Harris said. “You should have seen how he whipped up the crowd singing ‘Satisfaction.’ They all wanted to go out and just rip people’s arms and legs off. Then when he was playing ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ some kid pulled out a gun and waved it at the stage—”
“It wasn’t ‘Sympathy for the Devil!’” Doog interrupted. “That’s an urban legend. It was ‘Under My Thumb.’”
“That’s not how I remember it,” Harris said, glaring at his friend.
“What happened to the guy with the gun?” Iris said. “Was he the one who got killed?”
“Yeah,” Harris answered. “Guy pulled out his gun, and before you know it the Hell’s Angels stabbed him and stomped him to death. Great security, huh?”
Doog shook his head. “Man, the Altamont concert was probably the darkest hour of the ‘60s. So much for all the love and peace and harmony crap the hippies kept talking about. Gave us all a bad image.”
Iris stood up from the bleachers and brushed off her backside. She felt her knees crack. “Well, then let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again at the second great Altamont concert.”
Harley returned from the refreshment stand. Dirt streaked his clothes, and some splinters stuck in his nappy hair. “Found some,” he said excitedly. “Two cans of Budweiser and an Orange Crush. I get one of the beers.”
“No you don’t,” said Harris, “hand them over.”
“I found them!”
“You’re still too young.”
Grudgingly, Harley handed the warm cans over.
They had sent out notices with their runners to the people in Tracy and the other towns in the Central Valley, as well as to the enclave around Livermore. They would broadcast it across the Atlantis network to anyone listening in on the short-wave radio. Word would spread, summoning the audience and the musicians for the Last Great Rock ‘n Roll concert.
They sat in silence sipping their warm beer and passing the two cans back and forth. By Labor Day the unnatural quiet would at last be replaced by human sounds, music rising to the sky.
Chapter 62
The woman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory narrowed her eyes at them. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Todd and Casey Jones looked at each other and both shrugged. Todd removed his cowboy hat. “No, Ma’am, we’re serious. We’ve come to take those solar power satellites and haul them off to New Mexico.”
The woman gestured them inside the concrete research building, still looking at them with a mixture of amazement and disbelief. “Come and get washed up, you two. I think you’re suffering from heat stroke.”
She was a tough Asian woman, about 50, with wide hips and heavy arms. She looked like the type who’d move heavy equipment by herself just because she didn’t have the patience to wait for help. She pinned her gray-white hair back with elaborate pins. Her name, she said, was Henrietta Soo.
The dim facility looked like a 1960s version of a “high tech” building, an eight-story-tall cube with dark windows and light cement. The aluminum mini blinds had been taken down to allow the maximum amount of light to pour through the windows. Inside, the petroplague had dissolved most of the carpets and linoleum, leaving only concrete and plywood base boards.
Henrietta Soo took Todd and Casey past empty offices and a conference room where a half a dozen people stood brainstorming, scribbling things on a pad of paper propped on an easel.
In a kitchen area, Henrietta twisted on a faucet. Water trickled out with low pressure, but it was enough for them to drink and wash. Droplets sprayed from side to side in the gasketless faucet nozzle. She disappeared, leaving them to take turns at the sink, splashing their faces and pulling brown paper towels to wipe themselves off.
“Boy, this feels good!” Todd said as water dripped from the stubble on his chin. Casey Jones doused his bald head, kneading his dark skin with his fingertips.
After the train wreck, they had hiked for two days northwest of Pasadena. They passed through the sprawling, confused metropolis of Burbank and Glendale, asking directions from people on the street. They must have painted an absurd picture: both of them streaked with grime, the back of Casey’s shirt stiffened with drying blood, asking for somebody to point the way to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In Pasadena, the Rose Bowl sat empty, but a flea market had sprung up by itself, though the vendors sold a new selection of post-plague items. The lush and well-manicured country club golf course was ragged and overgrown.
By now Todd and Casey were hungry and exhausted, but they had reached their destination. The bright flowers and arching willows made JPL look like a campus, 175 acres jammed up against the sheer green-brown mountains. Once they passed into the JPL complex, they tracked down the headquarters of the satellite division. The Jet Propulsion Lab normally held over five thousand workers, but now the site was quiet and lethargic.
Henrietta Soo returned with a metal first-aid kit and opened it up, poking around to find cloth bandages. “Let me look at your back,” she said to Casey, and he dutifully removed his shirt. With a cotton swab, she dabbed and poked at the infected arrow wound. In her other hand she held a brown bottle. “I got a glass bottle of alcohol from one of the labs. All of our plastic tubes of first-aid cream are… no longer with us. I’ve got a few antibiotics, but we’re saving them.” She smiled apologetically, then said to Todd, “How about you?”
Todd flexed his hands; he was lucky they hadn’t formed any large blisters from the burn. “I’m okay.”
Casey Jones stared at the wall as she prodded crusted blood, cleaned the wound, and bandaged his shoulder. Finished, Henrietta clicked the first-aid kit shut and turned to face them.
“Now then. I’ve got some of Dr. Lockwood’s smallsats sealed up and ready for launch, but there’s no way you’ll be able to take all of them. When he asked for help getting them shipped to his railgun launching system, I never thought anyone would take the challenge. The satellites have been sitting in one of our clean rooms for months—but what I want to know is just how you two propose to get them to White Sands?”
She waited. Todd looked down at his dirty boots and shuffled his feet. Casey didn’t offer any ideas.
Todd refused to meet Henrietta Soo’s eyes. “Um, I was hoping you might have a suggestion, Ma’am.”
Todd sat in front of JPL’s short-wave radio, looking befuddled. He stared at the microphone. “Is everything ready?”
“Yes,” Henrietta said, leaning over his shoulder. “Go ahead.”
Todd touched the microphone again. “You’re sure it’s at the right frequency and everything?”
“Yes!” Henrietta said again, a bit more impatiently.
“And I just hold down the microphone button?”
Henrietta scowled. “You’re new at this aren’t you? We’re all connected to the Atlantis network. We’ve cleared our own node here and knocked off the Feds so we can get some decent radio time. FEMA is pissed off at us, but they’ll pick up the signal on this frequency and reroute it up to the Livermore receiving station. It’ll probably also be picked up by other substations and broadcast around the country.”
Todd felt a knot in his throat at the thought of thousands of people listening in on his personal message, but before he could lose his nerve he gripped the microphone.
“This is Todd Severyn calling for Moira Tibbett at the Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore, California.” He hoped Tibbett was there listening. From what he could tell, she never went home, she never left her map with its colored pushpins marking the growing number of stations on the emergency short-wave network.