“But there are such things as essential services, and if those people stop working we could be in trouble. The hospital, for instance. There hasn’t been much call for our work, admittedly, but even so, I can’t maintain a twenty-four-hour emergency room all by myself. I’m not the only physician on call, but there are fewer every day. The administration tells me the hospital won’t close entirely… at least not yet. It’s the ‘not yet’ that worries me. I hear it a lot. People are vague about the future—maybe you’ve noticed. I don’t think they know what’s going to happen much better than we do. But they seem to expect something. Some kind of massive, sweeping change.”

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out,” Jacopetti put in. “It’s like I said—we know the barn’s on fire.”

“Not exactly,” Abby Cushman said. “Could be a fire. Could be a flood or an earthquake. We don’t know what the problem is… isn’t that what you mean, Dr. Wheeler?”

“That’s right. The best we can do is make some general plans. We’re going to want to maintain as much of the quality of life in Buchanan as we can, and I think we’ll have to be able to deal with a breakdown at the telephone company, say, or the interruption of food deliveries.”

Makepeace, the City Hall functionary, was frowning. “How is that our responsibility? It doesn’t follow. If these… other people… can’t maintain basic services, won’t they suffer right along with us?”

Tom Kindle raised his hand. “Use your imagination, Mr.—Makepeace, is it? It’s not like everybody got converted to some new religion—though maybe they did that, too. Outside this room, people are physically different. They have things living inside them. Who knows what that means? Come next summer, they might all turn to stone, or live on air and sunshine, or move to Canada.”

“And there are those things,” Miriam Flett added. (Her voice, Matt thought, was as steely and rosinous as a violin note—and it commanded the same kind of attention.) “Those things on television, the Helpers, so-called, though they look like some kind of death robot to me. Probably one of them is coming to Buchanan.”

“Lord, don’t remind me,” Abby Cushman said. “It makes me shudder to think of it. I got a phone call from my cousin Clifford in New York State. He said he saw one down on 1-90, cruising toward Utica at about forty miles an hour. It stood a foot above the road, like an eight-foot-tall ace of spades, he said, and traffic parted like the Red Sea all around it.”

“Tom’s right,” Matt said, trying to steer the conversation back on course. “Anything could happen, and I think we’re obliged to do the most general kind of emergency planning. These are a few of the areas I’m concerned about.”

The boardroom was equipped with a green chalkboard along the front wall. Tom scrawled out four categories:

Everyone stared at the board for a long moment. It was Abby Cushman who broke the silence: “Holy God, Dr. Wheeler, is all that up to us?”

Jacopetti snorted. “That’s nuts. There’s ten of us in this room, Dr. Wheeler. Two of us, I would guess, over sixty. Three of us teenagers or not much older. None of us with much useful experience—though we do have a medical man. If all these things fail, I’d say it’s game over. We couldn’t truck food here from Portland—if there was food in Portland, which I don’t guess there would be—or run the electric company, or pump water from the reservoir.”

Kindle looked interested. “The numbers could be an advantage, though. Ten people can’t run a town, but they can sure as hell run themselves. It’s a survival problem, seems to me. If there’s no electricity, we can operate generators, as long as the gasoline holds out—which would be a hell of a long time if we had free access to every gas station between here and Portland. Similarly water. We don’t need every faucet in town running, only one or two.”

“There might not even be ten of us,” Bob Ganish said. “I’ve got family in Seattle. I guess they might be… you know, changed. But I still might try to get up there and see ’em. In the kind of emergency you’re talking about, why stick around?”

“Why leave?” This was Tim Belanger, the City Hall clerk, frowning massively. “Things would be bad all over, wouldn’t they?”

“We can assume that,” Matt said. “But there’s another point. We may be the only human beings in Buchanan, but there’s the whole northwest to think about. If we have a plan in place, we might attract refugees from Portland or Astoria or even farther away. A small town is easier to manage than a city. We could turn Buchanan into a kind of safe haven.”

“No room,” Jacopetti said.

“Not if the original population is still here. But they might not be. That’s one possibility, anyhow.”

“Communications,” Kindle said. “If we’re a refugee camp, people have to know about us.”

“No telephone,” Makepeace mused, “no mail, no newspapers… this is hard to imagine. There’s the local radio station, but I don’t think we could run it by ourselves.”

“Ham radio,” Kindle said. “Shit—excuse me—any radio ham who didn’t go over to the enemy must be laying eggs and hatching kittens. They love this emergency shit. Only there’s nobody to talk to.”

“We should look into that as soon as possible,” Matt agreed. “Any hams present?”

No one spoke.

“Okay. I know we haven’t elected a chairman, but does anybody object if I appoint Tom Kindle as our radio committee?” No objection. “Tom, you ought to be mobile by the end of the month. I suggest you price a decent ham radio rig—there’s an electronics shop down by the marina, I recall. In the meantime, I can find you some books on the subject.”

“Okay… but I’m not licensed, Matt.”

“Do you suppose the FCC gives a damn right now?”

Kindle grinned. “I spose not.”

Miriam Flett put up her hand: “Dr. Wheeler… are we expected to pay for this radio nonsense?”

“We should talk about funding. But I’m prepared to underwrite the Radio Committee for the time being.”

Makepeace and Ganish both offered to chip in; Matt said he’d get back to them—no money was being spent until next week at the earliest.

“There’s a fifth category,” Jacopetti said. “One you neglected to write down.”

Matt glanced at the chalkboard. “What would that be, Mr. Jacopetti?”

“Defense.”

A chill seemed to settle in the room. Joey Commoner uttered a small, scornful laugh.

Kindle said, “We get the point, Mr. Jacopetti, but as you yourself said, we’re kinda outnumbered. If this is the Alamo, we might as well pack it in.” Jacopetti folded his hands on his belly. “I agree. And I think it’s the likeliest prospect. We don’t fit into this new world of theirs. They’ll get tired of us, and then they’ll dispose of us.”

“Not my kids,” Abby Cushman said faintly. “They wouldn’t do that to me… not my grandchildren.”

Jacopetti gave her a stony look. “I wouldn’t count on that. We have to be prepared—isn’t that why we’re here, Dr. Wheeler?”

“I don’t think that’s something we can prepare for, Mr. Jacopetti. And I don’t think it’s as likely as all that. No one’s threatened us yet.”

“And no one will.”

A new voice. Heads turned toward the doorway. A small presence there. It was Cindy Rhee.

Matt had the involuntary thought She ought to be dead by now.

He was visited by the memory of Ellen Rhee wiping drool from her daughter’s chin as Cindy’s eyes roamed aimlessly and without focus.

That was before the intervention of the neocytes, this miracle cure. Now Cindy Rhee was walking—albeit stiffly—and talking, although her words were solemn and curiously deliberate.