Janet, the first-person narrator of "When It Changed," is adept with languages ("I can talk the old tongues in my sleep"), which is one reason she is called to meet the arriving men. She is thoughtful, perceptive, and inclined to worry about her wife and children, even though she has fought "three duels" and has the scars to prove it.

Janet's wife, Katy, drives wildly, but refuses (until the crisis of the story) to handle guns. Their daughter, Yuriko (Yuki), is an ebullient twelve-year-old whose future is the focus of Janet's anxiety. Several other women are named, and their descriptions help fill in other characteristics of the society of Whileaway.

Of the four unnamed men who arrive from the space ship, only two actually speak. The first reveals his obtuseness by asking twice "Where are all the people?" even though Janet has explained the history of the plague...