Chapter 8: Sunday Frequencies

On Sunday, Boone knocked on my door at four in the afternoon.

"Get your parka. I want to show you something."

"It's minus eighty."

"It's inside. Mostly."

The comms shack was a little room at the end of the science wing, packed with metal boxes and blinking lights.

In the corner was a desk that wasn't the Program's.

A radio with a hundred knobs. A microphone on a stand. A logbook with a coffee ring on the cover.

A paper sign taped over it said BRINKLEY, HANDS OFF, THIS MEANS YOU.

"Ham radio," Boone said. "I've had a license since I was fifteen. My grandpa taught me in his barn."

"And it works from here?"

"The antenna's out on the ice. It bounces off the sky." He sat down and pulled on a headset. "Wexler owns the satellite. Nobody owns the sky."

I sat on an upturned crate.

He turned a knob, listened, turned another.

Static. A whistle. More static.

Then a voice, scratchy and old and cheerful, came out of the speaker.

"There he is. The South Pole's finest dozer driver. Over."

"Only dozer driver," Boone said into the mic. "Afternoon. How's the knee? Over."

"Knee's terrible. Wife says I complain too much. Who's that breathing next to you? Over."

Boone looked at me.

"That's the doc. Over."

"The doc! The one from the newspaper? Over."

"Yeah," Boone said. "That one. Over."

"Well, tell her we think she's a hero up here. Tell her my wife says that man's a rat. Over."

I laughed before I could stop it.

Boone held the headset out to me.

"Tell him yourself. Push the button to talk. Say over when you're done, or he'll talk over you."

I pushed the button.

"Thank you. Tell your wife she's right. Over."

"Ha! She'll love that. Over."

***

He was a retired electrician in Tacoma.

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