The victory over the mosquitoes was not marked with parade or feast but with a quiet, profound shift in mood in Riverside. The slums in the east, once a place of resigned terror, now hummed with new energy—purposeful, watchful, and warily hopeful. That incessant, maddening hum was silenced, replaced with kids playing and laughing in the cooler evening air without being overpowered, with women socializing outside their homes without constantly slapping their arms and necks.Reuben Stone felt the change as a stab of barometric pressure. It was in how other people viewed him. The fear and suspicion that had followed the miraculous return of the well were gone, replaced by a deep, uncomfortable reverence.It started with the children. They would see him walking between his institute and the clinic and would stop their play to watch him pass by, their eyes wide with a mixture of wonder and interest. Then a young woman carrying a baby in her arms approached and said hello to him in the mark