Well, it was June 15, close enough. “I can’t read real good,” Newsman said. He pushed a button and the headlines faded, replaced by a spokesman in a Xerox uniform; he pushed it three more times and got a picture of a storm-wracked coastline. He licked his lips and stared at it “Hap’m here a couple times.”
Storm made the “stupid” sign behind his back—tongue between lips, thumb striking temple twice. “What do you call that, Newsman?”
“Hurricane or himmicane. Couldn’t read the name.” He smiled up at Jeff and explained. “It’s always ‘hurricane’ in the headlines. Stupid.”
“Sure,” Storm said. “If they didn’t have both kinds, where would the babies come from?”
Newsman frowned at him and nodded slowly. “I guess that’s right.”
“How long have you…worked here?” Jeff asked.
“Oh, I was here before the war, twenty years before.” He chewed a nail nervously. “But I wasn’t Newsman then. I was a janitor downstairs. But they showed me how to use the machine, so I could look at it after work.”
“He was the only one on the Island when we got here four years ago,” Storm said. “He was in this room when they found him.”
“I kept everything real clean.”
Jeff had a sudden thought that raised the hair on the back of his neck. “Do you have newspapers in that machine?”
“Sure, lot of ‘em.”
“Any from New Orleans?”
“Dunno.” He laboriously typed in NOOSPAPERS? The machine corrected his spelling and produced a list. One was the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Jeff tapped the screen. “That one.” He counted backwards. “I think the twelfth of March, 2085.”
“Jus’ before the war.” He tapped a button and an arrow moved up the screen to come to rest beside the Times-Picayune. With one slow finger he typed in the date.
Another list. “Entertainment section,” Jeff said.
“What’s this all about?” Storm asked.
“Oh, I…had a friend who said she had her picture in the paper that day. Playing in a band.” O’Hara had been invited to play clarinet for an evening at a place called Fat Charlie’s. She’d been a minor sensation, able to play Dixieland in spite of being white, female, and from another World.
“That’s her.” Jeff’s voice shook. It was a good picture of O’Hara, back arched, eyes closed, lost in the music.
“You knew somebody famous?” Tad said.
“For a day,” Jeff said. “Famous for one day.”
Newsman adjusted the color, surprisingly deft. “She sure was pretty. Dead now?”
“Yeah.” Jeff reached past Newsman and pushed the HARD COPY button. A red light came on. “Outta paper,” Newsman said. Jeff shrugged. “Not important.”
Year Eight
1 
O’Hara
I was databasing without too much enthusiasm, trying to decide whether we wanted a cultural anthropologist who plays handball or a physical anthropologist who plays chess, when the SAVE light started blinking. I put everything on the holding crystal and opened the channel.
It was Sandra. “Hello there.”
“Hello yourself. What’s on?”
“I need a fast personnel selection job.” She studied her thumbnail. “Twenty people to go to New York City.”
“What?”
“Self-help team. We’re in contact with some survivors.”
“Contact?”
“Need farmers and doctors and mechanics—I’ll show you the cube. Young, strong people who’ve been to Earth. One track generalist to be in charge. Interested?” I just stared at her. “I’ll assign a pilot for the Mercedes. Let me have the list about 1400. Leave day after tomorrow.”
“Hold it,” I said. “This is too fast. Go to Earth with a bunch of farmers?”
“That’s right. You’re far and away the best qualified.”
“What do you mean? I can’t farm. I couldn’t grow a weed without help.”
“I don’t mean farming; I mean leading. You have the mix of Policy and Engineering experience and you’ve spent a lot of time on Earth.”
It was starting to sink in. “Go back to New York City.”
“That’s right. Nothing like Zaire. No plague, no violence.”
“Okay. I’ll do it.” I had to, even though it made life suddenly complicated.
“Good, I knew you would. You have a blank cube in the recorder?” I put one in and she transferred the message from Earth. “See you at 1400.”
The cube was a five-minute broadcast from a commercial studio in New York City. Like Jeff, they’d found an antenna that was aimed at New New and pushed some juice through it.
It was a group of about a dozen people in their teens and early twenties. They’d been living out of a Civil Defense shelter in Tarrytown, which was starting to run out of food. They’d found our vaccine months ago—fished the box out of the Hudson—and had been trying to get in touch with us ever since.
There was plenty of farmland, but they hadn’t been able to do much with it. Did we have anybody who knew dirt farming, or was it all hydroponics up there?
Dirt farmers, we have. Even before the war, there were plenty of crops that didn’t do too well in zerogee hydroponics. A lot of people had ornamental gardens or grew exotic fruits and vegetables for the gray market. It wasn’t the same as gardening on Earth, since you didn’t have to contend with weather or pests, but that sort of thing would be in books. I hoped.
Mechanics and doctors were easy. I started calling people and had a complete roster by noon.
I cancelled my lunch date with Dan, figuring it would be better to go into the inevitable argument with a fait accompli. Too excited to eat, anyhow. With a couple of hours to kill I reran all the recordings of conversations with Jeff, making notes. With any luck, most of it would be irrelevant; he thought the sanguinary Family business was restricted to Florida and Georgia.
I had to confront the remote possibility that he might be alive. What if there was a way to get to Florida? How would I look for him if I got there? “Healer” would probably be easier to track down than almost anyone else in the state; Jeff’s survival had depended on his reputation spreading.
But if he was alive he surely would have found some way to contact us over the last two years. To pretend otherwise was simple fantasy. Still, I couldn’t put it out of my mind.
And the first thing Sandra said when I sat down at her desk was, “No side-trips to Florida, right?”
“I did think about it. Be chasing ghosts, though.”
“Wind up a ghost, too. Those maniacs would make Zaire look like a walk through the park.” She took the list I offered and scanned it. “Not that you’re going to New York unarmed. You’ll have the same sort of weapon we used in Africa.”
“The people who talked to us weren’t armed.”
“Not obviously. That wouldn’t be very smart. You want to take Ahmed Ten? He’s pretty old.”
“He’s a good medic. Good thinker, too.”
She nodded slowly, reading. “Well…since you have these regular doctors, too, I suppose he’s a reasonable choice. One of the few people with experience in this sort of thing.”
“The anthropology won’t hurt, either.”
“Sure.” She smiled. “You don’t have to justify your selections to me, Marianne. You’re project head; I just have this incurable nose problem. Who’s Jack Rocke-feller?”
“He lived in upstate New York as a boy. Had a garden.