“So,” said Michael, “how exactly do you build a radio?”
Radio wasn’t the problem, Elton explained; it was the mountain that was the problem.
The original beacon had run off an antenna that stood at the peak of the mountain; an insulated cable, five kilometers long, had run the length of the power trunk to connect it to the transmitter in the Lighthouse. All taken down and destroyed by the One Law. Without the antenna, they were hopelessly blocked to the east, and any signal they might have picked up would be overwhelmed by electromagnetic interference from the battery stack.
That left two choices: go to the Household and ask for permission to run an antenna up the mountain; or say nothing and try to boost the signal somehow.
It was, in the end, no contest. Michael couldn’t ask for permission without explaining the reason, which meant telling the Household about the batteries; and to tell them about the batteries was simply out of the question, because then everyone would know, and once that happened, the rest wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t just the batteries that Michael was in charge of; it was the glue of hope that held the place together. You couldn’t just tell people they had no chance. The only thing to do was find somebody still alive out there—find them with a radio, which would mean they had power and therefore light—before he said another word to anyone. And if he found nothing, if the world really was empty, then what would happen would happen anyway; it was better if nobody knew.
He got to work that morning. In the shed, piled among the old CRTs and CPUs and plasmas and bins of cell phones and Blu-rays, was an old stereo receiver—just AM and FM bands, but he could open that up—and an oscilloscope. A copper wire up the chimney served as their antenna; Michael refitted the guts of the receiver into a plain CPU chassis, to camouflage it—the only person who might have noticed an extra CPU sitting on the counter would be Gabe, and from what Sara had told him, the poor guy wasn’t ever coming back—and jacked the receiver into the panel, using the audio port. The battery control system had a simple media program, and with a little work he was able to configure the equalizer to filter out the battery noise. They wouldn’t be able to broadcast; he had no transmitter and would have to figure out how to build one from the bottom up. But for the time being, with a little patience, he’d be able to scoop out any decent signal from the west.
They found nothing.
Oh, there was plenty to hear out there. A surprising range of activity, from ULF to microwaves. The odd cell phone tower powered by a working solar panel. Geothermals still pushing juice back into the grid. Even a couple of satellites, still in their orbits, dutifully transmitting their cosmic hellos and probably wondering where everybody on planet Earth had run off to.
A whole hidden world of electronic noise. And nobody, not one single person, home.
Day by day, Elton would sit at the radio, the headphones clamped to his ears, his sightless eyes turned upward in their sockets. Michael would isolate a signal, clear out the noise, and send it to the amplifier, where it would be filtered a second time and pushed through the phones. After a moment of intense concentration, Elton would nod, maybe take a moment to give his crumby beard a thoughtful rub, and then proclaim, in his gentle voice:
“Something faint, irregular. Maybe an old distress beacon.”
Or: “A ground signal. A mine, maybe.”
Or, with a tight shake of the head: “Nothing here. Let’s move on.”
So they sat through the days and nights, Michael at the CRT, Elton with the earphones clamped to the sides of his head, his mind seemingly adrift in the leftover signals of their all-but-vanished species. Whenever they found one, Michael would record it in the logbook, noting the time and frequency and anything else about it. Then they’d do it all again.
Elton had been born blind, so Michael didn’t really feel sorry for him, not on that score. Elton’s being blind was just a part of who he was. It was the radiation that had done it; Elton’s parents were Walkers, part of the Second Wave to come in, fifty-odd years ago, when the settlements in Baja had been overrun. The survivors had walked straight through the irradiated ruins that had once been San Diego, and by the time the group arrived, twenty-eight souls, those who could still stand were carrying the others. Elton’s mother was pregnant, delirious with fever; she delivered just before she died. His father could have been anyone. No one even learned their names.
And for the most part, Elton got along fine. He had a cane he used when he left the Lighthouse, which wasn’t all that often, and he seemed content to spend his days at the panel, making use of himself in the only way he knew how. Apart from Michael, he knew more about the batteries than anyone—a miraculous feat, considering the fact that he’d never actually seen them. But according to Elton, this gave him an advantage, because he wasn’t fooled by what things merely appeared to be.
“Those batteries are like a woman, Michael,” he liked to say. “You’ve got to learn to listen.”
Now, on the evening of the fifty-fourth of summer, First Evening Bell about to sound—four nights since a viral had been killed in the nets by the Watcher Arlo Wilson—Michael called up the battery monitors, a line of bars for each of the six cells: 54 percent on two and three, a whisper under 50 on five and four, a flat 50 on one and six, temperature on all of them in the green, thirty-one degrees. Down the mountain the winds were blowing at a steady thirteen kph with gusts to twenty. He ran through the checklist, charging the capacitors, testing all the relays. What had Alicia said? You push the button, they come on? That’s how little people understood.
“You should double-check the second cell,” Elton said from his chair. He was spooning curds of sheep’s cheese from a cup into his mouth.
“There’s nothing wrong with the second cell.”
“Just do it,” he said. “Trust me.”
Michael sighed and called the battery monitors back up on the screen. Sure enough: the charge on number two was dropping: 53 percent, 52. The temperature was nudging up as well. He would have asked Elton how he’d known but his answer was always the same—an enigmatic cock of the head, as if to say, I could hear it, Michael.
“Open the relay,” Elton advised. “Do it again and see if it settles down.”
Second Evening Bell was moments away. Well, they could run on the other five cells if they had to, then figure out what the problem was. Michael opened the relay, waited a moment to vent any gas in the line, and closed it again. The meter stayed flat at 55.
“Static is all,” said Elton, as Second Bell began to ring. He gave his spoon a little wave. “That relay’s a bit squirrelly, though. We should swap it out.”
The door of the Lighthouse opened then. Elton lifted his face.
“That you, Sara?”
Michael’s sister stepped inside, still dressed to ride and covered in dust. “Evening, Elton.”
“Now, what’s that I smell on you?” He was smiling from ear to ear. “Mountain lilac?”
She pushed a strand of sweat-dampened hair from behind an ear. “I smell like sheep, Elton. But thanks.” She directed her words to Michael. “Are you coming home tonight? I thought I’d cook.”
Michael thought he should probably stay where he was, with one of the cells acting up. Night was also the best time for the radio. But he hadn’t eaten all day, and at the thought of warm food, his stomach let loose an empty rumble.
“You mind, Elton?”
The old man shrugged. “I know where to find you if I need you. You go now if you like.”
“You want me to bring you something?” Sara offered as Michael was rising from his chair. “We’ve got plenty.”
But Elton shook his head, as he always did. “Not tonight, thanks.” He took the earphones from their place on the counter and held them up. “I’ve got the whole wide world for company.”
Michael and his sister stepped out into the lights. After so many hours in the dim hut, Michael had to pause on the step and blink the glare away. They moved down the path past the storage sheds, toward the pens; the air was rich with the organic funk of animals. He could hear the bleating of the herd and, as they walked, the nickering of horses from the stables. Continuing onto the narrow path that edged the field, underneath the south wall, Michael could see the runners moving back and forth along the catwalks, their shapes silhouetted against the spots. Michael saw Sara watching also, her eyes distant and preoccupied, shining with reflected light.
“Don’t worry,” Michael said. “He’ll be fine.”
His sister didn’t respond; he wondered if she’d heard him. They said nothing more until they reached the house. At the kitchen pump, Sara washed up while Michael lit the candles; she stepped out onto the back porch and returned a moment later, swinging a good-sized jackrabbit by the ears.
“Flyers,” Michael said, “where’d you get him?”
Sara’s mood had lifted; her face wore a proud smile. Michael could see the wound where Sara’s arrow had skewered the animal through the throat.
“Upper Field, just above the pits. I was riding along and there he was, right out in the open.”
How long had it been since Michael had eaten rabbit? Since anyone had even seen a rabbit? Most of the wildlife was long gone, except for the squirrels, which seemed to multiply even faster than the virals could kill them off, and the smaller birds, the sparrows and wrens, which they either didn’t want or couldn’t catch.
“You want to clean him?” Sara asked.
“I’m not even sure I’d remember how,” Michael confessed.
Sara made a face of exasperation and drew her blade from her belt. “Fine, make yourself useful and set the fire.”
They made the rabbit into a stew, with carrots and potatoes from the bin in the cellar, and cornmeal to thicken the sauce. Sara claimed to remember their father’s recipe, but Michael could tell she was guessing. It didn’t matter; soon the savory aroma of cooking meat was bubbling from the kitchen hearth, filling the whole house with a cozy warmth that Michael hadn’t felt in a long time. Sara had taken the empty skin out to the yard to scrape it while Michael tended the stove, waiting for her return. He had bowls and spoons set when she stepped back inside, wiping her hands on a rag.
“You know, I know you’re not going to listen to me, but you and Elton should be careful.”
Sara knew all about the radio; the way she came in and out of the Lighthouse, it had been impossible to avoid this. But he had kept the rest from her.
“It’s just a receiver, Sara. We’re not even transmitting.”
“What all do you listen to out there, anyway?”
Sitting at the table, he offered a shrug, hoping to kill the conversation as fast as possible. What was there to say? He was looking for the Army. But the Army was dead. Everyone was dead, and the lights were going out.
“Just noise, mostly.”
She was looking at him closely, her hands on her hips as she stood with her back to the sink, waiting him out. When Michael said nothing more, she sighed and shook her head.
“Well, don’t get caught,” his sister said.
They ate without speaking at the table in the kitchen. The meat was a little stringy but so delicious Michael could barely stop himself from moaning as he chewed. Usually he didn’t go to bed until after dawn, but he could have lain down right there at the table, his head cradled in his folded arms, and fallen instantly asleep. There was something familiar as well—not just familiar but also a little sad—about eating jack stew at the table. Just the two of them.
He lifted his eyes to find Sara’s looking back at him.
“I know,” she said. “I miss them too.”
He wanted to tell her then. About the batteries, and the logbook, and their father, and what he’d known. Just to have one other person carry this knowledge. But this was a selfish wish, Michael knew, nothing he could actually allow himself to do.
Sara pushed back from the table and carried their dishes to the pump. When she was finished washing up, she filled an earthenware pot with the leftover stew and wrapped it with a piece of heavy cloth to keep it warm.
“You taking that to Walt?” Michael asked.
Walter was their father’s older brother. As the Storekeeper, he was in charge of Share, a member of the Board of Trade, and Household too—the oldest living Fisher—a three-legged stool of responsibilities that made him one of the most powerful citizens of the Colony, second only to Soo Ramirez and Sanjay Patal. But he was also a widower who lived alone—his wife, Jean, had been killed on Dark Night—and he liked the shine too much and often neglected to eat. When Walt wasn’t in the Storehouse, he could usually be found fussing with the still he kept in the shed behind his house, or else passed out somewhere inside.
Sara shook her head. “I don’t think I could face Walt right now. I’m taking it to Elton.”
Michael watched her face. He knew she was thinking of Peter again. “You should get some rest. I’m sure they’re okay.”
“They’re late.”
“Just a day. It’s routine.”
His sister said nothing. It was terrible, Michael thought, what love could do to a person. He couldn’t see the sense in it.
“Look, Lish is riding with them. I’m sure they’re safe.”
Sara scowled, looking away. “It’s Lish I’m worried about.”
She headed first to the Sanctuary, as she often did when sleep eluded her. Something about seeing the children, tucked in their beds. She didn’t know if it made her feel better or worse. But it made her feel something, besides the hollow ache of worry.
She liked to recall her own days there as a Little, when the world seemed like a safe place, even a happy place, and all there was to concern her was when her parents would come to visit, or if Teacher was in a good mood that day or not, and who was friends with whom. For the most part, it hadn’t seemed odd that she and her brother lived in the Sanctuary and their parents somewhere else—she’d never known a different existence—and at night when her mother or father or the two of them together came to say good night to her and Michael, she never thought to ask them where they went when the visit was over. We have to go now, they’d say, when Teacher announced it was time, and that one word, go, became the whole of the situation in Sara’s mind, and probably Michael’s too: parents came, and stayed for a bit, and then they had to go. Many of her best memories of her parents came from those brief bedtime visits when they would read her and Michael a story or just tuck them into their cots.
And then one night she’d ruined it, quite by accident. Where do you sleep? she asked her mother as she was preparing to depart. If you don’t sleep here, with us, where do you go? And when Sara asked this, something seemed to fall behind her mother’s eyes, like a shade being quickly drawn down a window. Oh, her mother said, gathering her expression into a smile that Sara detected as false, I don’t sleep, not really. Sleep is something for you, Little Sara, and for your brother, Michael. And the look on her mother’s face as she said these words was the first time, Sara now believed, that she’d glimpsed the terrible truth.
