“Four. Two doctorates.”
“I know what you’re thinking. Disabuse yourself. You can’t tack on new specialties like ornaments. It wouldn’t be very effective and it might even be dangerous. This technique isn’t for overachievers, it’s for people who aren’t strongly motivated.”
“All right, okay.” But she looked thoughtful.
“What was it you had in mind?”
“Oh, I’ve never been strong in maths and sciences. Most of my friends are on the Engineering track, though. Both my husbands.” She smiled ruefully. “Half the time it’s as if they’re talking a foreign language. One where I know some of the words but no grammar.”
He made a little clucking sound. “Happens all the time. First woman I married was a mathematician. That’s how I wound up in this mongrel kind of specialty. Down to cases, though. You want to do this to several hundred people? Do you know how long that would take?”
“What, are you the only person who can do it?”
“No, quite the contrary. Any nurse…hell, I could teach anyone in a day or two. Teach you, if you’re not squeamish about sticking thermometers into people. The machine does all the hard parts, but that’s just it: there’s only one machine. Ten days for a subject to program it and another ten for the induction. That’s eighteen per year. Maybe twenty, if most of them are good subjects.”
“We’ll just have to build more machines, then.”
He laughed, a bark. “Sister, I haven’t had a requisition granted since before the war. Psychological research is not a high priority, not this kind.”
She had been on the edge of her chair through the whole conversation. She sat back and beamed at him. “It is now.”
Charlie’s Will 
“Trouble,” Jeff said. Under the blanket on Tad’s lap, two clicks as he turned the Uzi’s selector switch to full automatic.
They’d been traveling down the Tamiami Trail for two days, overgrown jungle on both sides of the old highway, some shells of deserted towns but no people. Now there were people.
First a large boy stepped out from behind a bush about ten meters ahead, holding an old shotgun in his right hand, his left palm facing out to halt them. Both mules stopped abruptly. Seven more boys filed out across the road. Only one of them had a firearm, a rusty.22 rifle, but the others all carried machetes. Jeff was surprised that three of them were black. He hadn’t seen any other racially mixed families.
The first boy didn’t raise the shotgun but kept it pointed vaguely toward them. “What you peckerwoods doin?”
“Going south,” Jeff said. “I’m Healer.”
“Yer whater?”
“Healer.” Tad had shifted so the Uzi was lined up on the boy, but the lead mule was in the way. “You haven’t heard of me?”
“Uh-uh. We keeps pretty much to ourselves. People come by, we don’t gen’rally talk much.” One of the children giggled. “You heal people? You got the touch?”
“I have medicine.”
He laughed. “We never did hold for that. Not even before Daddy and Ma died.”
“Charlie’s will,” Jeff said.
“What?”
“Never mind…if you have sick people I can help them.”
“Well, I’m sick of catfish. Sure could use some roast mule. Any reason you shouldn’t—”
It happened very fast. The boy started to raise the shotgun and Tad stood up abruptly and leveled the Uzi on him. He dropped it. Then there was a shot from the left that hit Tad on the chest and spanged off his body armor. Tad twisted, saw smoke and fired a burst at it. By that time Jeff had the scattergun unclamped and aimed at the boy with the rusty rifle.
There was a strange gurgling sound and a boy or young girl staggered dying through the brush, throat and chest ripped open, face gone, still holding a rifle. When the children saw it they dropped their weapons. The apparition made it almost to the road; pitched forward and lay there twitching.
“Now I didn’t tell her to do that,” the boy said.
“Right,” Tad said. “She was just walkin’ through the woods.”
“Probably others,” Jeff said. “They wouldn’t just have one girl.”
“The girls are up at the house, ‘cept Judy here. She always has to git in on things.” He stared at the dying girl. “Don’t suppose you kin heal her, now?” Jeff didn’t say anything. “Whyn’t ya shoot her again. Put her out of it.”
“She’s dead,” Tad said. “Just some parts don’t know it yet. Be a waste of ammo.”
“I’ll do it, then.” He reached down for the shotgun.
“The hell you will.” The boy touched the gunstock but looked up at Tad and then slowly straightened again.
“What you gonna do? You gonna kill us all?”
“Probably not. No point to it,”
“What about those catfish?” Jeff said calmly. “You smoke them?” The boy nodded. “We’ll trade for some dry beef. And I’ll treat your sick, as I say. That’s what I do.”
Tad walked over to the line of boys and picked up the shotgun and rifle. He put them in the cart and went to the girl, who had stopped twitching. He toed her over on her back and scowled. “Dead.” He took her rifle.
“We’ll go get some catfish,” the leader said.
“No, you won’t.” Tad pointed the muzzle of the Uzi at the youngest one. “He’ll go. I’ll go with him. Rest of you stay here and talk with Healer.”
Nobody said anything while the boy led Tad away. “You don’t have any sick people?”
“Nup.”
“Anybody die recently?”
“Two in the fall. One last spring.”
“The oldest, right?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Did they talk nonsense for a while, stop eating, wet themselves—”
“They did that.”
“It’s going around.”
He looked at the other boys, pursed his lips and thought. “I guess if you had medicine for that, we could take it.”
“I’ll give you a typhoid shot, might help. When my partner comes back.”
“We wouldn’t try nothin’.”
“Sure.”
Tad returned after a few minutes with eight girls, three of whom had infants, and six small children toddling alongside, apparently none of them mutants. He had a plastic bag of greasy smoked fish and another ancient rifle. The girls had tried to shoot him with it but couldn’t make it work.
Jeff gave them their shots and a few sticks of dried beef. Then they took the oldest boy and one of the girls hostage, to discourage pursuit, and left as it was getting dark.
There was no moon but enough starlight to tell road from jungle. They were surrounded by creepy reptilian noises, croakings and slitherings. The mules went slower and slower and finally refused to go on. Jeff had to turn on a light to make them move, using up irreplacable electricity and providing a beacon for followers. But overall it may have been safer: more and more often, as the night went on, they came upon large rattlesnakes slumbering on the warm road surface. Best to give the creatures ample warning.
About midnight they came to a wide spot in the road that had once borne the improbable name Frog City. Jeff gave both the hostages sleeping pills and, once they were safely asleep, left them in an abandoned shop, along with the old weapons, no ammunition. Tad took a pep pill and they continued east, figuring to keep moving through the night and most of the next day.
By noon they were still in the Everglades. No human contact, no sign that they were being followed. The snakes had retired to the bush at dawn. There were alligators, some large, but they kept their distance. Long-legged birds of many varieties entertained them. The weather was beautiful, bright and cool, and under other circumstances it would have been a pleasant outing. But they might be coming up on a real logistics problem.