“With my husband programming the computer.”
“Not directly. Don’t you even want to know what the job is?”
“Go ahead.”
“We’re forming a start-up team for Operation Janus—”
“Still trying to get me aboard that goddamned star-ship.”
“Now listen. We do legitimately need a few people from the Policy side. Especially people with broad academic backgrounds. This is nothing less than setting up a whole new World from scratch. Social system, population distribution as to age, genetic background, professional specialty, and so forth. It would be a hell of a lot more interesting than chicken soup.”
She sighed and patted his hand, not looking at him. “It sure would. But I just can’t take the chance.”
“Why don’t you at least ask Berrigan’s opinion? She could tell you how the Board would feel. She does know half of them.”
“It’s the other half I’m worried about, the psychologist types. They can be pretty arbitrary. The senior administrators tend to make allowances, I guess out of empathy.”
“Psychologists don’t have empathy?”
She laughed. “Okay. I’m going swimming with Sandra tonight. I’ll see what she says.”
“It would be fun to work together.”
“All three of us?”
“Eventually, I hope.” He shook his head. “We have to get Dan out of that pressure cooker. The original reason for making him head of the Applied section no longer exists; all the problems with tar and resin decomposition have been resolved. God knows there are enough people hungry for the job.”
“More politics.”
“Maybe. I suppose the people over Dan are just as happy to have a section leader with no ambition to move higher. And he is good at it.”
She took him by the arm. “Let’s get you good at walking.”
Charlie’s Will 
Jeff Hawkings pedaled cautiously toward the burned-out service station. In front of the station a boy sat behind a table, cases of beer stacked beside him. The boy’s scattergun tracked Jeff as he approached.
“You Healer?” the boy said.
“That’s right. Anybody in your family sick?”
“Nah. Just one with the death.”
“Charlie’s Will,” Jeff said, and sketched a small cross with his thumb on the center of his chest. “How much for the beer?”
“Let you have a case for a scattergun refill.” He pointed at the weapon that dangled on a web loop from Jeff’s shoulder.
“Just have the one cassette,” Jeff lied, “and it’s not full.”
“Have any silver?”
“Huhuh. I have some loose rounds, gunpowder,.22 and.45 caliber.”
“We got a.45. Let you have a beer for two rounds.”
Jeff fished through a leather bag on his belt. “Two beers for one round.” He tossed the heavy cartridge on the table.
“One for one.” The boy slid a beer across.
Jeff shrugged, pinched it open and took a cautious sip; the stuff hadn’t been manufactured with a five-year shelf life in mind. It tasted a little stale but not spoiled. He drank it down quickly, and then bought another, and slipped it into his saddlebag. “Know of anybody nearby needs healing?”
“Family ‘bout fifteen minutes down the road. Somebody always sick there. They keep their muties. On the left there’s a sign, says something something farm.”
“Thanks.” Jeff mounted the bicycle and started away.
“Hey!” He felt the familiar itch in the middle of his back, stopped, and looked back.
“They got a sentry ‘bout halfway down the road to the farm. You don’t want to go in there after dark.”
“Thanks, I’ll move it.” It was late afternoon, the sun reddening.
About two kilometers along, he came to a sand road beside a faded sign that read “Forest-in-Need Farm.” The bicycle slithered too much in the sugar sand, so he got off and pushed it along. He shouted “hello” a couple of times a minute. There was thick underbrush on both sides of the road, thick enough to hide a man. Tall Australian pines sighed in the slight breeze.
“Hold it right there,” a deep voice said from behind him. “Put up your hands.” Jeff did, leaning the bicycle against his hip.
He heard someone crashing through the brush and then a soft tread on sand. “You’re that old goof, the doctor.”
“Healer.”
“Whatever. You can put down your hands.” The man’s appearance was startling; he was full-grown and old enough to have a bush of blond beard. He was holding a modern Uzi flechette gun, the first one Jeff had seen in years. Jeff noted that the safety was off, so he moved very slowly. Two hundred darts per second. In training they’d called them meatgrinders.
“You come at the right time. We have some sick people.” He twisted his ring and spoke into it. “That Healer goof’s comin’ up. He’s okay.”
“You have electricity?”
“Little bit. Big house around the second bend, somebody’ll let you through the gate.”
The forest ended abruptly in another hundred meters. Large pasture had gone thoroughly to weed. Around two bends there was a tall barbed-wire fence which claimed to be electrified; behind it were acres of lush vegetable garden and pens with chickens and pigs. A modern two-story house with solar collectors on the roof. Sandbag bunkers, fighting positions, were spaced around the house. A girl of thirteen or fourteen was standing silently, holding the gate open. She was naked, cradling a baby that chewed at her small breast.
She closed the gate behind him and locked it. “My baby’s sick. Maybe you can help it?”
The infant had a large growth on its neck. She held it out to him, and he saw that the growth was actually a half-formed second head. No eyes or nose but a perfect petal mouth. The baby was hermaphroditic, small male genitals riding too high over a female slit.
“It throws up all the time,” she said. “Sometimes it shits blood. Usually.”
“You can’t tell with muties. It might be missing something inside. Let’s take it up to the house and I’ll look at it.”
The house was built of concrete blocks, windows equipped with roll-down steel shutters. The door was a slab of foamsteel, ten centimeters thick. “Somebody built this to last,” Jeff said.
“It was Tad’s parents. Tad you met down on the road.” It was cool inside, air conditioned. The girl wrapped the baby up in a blanket and put on a robe. “They knew there was going to be a war.”
“How old is Tad?”
“He’s twenty, he’ll get the death pretty soon. Marsha’s gonna take over then, she’s his sister. The rest of us just came, mostly the first year or two.”
The living room was elegant and spare and clean. Neo-Japanese, with mats and low tables. She set the baby on a table and Jeff squatted cross-legged by it. He sterilized a probe and took its temperature. He looked at the readout and shook his head.
“Does it cry a lot?”
“The regular head does, sometimes. The other head does nothing, don’t even suck.”
“I don’t think it’s going to live very long.” He felt its forehead, hot and dry. “That much fever would kill a grownup. Its brains are cooking.”
“It hasn’t cried since day before yesterday, doesn’t move much either. Can you do anything?”
“I can try. Be surprised if it’s alive tomorrow.”
“Charlie’s will,” she muttered. Jeff crossed himself and got the hypo gun out of his saddlebag. He swabbed the nozzle of it and a place on the mutant’s arm. After a moment’s hesitation, he screwed a bottle of plain saline solution into the gun. No use in wasting antibiotics.
She wiped a tear across her cheek. “My first baby.”
“Well, you have lots more in you. Might pick a different father…do you know who the father was?”