Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online Page B

his cheek that David never had seen before. "Why now?" he asked. "Why change the plan and tell them now, so far ahead of time?"
           "Because it isn't that far ahead of time." Walt rubbed his eyes hard. "Something's going wrong, David. I don't know what it is. Something's not working. I think we're going to have our hands full with prematures."
           In spite of himself David made rapid calculations. "It's twentysix weeks," he said. "We can't handle that many premature babies."
           "I know that." Walt sat down once more, and this time put his head back and closed his eyes. "We don't have much choice," he said. "We lost one yesterday. Three today. We have to bring them out and treat them like preemies."
           Slowly David nodded. "Which ones?" he asked, but he knew. Walt told him the names, and again he nodded. He had known that they were not his, not Walt's, not Celia's. "What are you planning?" he asked then, and sat down on the side of his bed.
           "I have to sleep," Walt said. "Then a meeting, posted for
    seven. After that we prepare the nursery for a hell of a lot of preemies. As soon as we're ready we begin getting them out. That'll be morning. We need nurses, half a dozen, more if we can get them. Sarah says Margaret would be good. I don't know."
           David didn't know either. Margaret's four-year-old son had been one of the first to die of the plague, and she had lost a baby in stillbirth. He trusted Sarah's judgment, however. "Think between them they can get enough others, tell them what to do, see that they do it properly?"
           Walt mumbled something, and one of his hands fell off the chair arm. He jerked upright.
           "Okay, Walt, you get in my bed," David said, almost resentfully. "I'll go down to the lab, get things rolling there. I'll come up for you at six thirty." Walt didn't protest, but fell onto the bed without bothering to take off his shoes. David pulled them off. Walt's socks were more holes than not, but probably they kept his ankles warm. David left them on, pulled the blanket over him, and went to the lab.
           At seven the hospital cafeteria was crowded when Walt stood up to make his announcement. First he had Avery Handley run down his log of diminishing shortwave contacts, with the accompanying grim stories of plague, famine, disease, spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and sterility. It was the same story worldwide. They listened apathetically; they could not care any longer what was happening to any part of the world that was not their small part. Avery finished and sat down once more.
           Walt looked small, David thought in surprise. He had always thought of him as a fairly large man, but he wasn't. He was only five feet nine, and now he was very thin and hard-looking, like a gamecock, trimmed of all excess with only the essentials needed to carry on the fight remaining. Walt studied the assembled people and deliberately said, "There's not a person in this room hungry tonight. We don't have any more plague here. The rain is washing away the radioactivity, and we have food stores that will carry us for years even if we can't plant crops in the spring. We have men capable of doing just about anything we might ever want done." He paused and looked at them again, from left to right, back again, taking his time. He had their absolute attention. "What we don't have," he said, his voice hard and flat now, "is a woman who can conceive a child, or a man who could impregnate her if she was able to bear."
           There was a ripple of movement, like a collective sigh, but no one spoke. Walt said, "You know how we are getting our meat. You know the cattle are good, the chickens are good. Tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, we will have our own babies developed the same way."
           There was a moment of utter silence, of stillness, then they broke. Clarence leaped to his feet shouting at Walt.