"God damn it! You turn around here and listen to me, you asshole! You think I'm going to let all this work, all this planning, go up in one irrational act! You think I won't kill anyone who tries to stop it now!" Walt had jumped up with his outburst, and he swung David around and yelled into his face. "You think I'm going to let you sit up here and die? Not today, David. Not yet. What you decide to do next week, I don't give a damn, but today I need you, and you, by God, are going to be there!"

"I don't care," David said quietly.

"You're going to care! Because those babies are going to come busting out of those sacs, and those babies are the only hope we have, and you know it. Our genes, yours, mine, Celia's, those genes are the only thing that stand between us and oblivion. And I won't allow it, David! I refuse it!"

David felt only a great weariness. "We're all dead. Today or tomorrow. Why prolong it? The price is too high for adding a year or two."

"No price is too high!"

Slowly Walt's face seemed to come into focus. He was white, his lips were pale, his eyes sunken. There was a tic in 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 twenty-six 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?"