on the shining hills of Naka. She was no fool -- long exposure to her nature had shown that she would be unhappy in the loveliest villa in Italy -- but she was also human. And it was human nature to want to improve one's lot. "Why did Hammond get Naka?" she asked. "He's only a major." The Colonel looked at her with cool dispassion, a sort of reptilian objectivity, it had been noted in Oji, that seemed the normal connubial climate between the Satterwhites. "He got here first." "'Rank hath its privileges,'" she quoted. "It does," he objected, "in Tokyo or Kyoto, but in Oji -" His voice died, but she filled the sentence out: in Oji privilege fights its own battles. For the Detachments were under G2, safely remote in Tokyo, the Engineers under the Infantry Regiment in Kyoto, half a day's ride. Officially, communication between the two units had to wend its way through every link in the chain, a process as efficient, somebody had said, as a hinged fly-swatter. And the Detachments capitalized on the intricacy, the officers disregarding regulations with cavalier good-humor, their wives begrudging Mrs Satterwhite anything more cordial than a toss of the head. |