A week later, as a result of their findings, another crew—nine medical specialists—left for Fillmore. They examined George Abnego with coordinated precision. Afterwards, they called on Dr. Glurt briefly, leaving a copy of their examination report with him when he expressed interest.
Ironically, the government copies were destroyed in the Topeka Hard-Shelled Baptist Riots a month later, the same riots which stimulated Dr. Glurt to launch the Abnegite Revolution.
This Baptist denomination, because of population shrinkage due to atomic and bacteriological warfare, was now the largest single religious body in the nation. It was then controlled by a group pledged to the establishment of a Hard-Shelled Baptist theocracy in what was left of the United States. The rioters were quelled after much destruction and bloodshed; their leader, the Reverend Hemingway T. Gaunt—who had vowed that he would remove neither the pistol from his left hand nor the Bible from his right until the Rule of God had been established and the Third Temple built—was sentenced to death by a jury composed of stern-faced fellow Baptists.
Commenting on the riots, the Fillmore, Wisc., Bugle-Herald drew a mournful parallel between the Topeka street battles and the destruction wreaked upon the world by atomic conflict.
“International communication and transportation having broken down,” the editorial went on broodingly, “we now know little of the smashed world in which we live beyond such meager facts as the complete disappearance of Australia beneath the waves, and the contraction of Europe to the Pyrenees and Ural Mountains. We know that our planet’s physical appearance has changed as much from what it was ten years ago, as the infant monstrosities and mutants being born everywhere as a result of radioactivity are unpleasantly different from their parents.
“Truly, in these days of mounting catastrophe and change, our faltering spirits beg the heavens for a sign, a portent, that all will be well again, that all will yet be as it once was, that the waters of disaster will subside and we shall once more walk upon the solid ground of normalcy.”
It was this last word which attracted Dr. Glurt’s attention. That night, he slid the report of the special government medical crew into the newspaper’s mail slot. He had penciled a laconic note in the margin of the first page:
“Noticed your interest in the subject.”
Next week’s edition of the Fillmore Bugle-Herald flaunted a page one five-column headline.
FILLMORE CITIZEN THE SIGN? Normal Man of Fillmore May Be Answer From Above Local Doctor Reveals Government Medical Secret