“Any empty one, I suppose.”

He recalled Joey Commoner’s remark about an antenna. “I want a house on a hill. No obstructions. Nice view all around.”

“Ocean view?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I can give you a few addresses.…” Kindle fumbled for his pen.

He spent the next day looking at properties. By mid-afternoon he’d picked one out: A two-bedroom frame house in Delmar Estates, a mildly upscale part of town, overlooking Buchanan and a northerly piece of the bay. The house was empty and unfurnished.

He moved in his single piece of property—the radio transceiver, still boxed. He put it in the middle of the living room floor.

The house had an empty-house smell. He guessed the broadloom had been cleaned before the property went on the market. Maybe the walls had been painted. He breathed in, breathed out.

He had never lived in such a place and never really wanted to… but he guessed a month or so here might be tolerable. Although, at the moment, there was nothing to sit on but the floor.

He drove to the Sears at the nearest mall and found the doors standing open but no one on duty at the cashiers’ stations. What else? He realized with some startlement that he could equip the house with any furniture he happened to like, price being no object. He’d always kind of admired these imitation-leather sofas, for instance. He tried one out, right there in the deserted Home Furnishings department. It was like sitting on a stuffed lizard. Sumptuous but probably sticky in hot weather.

But this was all academic—there was no way he could transport any of this stuff, not at the moment, not without grinding his bad leg down to bloody splinters. He sighed and moved on to the patio furniture. Two folding chairs and a chaise lounge, just about his speed. He tucked them under his arm and carried them to the car.

He went back for fresh clothes—a pair of jeans and an armload of cotton T-shirts and underwear.

It had been a long day and he was beginning to tire, but he made a second stop at the A P, where he picked up canned food, cold cuts, a couple of loaves of bread. The house was equipped with a refrigerator and stove… but hang on, was the electricity working? It hadn’t occurred to him to check the lights. He supposed he could phone the power company. If the phone was connected. If there was a phone. Okay, one more stop, back to the mall to pick up a touchtone telephone.

It was nearly dusk by the time he arrived back at the house.

Electricity, it turned out, wasn’t a problem. The refrigerator was humming vigorously. He switched on the kitchen lights and began putting away the food.

He noticed the wire shelves in the refrigerator were barely cool, and he frowned and checked the freezer. No frost. Not even a trace. Was that significant? Maybe it was a frost-free unit; Kindle had heard of such appliances, though he had never owned one.

But the refrigerator was humming like a son of a bitch. When he was here earlier… had he noticed that sound?

Maybe not.

Maybe, this afternoon, the electricity hadn’t been turned on. He plugged in the phone and called Ira. “Ira, I found a place.”

“I know,” Ira said cheerfully. “Up on Delmar. I was the listed agent on that property, by the way. Good view. I hope you’ll be happy there.”

“Pardon me, Ira, but how the fuck do you know where I picked to live?”

There was a pause. “The neighbors saw you leave some belongings. We assumed you were moving in.”

“What, you talked to the neighbors?”

“Well. In a way.”

By voodoo telegraph, in other words. “So tell me… did the neighbors also talk to the power company?”

“Well, Tom. Everybody more or less talks to everybody.”

“Well, Ira, doesn’t that more or less scare the shit out of you?”

“No. But I apologize if we alarmed you.”

“Think nothing of it.” He put the phone down in a hurry. Unfolded a chair and sat in it.

He’d forgotten to pick up a TV set. Was there a game on tonight? He couldn’t remember.

Kindle went to the kitchen, where the light was brighter, and unpacked the transceiver. Ungainly object. He tried to read the manual, but it was written in some language only theoretically English. “Do not allow to contact with moisture or heavily wet.” Words to live by.

He guessed Joey Commoner would be able to figure it out.

November was rainy; he postponed the chore of erecting an antenna. The ache in his leg retreated some. He began stocking up on groceries, beginning to suspect that Mart’s fears about the food supply were well-founded. The staples were still being trucked in, but luxury items had begun to disappear from the shelves. He stockpiled some of those, too. He felt like making a trophy list. Successfully hunted down in Buchanan, Oregon : Last bag of Oreos. Last bottle of gourmet popcorn.

He ferried down some items from his cabin, mainly tools and books. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire had been sitting where he left it last August and was a little musty, since he’d left the windows open, but still readable. A trudge through Gibbon might not be too bad, given all this rainy cool weather. Then on to Madame Bovary.

The Tigers took the American League pennant late that month.

He called Joey when the skies cleared for a couple of days.

“Been waiting to hear from you,” Joey complained. “I got a lot of tower parts from Radio Shack. And a beam antenna from Causgrove’s. But you weren’t at the hospital.”

Kindle gave the kid his new address. “You can transport all that?”

“Took a van out of the lot at Harbor Ford.”

Must do that myself one of these days, Kindle thought. “Are we talking hard physical labor here?”

“Some,” Joey said. “Bring beer,” Kindle said. “You got it.”

Kindle had worked erecting TV towers back in the sixties, and he remembered enough of that experience to temper Joey’s recklessness. He used a power drill with a masonry bit to anchor the antenna base in a concrete trailer pad in front of the house. He guyed the tower as it went up, extra guys on the first ten feet so Joey wouldn’t come plummeting down. Probably Matt Wheeler would resent being called in on another broken leg. Would resent it even worse if he lost one of his one in ten thousand—even if it was Joey Commoner.

They had the tower stabilized and the antenna installed by dusk. Joey did all the climbing, in deference to Kindle’s leg, a nice thought, or his age, which was insulting; he was careful not to ask.

Joey stood back from his work. “This ought to give us good access to the twenty-meter band, which I guess would be the busiest band under the circumstances, though who knows?”

“I sure as hell don’t.”

Joey had taken off his shirt during the final guying of the tower. As they entered the house, Kindle read the tattoo on his right bicep. Neat blue letters.

WORTHLESS, it said.

“You believe that?” Kindle asked.

Joey shrugged his shirt back on and began fiddling with the back of the transceiver. Kindle cracked a beer, waiting for an answer that didn’t come. This would have been a good time to order in a pizza, he thought, except nobody delivered anymore. He wondered who in Buchanan had eaten the last delivery pizza.

He persisted, “It just seems like a strange thing to write on yourself.”

Joey put his head up from behind the transceiver. “Since when do you give a shit?”

“Don’t get hostile.” Anyway, Kindle’s attention had refocused on the dinner problem. “Maybe I could cook us up some hamburgers on that Jenn-Air in the kitchen.…”