“You said you’d do radio.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do radio. I’m not leaving yet.”
“There’s a meeting at the end of the week.”
“Right, I’ll be there.”
“I want you to talk to me before you leave,” Matt said. “Maybe I can change your mind.”
Kindle promised he would, though it rubbed him the wrong way. No strings attached, damn it. He’d leave when he felt like it. Stay or go as the spirit moved him.
It was how he’d lived his life. Why change now?
Matt left him alone in his room. Kindle checked the TV, but there was nothing but fuzz. All they showed on TV anymore was a couple of hours of news per day. Plus the Major League playoffs.
The first-of-November Committee meeting was brief and morose. Five people showed up in addition to Kindle and Matt Wheeler. Joey Commoner and Beth Porter were two of them. Abby Cushman, the somewhat ditzy farm lady, failed to appear. Paul Jacopetti unfortunately did. The pessimistic ex-tool-and-die maker issued his usual evil-minded prophecies, including a prediction that the Helper recently arrived at the City Hall Turnaround would murder them all while they slept. Poison gas, maybe. Matt seemed too dazed to refute this paranoia, and Kindle listened with disgust.
After that they held their first election. Matt stood for chairman. His single opponent was—inevitably—Paul Jacopetti, who didn’t think Matt should run unopposed, “although of course this whole exercise is futile.” There was a show of hands and Matt took the vote six to one. (“Figures,” Jacopetti said.)
Old business. Kindle promised he would drive down to Causgrove Electronics the next day and look for a ham set.
“A lot of those stores are closed,” Matt reminded him. “Call first. Or call the owner and see if he’ll let you in.”
“Or I could jimmy the lock.”
Matt shot him a disapproving look. “I don’t think it’s come to that.” Maybe, Kindle thought. Or maybe not.
But he did as Matt asked: phoned the store, no answer, phoned three Causgroves out of the book until he found the one who owned the shop.
“You’re right, Mr. Kindle, the front door’s locked. Locked it myself. Force of habit, I guess. -But the back is open. You can get in that way.”
“You want to meet me there?”
“For what purpose?”
“Well, I can write you a check. Unless you want cash.”
“Please, don’t bother. Just go ahead and take what you need.”
“I’m sorry? What?”
“We had a reasonable stock last time I looked. I presume you can find the stockroom, or just root around the displays. If we have what you want, take it.”
“Pardon me. You said—take it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just—take it?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes. I’m happy to see the goods serving a purpose. I thought they’d all turned into scrap metal. Please, take whatever you want. But it’s nice of you to have called, Mr. Kindle.”
The connection broke at the other end. Kindle stared at the phone for a while.
His first experience with a motor vehicle since the accident wasn’t his pickup truck, which had been towed or trashed, but a car Matt Wheeler left for him in the hospital lot: a little blue Japanese device. Kindle was long-legged, and the act of climbing inside this automobile left him feeling like he’d been folded into a mailbox. His knees bumped the wheel until he figured out how to lever back the seat. Everything was digital. The dashboard looked like a cockpit display.
But it was transportation, what the hell. Maybe, when his leg didn’t hurt so damn much, he would take himself to a car dealership. Maybe the price of a new car had dropped since Contact. Maybe to zero. He wondered what it would be like to drive one of those bullet-shaped vans he used to see on the road. It would be nice to have an enclosed space to keep a few things out of the rain.
This morning, a Tuesday morning, the roads were wet and empty. The rain fell in mists; the windshield fogged until he figured out how to run the heater.
Driving west from the hospital, Kindle was impressed with the stillness of the town. It was as if some languorous, fatal calm had settled over Buchanan. He counted the cars he passed—eight altogether, their brake lights making comet-tails on the slick asphalt. No pedestrians. Most of the shops were dark.
It resembled a ghost town, Kindle thought, but no one had really left. What were all those people doing?
He parked in a no-stopping zone. Anarchist outlaws of the world, unite. He extracted himself from the car, moaning when his bad knee knocked against the steering column.
Causgrove had been correct: The front door of the shop was locked, but the door facing the service alley opened at the turn of a knob.
Kindle switched on lights as he entered the building. He realized as soon as he found the dimly daylit front room that shopping was going to be harder than he’d expected. The racks were full of indistinguishable black boxes with endless, cryptic numeric displays. Some of these items were marine radios, some were ham rigs, some served no obvious purpose. “Should have studied up on this,” Kindle said aloud.
“You just have to know what you’re looking for.”
He was startled by the voice, and he turned thoughtlessly on the axis of his left foot. A flare of pain sizzled up the leg. “Ouch, goddamn it!” He steadied himself on a steel rack. “Who’s there?”
It was Joey Commoner.
Joey came out of the shadows behind the cash counter. He looked like a hood, Kindle thought, but not a dangerous one. The kind of suburban white kid who dresses like a drug dealer but doesn’t know any. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and an unreadable expression on his face.
“Knew you’d show up,” Joey said.
“You were waiting for me?”
“What you said at the meeting last night…”
“What about it?”
“Figured you wouldn’t know what you wanted.” Kindle glanced again at the relentless racks. Kid had a point. “So are you here to help or did you just want the fun of watching?”
“You need a transceiver,” Joey said. “Show me one.”
Joey pushed away from the counter and sauntered over to a wall display. Yet more big black boxes. Some of them had microphones attached. Joey said, “How much are you planning to spend?”
“Do you see anybody behind the register?”
“We’re ripping this off?”
“Not exactly. I talked to the owner. He says we’re welcome to take anything we want.”
“What, for free?”
“No money down, no monthly payments.”
“Shit,” Joey said. “That’s weird. I knew these people weren’t human.” He turned his attention to the stock. “So we want the best, right?” He put his hand on a huge rig. There was a Japanese brand name on the face of it, next to more knobs and technical graffiti than Kindle cared to look at. “This is a three-hundred-watt transceiver. They come more powerful, but I don’t think we need it.”
“You know ham stuff? How come you didn’t say anything at the meeting? Save me the trouble?”
“I don’t know much. Mainly theory. I know how radio works. I never got a license or anything.”
“One up on me.”
“Uh-huh. Probably we could use an ARRL Manual, too.…”
“Which?”