"Well, here she is," Leo announced. "Everyone, this is Jane Unger."
They looked up, mildly curious. No one said much. Jane sipped her warm coffee, holding the mug with both hands.
"Forgive me if I don't make introductions," Leo said.
"You know what would be a really good idea, Leo?" said one of the chess players, mildly, looking over his rimless glasses. "It would be a really good idea if you put Ms. Unger back outside."
"All in good time," Leo said. He turned to the silent televisions. "Oh dear, just look at that havoc." He said it in a voice so flat and numbed that Jane was taken aback. She set her coffee mug down. Leo looked at her. She picked the mug back up.
"It's pretty much leveled El Reno," remarked the other chess player, cheerfully. "Pretty danm good coverage too."
"Have they structure-hit that broadcast tower outside Woodward yet?" Leo said.
"Yeah. It came down three minutes ago. A good hit, Leo. Real solid hit. Professional."
"That's great," Leo said. "That's splendid. So, Jane. What would you like? A few spring rolls with hot mustard? You do like Thai food, don't you? I think we have some Thai in the freezer." He took her elbow and led her to the open kitchenette.
Jane pulled her arm free. "What the hell are you doing?"
Leo smiled. "Short explanatün, or long explanation?"
"Short. And hurry up."
"Well," said Leo, "shortly, my friends and I are very interested in dead spots. This is a big dead spot, and that's why we're here. We've put ourselves here quite deliberately, just like you and your Troupe did. Because we knew that this area would be the epicenter of damage from my brother's F-6."
"Leo, I gotta hand it to that brother of yours!" called out the second chess player, with what sounded like real gratitude. "Personally, I had the gravest doubts about any so-called F-6 tornado, it seemed like a real reach, a real nutcase long shot, but Leo, I admit it now." The chess player straightened up from his board, lifting one finger. "Your brother has really delivered. I mean, just look at that coverage!" He pointed briskly at the television. "This disaster is world-class!"
"Thanks," Leo said. "You see, Jane, there are many places in America where human beings just can't -live anymore, but that's not true for our communications technologles. The machines are literally everywhere. In the U.S.- even Alaska!-there's not one square meter left that's not in a satellite footprint, or a radio-navigation triangulation area, or a cellular link, or in packet range of nemode sites or of wireless cable TV... . 'Wireless cable,' that's a nasty little oxymoron, isn't it?" Leo shook his head. "It took a truly warped society to invent that terminology...."
Leo seemed lost for a moment, then recovered himself. "Except, Jane, not here, and not now! For one shining moment, not here, not around us! Because we are inside the F-6! The most intense, thorough, widespread devastation that the national communications infrastructure has suffered in modern times. Bigger than a hurricane. Bigger than earthquakes. Far bigger than arson and sabotage, because arson and sabotage on this huge scale would be far too risky, and far too much hard work. And yet here we are, you see? In the silence! And no one can overhear us! No one can monitor us! Not a soul."
"So that's why you overheard me in my car? My distress call? Because you're paying so much attention to broadcasts?"
"Yes, that's it exactly. We're listening to everything on the spectrum. Hoping, aiming, for perfect silence. Luckily, we have the resources to help the project along a bit-to take out a few crucial relays and especially solid towers, and such. Because God knows, the damned repairmen will all be back in force soon enough! With their cellular emergency phone service, and the emergency radio relays, and even those idiot ham operators with their damned private services out of ham shacks and even their bathroom closets, God help us! But for a little while, a brilliant, perfect silence, and in that moment all things are possible. Everything is possible! Even freedom."
Someone, lackadaisically, applauded.
Jane swallowed coffee. "Why do you need that much silence?"
"Do you know what 'electronic parole' is?"
"Sure. When they put, like, a government wrist cuff on prisoners. With a tracker and a relay inside. My Trouper cuff is a little like that, actually." She held up her wrist.
"Exactly. And all of us here, we all have similar devices."
She was amazed. "You're all out on parole?"
"Not the common kind. A special kind, rather more sophisticated. It's more accurate to say that my friends and I are all bonded people. We gave our word of bond. But we're in a Troupe, of a sort. A Troupe of people in bondage."
"Excuse me," said the man at the broadband scanner. He was a large, hefty, middle-aged man, with short brush-cut hair. "May I see that device, please?"
"My Trouper cuff?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Jane unbuckled it and handed it to him.
"Thanks." The man rose, examining Jane's cuff carefully, then walked into the kitchen. He placed the cuff carefully beside the sink, opened a kitchen drawer, swiftly removed a meat-tenderizing hammer, and smashed Jane's cuff, repeatedly.
"Why are you doing this?" Jane shouted.
"It's a big world," Leo said, between his friend's precisely judged hammer blows. "It's an old world, it's a sad and wicked world... . We in this room, we are definitely people of the world, Jane. We're a very worldly lot!" The radioman carefully ran sink water over Jane's shattered cuff.
"We've done some of the work of the world, in our day," Leo said. "But you can't acquire that kind of power without responsibility. Power doesn't come without an obligation, without an account to pay. The people who put these cuffs on us-well, you might say that we all quite voluntarily put them onto one another, really-these bracelets are badges of honor. We thought of them as badges. As fail-safes, as a kind of moral insurance. As talismans of security! But after the years roll on... It doesn't ever stop, Jane, time just keeps going on, consequences just keep mounting up." He lifted his arm and looked at his watch. It looked just like any other watch. Nothing too special about Leo's watch. Just another metal-banded businessinan's watch. Except that the skin beneath the watch was very white.
"We've come here to stop being what we are," Leo said. "There's no way out of the Game, no way outside the code of silence. Except for death, of course; death always works. So we've found a kind of silence now that's an electronic, virtual death. We're going to cut our bonds away, and we'll die in the world of the networks, and we'll become other people, and we'll leave and vanish for good."
"Like evacuation freaks?"
One of the poker players burst into laughter. "Hey! That's a good one! That's dead on. Evacuation freaks. You mean those weird poseurs with no ID who just haunt the camps, right? That's good, that's very good. That's us right to a T."
"Leo, what have you done that's so horrible? Why do you have to do anything this weird and elaborate?" She looked into his eyes. They were not cruel eyes. They were like Jerry's eyes. They only looked very troubled. "Leo, why don't you just come to the Troupe camp? We have our own people there, we have resources and ways to get people out of trouble. I can talk to Jerry about it, maybe we can straighten all this out."
"That's very sweet of you, Jane. It's very good of you. I'm sorry I never had a chance to know you better." He lifted his voice to the others. "Did you hear that? What she just offered? I was right to do what I did." He looked into her face. "It doesn't matter. In any case, after this meeting you'll never see me again."