3 
O’Hara continued to go down to the Bellcom studio at midnight every full moon, but for several months there had been no broadcast from Jeff. They said he probably was still sending, but the signal had gotten so weak they couldn’t pick it up: something about signal-to-noise ratio and discrimination. She kept going in the hope that he would find a new fuel cell or a way to recharge the one he had.
Jeff defined “midnight” as the time when the moon was highest, which would be at eleven-forty this month, New New York time. O’Hara came in at eleven and sat down in front of the familiar blank screen, listening to static. She opened up her briefcase and took out a small printer, which she balanced on her knees. She started outlining a report on the correlations between accident frequency and age for people involved in various construction tasks.
After about a half hour, the static abruptly stopped. She looked up, thinking that the monitor had been turned off, and Jeff’s voice boomed: “MARIANNE—I HAVE A FUEL cell.” Somebody adjusted the volume. “Can you hear me? Are you up there?”
The printer slid to the floor with a crash. “Yes… yes, I—” A technician rushed in with a throat mike and she fastened it to her neck. “I can hear you, Jeff. Can you hear me?”
There was a long silence. “Yes, I do. You’re all right, then—New New came out all right?”
Words appeared on a prompter: SOMEBODY’S COMING FROM THE PLAGUE PROJECT. TELL HIM TO SHUT DOWN FOR TEN MINUTES AND CALL BACK.
“Yes, everything’s…well, not back to normal exactly—Jeff, listen. We found a cure for the plague. An antibiotic. They want us to shut down for ten minutes, I guess to save your power; somebody’s coming to tell you about it.”
“But…a cure? Christ. All right.” The static rushed back.
While O’Hara waited, other cube screens lit up with various data about the plague. Two flatscreens showed a road map of Plant City and a satellite photograph, which enlarged itself and rotated, to match the orientation of the road map.
A young man—black, short, wiry, stifling a yawn—rushed into the studio and sat down next to O’Hara. He shook her hand. “Elijah Seven,” he said. “Am I awake yet?”
“Getting there,” O’Hara said. He had buttoned up his shirt wrong; she leaned over and fixed it. “You’re from the plague project?”“Yeah, I’m with the bunch distributing the vaccine. We have a special kind of—”
“I’m back now,” the speakers said. “You hear me?”
Seven put a throat mike in place. “Hawkings, this is Dr. Elijah Seven. We’ve synthesized a vaccine for the plague. I’m in charge of sending it down to Earth.
“We’ve sent down a couple of hundred thousand doses already; none to your area. Some went to Atlanta and Miami. You may run across them: they’re bright red individual ampoules in crates of the thousand. The crates have pictograph instructions, as well as written ones, telling how to administer the dose.”
“Haven’t seen anything like that.”
“Didn’t think you would, not yet Listen, we have a special shipment for you. The ampoules are damned inefficient. We made up a batch in regular hypo bottles. You have an American standard hypo gun?”
“I guess that’s what it is. It has the Pharmaceuticals’ Lobby symbol stamped on it.”
“Good. We want to drop a crate at your hospital, for you to store in that safe. But we don’t know where the hospital is. We have a map of Plant City but it doesn’t show St. Theresa’s.”
“It’s a brand-new building just south of the city limits, on Main Street extended. It’s shaped like an H, forty stories high, all blue glass and composites. Big golden cross in front.”
“Okay…” He watched the prompter. “The vaccine’s in low Earth orbit. We’ll bring it down to you soon as it gets light. Coming in from the west about seven-thirty.”
“All right. But look, are the bottles or the crate identified as plague vaccine? Most of the people around here wouldn’t take it if they knew it would prevent the death. They have pity on me for having lived so long.”
“Yes, we anticipated that. No markings, no labels. Tell them anything you want.”
“We’ve got a typhoid epidemic south of here. I can claim it’s for that.”
“Good. You’ll be getting several years’ supply; twenty or thirty thousand doses, depending on the proportion of small children. Though I think it would be smart to inoculate the older ones first.”
“What about me? Should I take it? Then I could start taking drugs again for the growth hormone anomaly—it’s probably all that’s keeping me alive, but sooner or later the pain is going to immobilize me.”
“What, you’re growing?”
“I don’t think so, not enough to notice. But it’s doing something to my joints, something like arthritis.”
Seven kneaded his forehead. “I’ll have to talk to an endocrinologist. Seem to remember that in children the growth hormone sends some sort of ‘message’ to the bone ends. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling.
“Don’t take it yet. We’ll get a consensus and leave word with O’Hma. Any other questions?”
“No. I’ll call back in one month. Let me talk with my exwife.”
They’d signed a one-year marriage contract, partly in the hope of getting Jeff space on the shuttle. “Hello, exhusband.”
“So. How’s the weather up there?”
Charlie’s Will
Jeff heard the robot drone before he saw it. It came out of the morning haze to the southwest, banked toward him, then coasted silently overhead, releasing its package. About twenty seconds later its engines kicked back in and it sped off to the east.
The bright red parachute floated straight down and just missed getting hung up on the golden cross in front of the hospital. That would have been interesting, trying to find a long ladder before some scavengers got to it.
It was a plain metal box with no markings. No obvious way to get it open, either. He walked around it, puzzled, and was just about to turn it over when there was a faint “pop” and the top sprang open. Inside, dozens of half-liter bottles were nestled in spun glass. He filled the wagon and pulled it inside to the safe.
After three wagonloads he put two bottles in his sad-dlebags and locked up the safe. He wrapped the fuel cell in dirty clothing and put it in the bottom of his canvas bag. When he went out to get his bike there were two boys standing there, looking at the parachute and the metal box. One had a shotgun and the other had a pistol stuck in his belt. He recognized them as the two hunters from the family he’d treated for syphilis.
“Hello, boys. How’s the girl doing?”
“What girl?” said the one with the shotgun. “The girl who had the fungus, remember?”
“Oh yeah. She’s okay. What’s all this shit, we heard the rocket and saw it drop this shit.”
“It’s medicine. They have typhoid down in Tampa. I’m trying to fix it so no one up here gets it. It’s pretty ugly.”
“So where’d the rocket come from? The Worlds?”
“No,” Jeff said slowly, “you retarded? We killed those bastards a long time ago. This is from Mobile, Alabama. That’s where they keep stuff like that.”
“Yeah, Willy,” said the one with the pistol. “You never seen them?”
“Maybe I seen ‘em and maybe not.” He stared at Jeff. “So you got a radio in there.”
“Not here. I have to go down to St. Petersburg. There’s a Public Health Service building down there.”