He ought to go back to Forest-in-Need. Put a wellarmed family between himself and this kind of madness.
Forget the plan he and Tad had made, forget the antibody; let them have their short furious lives and Charlie’s gift.
But to be completely realistic, he was probably safer moving on, protected by his Healer pose. If Tad’s family gets attacked every couple of months, and a couple of people die in every attack, how long could he expect to survive? Marianne could work out the probabilities for him.
That was a factor. If he stayed with the family he would never talk to Marianne again. If he went on the road with the medicine, he might find another working radio. There was a family down by Bealsville that had mules and had offered to trade for his bicycle. A mule could carry a lot of medicine.
And if he stayed here for another year or two, people might wonder why the grownups he treated never got the death. Logic was a rare commodity in Plant City nowadays, but it would only take one person making the connection.
It would be good to go farther south, with winter coming on. The days were fairly warm, but last year there’d been two nights of frost. Whatever was happening to his joints didn’t like cold. He would wake up almost immobilized with pain. It was warmer down in the Keys.
Year Six
1 
O’Hara found Room 6392, hesitated, and knocked firmly. The door slid open. It was a small room with nothing but a table, two chairs, and a cot. A woman stared at her from the other side of the table. She was an older woman, in her sixties, face a web of worried lines, chin resting on interlaced fingers, no expression in her tired eyes.
“Come in, O’Hara. Sit down.” She did; the door closed behind her. “Aren’t you happy with your job?”
“May I ask who you are?”
“I’m on the Board, of course. I can’t tell you my name.”
“We’ve met once before. You administered the preferment and aptitude tests to my class, ninth form.”
She smiled slightly. “Thirteen years ago. You have a remarkable memory for faces. Aren’t you happy with your job?”
O’Hara settled back in her chair. “I haven’t made any great effort to keep that secret. No, I’m not particularly happy. Is that surprising?”
“Why aren’t you happy?”
“It’s not a job for a nontechnical person. It took months for me to gain the confidence of the people whose work I coordinate. Some of them still see me as an interloper.”
“Would you care to name them?”
“No. I don’t think they’re wrong.”
“Yet you haven’t filed for a transfer.”
“I assumed the Board had a good reason for giving me the assignment.”
“The Board can be in error. Weren’t you trying to second-guess us?”
“In a way. I’ve read my profile, of course. It looked like a test.”
“It was. And you were doing quite well, until yesterday.” She opened a drawer and took out a piece of paper. “This is a request from Coordinator Berrigan’s office, that you be transferred to the Janus start-up program. Did you have anything to do with this?”
O’Hara closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “On the contrary. One of my husbands suggested it several months ago. I refused because I thought the Board would interpret it as manipulation. I mentioned it to Dr. Berrigan, who is a friend, and she agreed.”
“That the Board would react negatively?”
“That’s right. I was going to wait until after this year’s evaluations, and then write up a detailed request.”
“To be transferred to Janus.”
O’Hara shook her head slightly. “Just for a position more appropriate to my talents. I expected that the Janus Project would be filled up by then.” She leaned forward and looked at the piece of paper. “Was this request made by my husband?”
“Not directly; the program that selected you was written by someone else. But both your husbands were consulted as a matter of course.” She sat back and folded her arms over her chest. “Please understand that I personally don’t disbelieve you. But only two other people were chosen from the Policy track, for a project employing over seven hundred. Given the…unique assets that you possess, it wouldn’t be difficult to arrange things so that the program would have to choose you as one of the three.”
“It sounds as if you should be interviewing my husbands, or whoever wrote the program. Not me.”
“It may be done. That’s up to the Engineering Board. Right now I have an unpleasant task…” She reached into the drawer and brought out a hypodermic gun and a jar of swabs. “Would you volunteer to be interviewed under the influence of a strong hypnotic drug? You may refuse.”
“Sure I can.” She rubbed her palms on her thighs. “I don’t have anything to hide. Over there?”
“Yes. Lie down and roll up your sleeve.” Sharp smell of alcohol when she opened the jar.
O’Hara lay down on the cot, tense. “I’ve heard of this. But I thought you had to do something really drastic.”
“Not at all. It’s a standard procedure. Just close your eyes now, it won’t hurt.”
Q: How do you feel now?
A: All right. Sleepy.
Q: Do you remember when your husband John first mentioned the Janus Project?
A: Both of my husbands have been talking about it for years. They were both involved in the initial planning.
Q: I mean, when did he first mention your working on the start-up program?
A: That would have been sometime last September. We were walking up in the half-gee area, he’d had a month of zerogee and needed exercise, and I guess I was complaining about the Stat group. He thought he could get me transferred.
Q: But you told him not to do it.
A: It wouldn’t look good.
Q: Tell me about John.
A: He’s funny.
Q: Amusing? Or peculiar.
A: Both. He’s always joking, he carries a little notebook to write down the last lines of jokes he hears, but mostly it’s just his outlook. Everything is funny to him. He’s an awful tease.
Q: He’s crippled.
A: Yes. He was born with bad curvature of the spine. His parents were too poor to get him corrective surgery, and now he’s too old for it. That’s why he came to New New, to work in the low-gee labs. Gravity hurts him.
Q: Did you ask him to get you assigned to the Janus Project?
A: No. He asked me and I said no.
Q: Do you think he went ahead and did it against your wishes?
A: I’m going to ask. But that wouldn’t be like him.
Q: Is John a good lover?
A: You mean sex?
Q: That’s right.
A: (Pause) He’s not very imaginative. Neither is Dan. But they’re both groundhogs, you know.
Q: Why did you marry groundhogs?
A: I don’t know. John says I’m a throwback. (Laughs.) Says I only love him because his knuckles drag on the ground.
Q: Do you love them?
A: I married them.
Q: That’s not an answer. (No response.) Do you love Jeff Hawkings?
A: I think so, if he’s still alive. He wasn’t there the past two months, I’m afraid for him.
Q: Who do you love more, John or Dan?
A: I guess… usually John. He’s easier to get along with.
Q: Who do you love more, John or Jeff?
A: Jeff, I think.
Q: But you’ll never see him again.
A: Maybe not.