“Watch your back, Dr. Kildare.”
“We thought you should know,” the radio said, “all our Helpers have gone silent.”
It was not a routine call, coming at this hour of the morning, and Tyler listened with a rising interest.
He and Joey had set up the receiver in a seedy staff lounge at the back of the truckstop cafeteria. Tyler had made the room his command quarters, and he was alone in it.
As alone as he ever got, these days.
He held the microphone in his right hand and thumbed the talk button. “Say again, Ohio?”
The transceiver was hooked to a mobile antenna and plugged into a wall socket. Since they came over the Coast Range, they’d been doing radio wherever they found live AC. Joey wanted to rig a ham unit to run off a car battery—it was easy, he claimed, and would be more convenient. But Tyler had discouraged him. Tyler didn’t much care for the radio anymore. He had begun to see it as a liability.
“Helpers have fallen silent,” the Ohio man said. Ohio ran a twenty-four-hour radio watch, and this was their morning shift, a guy named Carlos with a faint Hispanic accent. “Wondered if you had the same experience.”
“We’re not currently near a Helper, Ohio.”
“Theory here is that the Travellers are fixing to move on. Maybe the Contactees take over, maybe not. Could be we’ll see the Artifact move out of orbit soon. End of an era, huh? If that’s true.” The man seemed to want to chat.
Sissy appeared in a corner of the room, faintly luminous and anxious to speak.
“All the Helpers are silent?” Tyler wanted to nail down this new fact. “Every one,” Carlos said. “They don’t talk anymore. Or move or nothing.”
Tyler thought about it. He turned it over in his head, wanting to make sense of it.
He glanced out the greasy window at the curvature of the new Artifact, still earthbound—the human Artifact, a spaceship the size of a mountain.
“Ohio,” he said. “Your signal is weak.”
“Sorry, Colonel… weather problem there?”
The sky was baby-blanket blue. Windless. “Got a front moving in,” Tyler said.
“You in any danger, Colonel?”
“Not that serious. We might be out of touch for a while, though.”
“Sorry to hear it. Look for you later?”
“Indeed. Thanks, Ohio.”
Sissy beamed approval.
Now, Tyler instructed himself, now think.
If the Travellers leave… If the Helpers fall silent…
Then we’ll be safe. All our secrets safe.
Sissy’s voice was faint but strident, like the buzz of a high-tension wire. It might not work that way, Tyler thought. We don’t know. Therefore wait. Wait and see. Wait here? Yes.
How long?
Until it’s over. Until the Travellers are gone, dead are gone, altogether empty skies.
People don’t want to stay here, Tyler thought. They want Ohio. Make up something. Tell them Ohio told you to wait. Bad weather. Like you said, Bad weather along the Platte, say. Dam washed out, say. Sissy possessed a wonderful imagination.
It might work, Tyler agreed. But not if they can talk to Ohio, or Ohio talk to us. The radio—
You’re not stupid, Sissy said. You can fix the radio.
Tyler closed the dusty horizontal blinds and jammed a chair back under the knob of the door.
It was still early morning, not much activity yet among the people Tyler had come to think of, pleased with his own sense of humor, as the Unhappy Campers. Joey was walking a perimeter, exactly the kind of idiotic task Joey adored. Jacopetti slept until noon if no one bothered him. No one else was likely to knock in the next few minutes.
He lifted Joey’s toolbox onto the trestle table where the radio was. He unplugged the transceiver and worked out the sheet-metal screws that held the cover in place.
He used two alligator clips and a stout piece of wire to make a jumper cable. Then he hooked one clip to the 120-volt primary of the transformer and the other clip to the positive rail of the DC supply. For insurance, he added a bare wire across the internal fuse.
Put the lid back on, Sissy reminded him, before you plug it in.
Tyler did so. He threw the power switch to the on position, for good measure.
Then he hunkered down and pushed the plug into the wall socket.
There was a half second of silence. Then the big transceiver made a sound like a gunshot and jumped a quarter-inch off the surface of the table. It belched a spark as bright as a camera flash and sizzled with high-voltage overload.
The ceiling light flickered and faded altogether as the building’s circuit breakers cut in.
Now hurry, Tyler thought. He unplugged the unit, then cracked the blinds to admit just enough light to work by. When he pried up the lid, the transceiver gushed sour smoke into his face. Tyler ignored the stench and hurried to disguise his handiwork. He pulled out what was left of the jumper, the alligator clips, the wire across the fuse. Then he jammed the lid back on and began to drive home the screws one by one.
The sound of Tim Belanger’s voice came faintly through the window, something about the lights going off, anybody know where the fuse box was?
Eight screws, four to a side. Tyler drove the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, sweating.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
He fumbled the last sheet-metal screw into its hole. The screwdriver didn’t want to find the slot in the screwhead. When it did, the screw sheered sideways. “Shit,” Tyler whispered.
Don’t curse, Sissy scolded him.
There was a knock at the door. Joey’s voice: “Colonel? You still in there?”
Three twists of the wrist to drive the screw home. A couple of seconds to clear Joey’s toolbox off the table. Couple more to yank the chair away from the doorknob.
“Dark as a bitch in here. Sorry.” He let Joey in.
Joey sniffed the air. “What’s that stink?”
“Had some trouble with the radio,” Colonel Tyler said.
“Thing’s totally fucked,” Joey said when he had examined the molten interior. “Transformer must have shorted. Though I don’t know how it could of.”
He offered to drive into Cheyenne and get a replacement. “Fine,” Tyler said. “But not yet.” How come, Joey wanted to know.
“I’m calling a meeting tonight. It’s important, and I need you there. As a vote and as sergeant-at-arms.”
“I could be back by dark.”
“I don’t want to risk it.” Tyler drew himself up. “Let it ride, Mr. Commoner. Take my word on this.” Joey nodded.
Good soldier, Tyler thought.
Matt was compiling a pharmaceutical wish list to transmit to the Ohio people—he didn’t know about the radio problem yet—when he heard Abby’s anguished voice from the parking lot.
He hurried out of his camper into the rough circle of trucks and RVs, knowing what the problem was and dreading it.
Tom Kindle had climbed into the cab of his lumbering RV and was cranking the motor. Abby had stepped out of her own camper. She wore a denim skirt and a loose blouse and carried a hairbrush in one hand. Her feet were bare and she’d been crying. She ran a few steps across the hot, midday tarmac toward Kindle’s vehicle.
“You CANT!” Stopping when it was obvious that he could and was. “OOOOH!”
She threw the hairbrush. Her hard overhand toss sent it pinwheeling at Kindle’s camper; it rang the side panel like a bell.