Worlds Apart Read online

  “Hold it right there,” a deep voice said from behind him. “Put up your hands.” Jeff did, leaning the bicycle against his hip.

  He heard someone crashing through the brush and then a soft tread on sand. “You’re that old goof, the doctor.”

  “Healer.”

  “Whatever. You can put down your hands.” The man’s appearance was startling; he was full-grown and old enough to have a bush of blond beard. He was holding a modern Uzi flechette gun, the first one Jeff had seen in years. Jeff noted that the safety was off, so he moved very slowly. Two hundred darts per second. In training they’d called them meatgrinders.

  “You come at the right time. We have some sick people.” He twisted his ring and spoke into it. “That Healer goof’s comin’ up. He’s okay.”

  “You have electricity?”

  “Little bit. Big house around the second bend, somebody’ll let you through the gate.”

  The forest ended abruptly in another hundred meters. Large pasture had gone thoroughly to weed. Around two bends there was a tall barbed-wire fence which claimed to be electrified; behind it were acres of lush vegetable garden and pens with chickens and pigs. A modern two-story house with solar collectors on the roof. Sandbag bunkers, fighting positions, were spaced around the house. A girl of thirteen or fourteen was standing silently, holding the gate open. She was naked, cradling a baby that chewed at her small breast.

  She closed the gate behind him and locked it. “My baby’s sick. Maybe you can help it?”

  The infant had a large growth on its neck. She held it out to him, and he saw that the growth was actually a half-formed second head. No eyes or nose but a perfect petal mouth. The baby was hermaphroditic, small male genitals riding too high over a female slit.

  “It throws up all the time,” she said. “Sometimes it shits blood. Usually.”

  “You can’t tell with muties. It might be missing something inside. Let’s take it up to the house and I’ll look at it.”

  The house was built of concrete blocks, windows equipped with roll-down steel shutters. The door was a slab of foamsteel, ten centimeters thick. “Somebody built this to last,” Jeff said.

  “It was Tad’s parents. Tad you met down on the road.” It was cool inside, air conditioned. The girl wrapped the baby up in a blanket and put on a robe. “They knew there was going to be a war.”

  “How old is Tad?”

  “He’s twenty, he’ll get the death pretty soon. Marsha’s gonna take over then, she’s his sister. The rest of us just came, mostly the first year or two.”

  The living room was elegant and spare and clean. Neo-Japanese, with mats and low tables. She set the baby on a table and Jeff squatted cross-legged by it. He sterilized a probe and took its temperature. He looked at the readout and shook his head.

  “Does it cry a lot?”

  “The regular head does, sometimes. The other head does nothing, don’t even suck.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to live very long.” He felt its forehead, hot and dry. “That much fever would kill a grownup. Its brains are cooking.”

  “It hasn’t cried since day before yesterday, doesn’t move much either. Can you do anything?”

  “I can try. Be surprised if it’s alive tomorrow.”

  “Charlie’s will,” she muttered. Jeff crossed himself and got the hypo gun out of his saddlebag. He swabbed the nozzle of it and a place on the mutant’s arm. After a moment’s hesitation, he screwed a bottle of plain saline solution into the gun. No use in wasting antibiotics.

  She wiped a tear across her cheek. “My first baby.”

  “Well, you have lots more in you. Might pick a different father…do you know who the father was?”

  She shook her head. “One of the guys.”

  “Are there any other muties?”

  “Four others. Five if you count Jommy, but he’s just got extra fingers. Then there was some born dead. One was born kind of insideout, but he lived long enough to be christianed.”

  “How many normal ones?”

  “Eight, counting Jommy.”

  “And how many women, I mean old enough to be mothers?”

  “I’m the fourth. Then Sharon, she’s sixteen, she bleeds but don’t catch. She gets it two or three times a day but she don’t catch.”

  “Does she bleed regularly?”

  “Nah. She never can tell.”

  “Then I might be able to help her, next time I come by.” He took out his pad and made a note. There were crates of birth control pills back at Plant City, but he didn’t bother to carry any. Maybe they could straighten out her cycle and make her more fertile. “Any other sick people?”

  “Two upstairs, really sick. I’ll show you.” She picked up the baby and was all the way across the room before Jeff could make his joints stand up. “You hurt?”

  “Just don’t move so well. Part of being old.”

  She nodded soberly. “Charlie must hate you.”

  He followed her up a broad staircase and into a bedroom. “I’m the only one comes in here,” she said. “Tad don’t want it to spread, whatever it is.”

  In separate beds, two boys: emaciated, pale, beaded with sweat. One was asleep; the other was moaning and twitching. The sleeping one had crops of tiny pink spots on his chest.

  “Let me see your tongue,” Jeff said to the one who was awake. When he didn’t respond, Jeff clamped his chin and forced his mouth open. The tongue was brown and dry.

  “They been to Tampa recently?”

  “Yeah, about a month ago, Tad sent ‘em down to get some hose. How come you know that?”

  “There’s an epidemic down there. You know what an epidemic is?”

  She shook her head. “That little thing in your belly?”

  “No, it’s a disease that spreads all around, gets out of control. In Tampa they’ve got an epidemic of typhoid fever. These guys picked it up there.”

  “Are they gonna die?”

  “Probably not. I’ve got medicine for it. What do you do with their shit?”

  “What?”

  “You carry out the shit, don’t you? Where does it go?”

  “Oh, we got a compost machine out back.”

  “Does it burn it?”

  “No, it’s, uh, ultra something. Tad knows.”

  “Good.” He rummaged through his saddlebags and found the chloramphenicol and cortisone. “How have you been feeling? Have you been sick?”

  She looked at the floor. “Huhuh. Just tired all the time. Maybe I got the runs.”

  “Nosebleed?”

  “Little bit.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it. Probably that’s what’s wrong with the baby, too.” He studied the chloramphenicol label and set the hypo gun for three-quarters of an adult dosage. “That’s how the disease spreads. In Tampa they just shit anywhere. Flies get on the shit and then on the food.”

  “They’re real animals down there,” she said.

  “Sure are.” He gave shots to both of the boys. “That’s how you got it, being in too close contact.”

  “I’m real careful,” she said in a hurt voice.

  “Doesn’t take much. Turn around and lift up your robe.” She twitched at the cold alcohol. Jeff scrubbed her buttock a little longer than was necessary. Except for her feet, she was very clean, which had more of an effect on him than her boyish figure. Five years of filthy children, his sex life limited to mental pictures of Marianne and a handful of surgical lubricant. He swallowed saliva and told himself this girl was young enough to be his daughter. But he had to use both hands to keep the hypo gun steady.

  “The baby now.” He set it on minimum dosage, scrubbed, and shot.

  She pointed at his obvious erection and giggled. “You want me to fix that?”

  He paused. “What would Tad say?”

  “I wouldn’t tell him nothing.”

  Jeff knew a little about child psychology and a lot about gunshot wounds. “Let’s wait. I’ll talk it over with Tad first.”
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  “He won’t let you. No one outside the family. Besides, if I got a baby it might get old like you.”

  “There are ways not to catch.”

  “Sure, front-to-back and front-to-top. Tad says Charlie says they’re sinful.” She laughed. “I did them both when I was pregnant, though, even with Tad. It was fun.”

  Jeff closed his eyes and slowly let out the breath he’d been holding. Anal intercourse with a typhoid carrier. That wasn’t covered in the text he’d read. Well, he could always take a booster shot.

  “Let’s go downstairs.” There were voices.

  Tad was sitting at a table, giving dinner instructions to a couple of children. He motioned Jeff over and told one of the children to bring in a bottle of wine. “Could you do anything for them?”

  Jeff sat down and told him about the typhoid epidemic. “I have enough vaccine to immunize everyone in the family. The girl with the two-headed baby, I think she already has it. The boy, too. I gave them all shots and they should get another in the morning. Then I’ll leave some pills.”

  A girl brought in a bottle of pale wine and two glasses, actual stemware. Tad pulled the cork and poured. It tasted like harsh port with a musty aftertaste, like rotten oranges, but was drinkable.

  “What can we give you in exchange? We have lots of food.”

  “No, I’ve got all I can carry from the last family. What I really need is a charged fuel cell. You must have some.”

  He frowned. “We don’t have any to spare. Seven on line and two backups.”

  “I’d bring it back in a week or so.”

  “I don’t know. Anybody knew you had it, they’d kill you for the silver.” He stared into the wine, swirling it. “What do you want with one, anyhow?”

  “There’s a powerful radio back at the hospital where I keep my medicine. I want to see if I can raise anybody.”

  Tad pulled on his beard. “Maybe… you leave the scattergun here, though. You have another weapon?”

  Jeff nodded. “Pistol. But nobody ever bothers me.”

  “That’s what I hear. How come you didn’t die, do you know?”

  “Charlie’s will.”

  Tad shook his head slightly and lowered his voice. “You don’t really believe in that.” He looked at the holo pictures over the fireplace: a beatific Manson, a bloody Christ, and three smaller pictures, two women and a man who resembled Manson in hair and beard. “My father and mothers were Family when I was growing up. I thought it was the craps and still do. The timing of the war was just coincidence. Charlie Manson was just a crazy goof. I don’t know about Jesus.”

  “Does the rest of your family feel the same?”

  “No. Or if they do, they keep it to themselves.” When Jeff didn’t say anything, he went on. “I’ve heard of a few other old people, and I even saw one once, Big Mickey over in Disney World. He was big like you, but crazy. All of the old ones are supposed to be big and crazy. How come you’re different? Tell me and I’ll let you use the fuel cell.”

  “I can tell you what I think, but it won’t save you from the death.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It’s an accident of birth. I’m a kind of mutie, like the other old people. It’s called acromegaly; something goes wrong with your glands and you keep growing after normal people stop. It usually affects your mind, but it started late in my case, and I had medicine.”

  “So how does that keep you from the death?”

  “All I know is that it does. I’ve traveled around a lot since the war, and never met or heard of anybody over twenty-some who didn’t have acromegaly.”

  “Okay.” He looked thoughtful, took a sip of wine. “Now is there some way I can catch the acromegaly from you? Like a blood transfusion?”

  “No, you have to be born with it. There’s a hormone involved, growth hormone, that might work, but I’ve never found any in hospitals and I wouldn’t know how to make it. I’m not a scientist; I’m not even a doctor. With the radio, maybe I can find something out.”

  Tad looked at the door to the kitchen. “Go away, Mark. This is grownup talk.” A young boy was in the doorway, standing on his hands. His hands were like flesh spatulas, no fingers. Instead of legs he had a single limb rising into the air, ending in a flipper. He had a harelip and eyes that were too small and too close together in his egg-shaped head. He mewed something, turned around and padded out.

  “Never know how much he understands,” Tad said. “Have you ever seen one like him?”

  “Not quite. Most muties do have more than one thing wrong with them, but he’s a regular catalog: harelip, srenomelus, microphthalmia, acrocephalosyndactyly. God knows what else inside. It’s a wonder he survived.”

  “Eats like a pig. If you’re not a doctor, how come you know all those names?”

  “Found a book on monsters, not that it does any good. The few things that can be fixed, they take surgery. I can stitch up a wound, but that’s about it.”

  “Do you think we ought to let them live? Most families don’t, I guess.”

  “Hmm.” Jeff drank off his wine and refilled both glasses. “I wouldn’t say this to most people—and you’re not hearing it, right?” Tad nodded. “We should let the muties grow up and mate. Sooner or later a gene might come along that carries immunity to the death, maybe like acromegaly but without the bad side effects.”

  “What do you think the death is? Other than Charlie’s blessing.”

  “It’s either some kind of biological warfare agent or a common disease that underwent mutation. It might die out or it might last forever. I don’t even know how wide-spread it is, which is another reason for getting the radio working.”

  “They’ve got it in Georgia, we know that. Met a guy from Atlanta.”

  Jeff nodded. “It’s probably all over. At least all over the East Coast. You’d expect that Florida would have quite a few immigrants, after a winter or two.”

  “Maybe they stick to the Atlantic side.”

  “It’s pretty well bombed up. I started there, but came inland, looking for farms.”

  For a while they sat and traded information about the various places they’d been. Then a little girl, apparently normal, came in and shyly said that dinner was ready.

  They ate at two trench tables, one for the adults and one for the children. The food was delicious, chicken stewed with fresh vegetables, but the dinner companions at the other table were not too appetizing. Two had to be fed: one because of phocomelus, seallike flippers instead of arms; one who was microcephalic and totally passive. One who ate quite normally was a girl with beautiful golden curls and a single median eye. The girl with the two-headed baby took a bowl out to Marsha, Tad’s sister, who was guarding the road.

  All through dinner, Tad quizzed the “grownups”—the oldest might have been seventeen—about animal husbandry and plant propagation. His parents had accumulated a large library of books on farming and other aspects of survival, but as he’d told Jeff, most of the grownups didn’t read too well, and didn’t much want to learn.

  After dinner Jeff vaccinated them, and then found out why they were so clean. On the porch beyond the kitchen, they had a shower room and a family-sized tub. They scrubbed down with soap that smelled slightly of bacon, then rinsed, and the adults slipped into the deliciously hot water while the children played.

  “We fill the tank on the roof every morning,” Tad said, pointing to a pump contraption like a bicycle without wheels. “It takes a half-hour of pedaling but it’s worth it. This time of year we wait till noon, or it gets so hot you can hardly stand it.”

  Marsha came in and Jeff watched with languid appreciation as she showered. Not beautiful, but she was adult, a rare sight. Solid with muscle, no baby fat, stretch marks from several pregnancies.

  She stepped in next to Jeff and put her arm around him, and began talking to Tad. After a while they got out of the bath, letting the children have their turn. Jeff and Marsha dried each other off. Without a spoken word, they gathered up th
eir clothes and weapons and led each other upstairs.

  The first time, predictably, was over before it started, but Jeff had good powers of recuperation, and five years of catching up to do. Eventually they did talk.

  “I bet you’re like Tad,” she said, playing with his beard. “You don’t believe.”

  “I grew up in Taoism,” Jeff said cautiously, “American Taoism. A much more gentle way of looking at things.”

  “Oh, Charlie’s way is gentle.” She stretched her body against his side and lay an arm partway across his broad chest. “Men have a hard time understanding, I think. Women are closer to life, so they aren’t so afraid of death.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “’Course not. You’re a man.”

  “Charlie was a man.”

  “So was Jesus. But they were strange men.”

  Jeff smiled in the dark. “At least we can agree on—” He was on the floor and rolling toward his weapons before his brain quite registered what he had heard: through the open window, the unmistakable raow sound of an Uzi meatgrinder, scream, manic submachinegun chatter, the Uzi twice more, a fusillade of rifle and pistol fire, and then silence. Then a solitary pop, one shot from a small-caliber pistol.

  From the other side of the room, greased-metal sounds of Marsha putting a cassette in her rifle and cocking it. “Guess they got Larry. Charlie’s will.”

  Jeff automatically reached up to cross himself and then checked it. Calf holster in place, he stepped into his pants. He shrugged into the shoulder holster but didn’t bother with a shirt. He found his boots and knife and scattergun and followed her down the stairs. A gong was ringing.

  They were the first ones behind the sandbags. He scanned the road and the overgrown pasture, pretty well lit by the moon. Three days till full; in three days he might be talking to Marianne. That was worth fighting for. “You ought to keep the weeds clear’around the perimeter,” he said. “You could have a hundred people crawl up and you wouldn’t see one of them until they started climbing the fence.”