Afterburn by Colin Harrison Page A

you're forty-nine size small diapers short."
    Miss Metzger stepped toward the wall of diapers, frowning to herself, and that was exactly when Christina pocketed one of the urine test cups.
    "But if you order more size smalls, we can subtract the two hundred and seventy-three diapers from the original total requirement of eighteen forty-eight newborn size, which leaves fifteen seventy-five newborn. That number divided by thirty-two, the number in each packet, comes out to forty-nine-point-two size newborn packets. You have fifty-four. So, if you reorder size small, you'll definitely have enough size newborn."
    "I see," said Miss Metzger uncertainly.
    "But if you don't order more size small, then you'll be forced to use size newborn for all the babies all the time. And with the new babies coming, you'll run out. Let's see—you have fifty-four packets and you need fifty-eight. That's four times thirty-two, which is one twenty-eight. At ten babies—three of whom probably have diaper rash because their diapers are now too tight—times seven diapers a day"—Christina glanced at her watch, remembering the problem with Soft T—"seventy diapers every twenty-four hours . . . and you're one twenty-eight short . . . it's the early afternoon now, so you'll run out of diapers sometime in the morning of the twenty-sixth day. One day short before the truck comes."
    "Oh."
    "Of course, you could ration the diapers, Miss Metzger. But you'd have to get all the women to cooperate and agree not to use more than six a day, or, more precisely, thirteen in a two-day period. But if they count wrong, or cheat, or are too sleepy in the morning to remember how many times they changed the baby, then you could still end up with ten babies with no fresh diapers for twelve or fifteen hours twenty-seven days from now. It's close, either way. All this is assuming you don't get a kid or two with diarrhea. You could also ration the diapers so successfully that you run out of them at exactly the time the truck is due, but there's a problem there, too."
    "There is?" asked Miss Metzger worriedly.
    "Yes. I've noticed that the delivery truck arrives between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, with no real pattern to—"
    "So?" Miss Metzger interrupted.
    "So let me continue."
    "There's no need to be rude."
    "My point exactly." Christina switched the mop to her other hand. "Now, it also happens that the truck will be delivering paper napkins in bulk, for the meal room, where they claim they feed us something they call food . The napkins are on a six-week delivery cycle, okay? I know because I've worked in the kitchen. The cycle corresponds to every third diaper delivery. Same provisioning company, same truck, same driver. Sometimes it's diapers, sometimes it's napkins, sometimes both. But the kitchen loading dock is closer to the main gate than we are, here in the nursery, and so that's the first stop. They load the truck that way, too—napkins at the back of the truck, first to unload. The driver of that truck is Puerto Rican and he likes to bullshit with Luis, the guy in the kitchen, about Cuban baseball players, what the best dance clubs in the city are, how nasty their girlfriends are—wait, are you nasty, Miss Metzger?"
    "Nasty?" The woman's carefully drawn eyebrows lifted, suspicious of the question. "I suppose I am."
    "Oh, Miss Metzger, so am I !" Christina cried. "Or I used to be. I used to be very nasty. And you know what?"
    "Tell me, Christina, if you must," the nursing administrator sighed.
    Christina bent closer. "I liked it, too." She straightened up. "Anyway, those he-men at the loading dock are, in our high-powered diaper supply analysis, enjoying the kind of intellectual discussion you get with guys who don't understand the importance of diapers, and so, on top of the twenty minutes of slow-motion unloading of kitchen napkins, Miss Metzger, you can add at least thirty minutes of chinga las putas and other learned observations, which,