Lights in the Deep (13 page)

“Not specifically, but it won’t matter. Trust me, if the FCC wants to shove its big smelly toe into our business I have a pack of lawyers at my disposal that I can whistle up. The government won’t be any problem. And we can be as discreet as we need to be, nobody who doesn’t need to know won’t have to find out. I haven’t lived my life on this lake, being who I am, without learning something about keeping things on the down-low.”

“Okay, Sounds like a grand and original idea. I’m almost tempted to do it for free. Almost. But you came in here ready to make a purchase, so I’ll be frank. What’s in it for the station?”

“A generous yearly donation, plus some bonus cash up front for you personally.”

“And what about putting you on the air?”

“I’m flexible. Wherever and whenever you can think to fit me.”

I considered at length, swapping music discs in and out of the CD players and doing a live-mic station identification. The stuffy pragmatist in me said this was a truly bad proposition, not to be trusted. I had given up a good career to escape men with money always telling me what I could and could not do on the airwaves. But the wild artistic part—my side which had ditched commercial radio and broken my piggy bank in order to found K-Powell—salivated. K-Powell had always been something of an outpost on the fringe of civilization. Now it looked like K-Powell would be an outpost on the fringe of the universe itself.

Poetic.

I potted up some Beatles.

“I get a hammerlock on creative control, Andy. If you start trying to stick your fingers into the programming beyond your designated time slot, the deal is off. I want that in writing. I don’t work for you in any way, shape, or form. I’m lending you my signal in return for donated funds. I can quit the arrangement at any time if I don’t like what’s happening. I also don’t take chances with the feds. Triple check this with the FCC so that we’re not putting my license at risk. Clear?”

“Okay,” Andy replied. “I can have my people draw up the paperwork today if you want.”

Chang kept smiling while I spent a moment daydreaming about what I could do with even a little extra cash. Having Andy as a sugar daddy would work miracles for my little station. I could replace all the old equipment, scrap the carts for minidisc or a Digital Audio Workstation, maybe even expand the facilities. On the other hand, I’d spent my last honest dollar getting away from guys not too different from Chang—to a place where I owed allegiance to no one but myself.

Taking Chang up on his offer, regardless of whatever paper I might sign, smacked somewhat of surrender.

“Have your paperwork drawn up, but don’t rush it. Give me day or so to think about all of this.”

“Fine. Call me when you make up your mind.”

With that Andy dropped his card onto the top of the main mixer, opened the door to the outside world, and vanished back the way he had come. I peered out the partially closed blinds and watched as he donned sunglasses and climbed into his Escalade. Sighing heavily, I slumped back into the chair in front of the main mic, battered headphones patched with electrician’s tape dangling around my neck. The Escalade audibly ground gravel as it motored back onto the highway, and for the longest time I just glared at the door, listening to the A/C chug and my discs spin.

I then slipped on my headphones and sat there for the rest of the day, thinking hard. I tracked through my old favorites, seeking some kind of musical wisdom that might point me towards a yes or a no. I wanted to feel better about saying yes, or at the very least I wanted to not feel like an idiot for saying no. Hendrix, Tull, Credence, Zep, a little touch of the eighties in the form of Rush, later Yes, The Police, Journey, then back to basics with Pink Floyd.
Floyd:
Roger Waters wailing about the sins of big-money and capitalism.

Perhaps not coincidentally, that was when the left speaker on my headphones started to cut out. I had soldered and patched the connection three times, and yet the damn thing was going south on me.
Again.
I yanked and fiddled at the wire with my fingers, until both speakers were cutting out, then I ripped the phones off and hurled them to the floor in disgust.

“Fuck you, Waters.” I rasped with irritation. “You can afford to be angst-ridden.”

• • •

“So,” said Spingath, “you’re a business partner.”

“More like contracted provider of content,” I said testily.

“A quibble, under the Articles,” one of the men said off-hand.

“Articles of what?” I asked.

“Interstellar Articles,” Spingath replied. “Andrew Chang’s pirate broadcasts are unlicensed and unauthorized.”

“According to whom?” I said. “Andy swore to me he had this thing locked, with the FCC.”

“Your quaint Federal Communications Commission doesn’t even govern the broadcast envelope of your whole planet. You can pollute the band all you want if you do it locally. Andrew Chang has been more ambitious than that.”

I was quiet, looking from face to uniform to generic face. A sinking surety had settled into my gut.

“You’re not human, are you?”

“No.”

“Jesus. Look, all I do is feed Andy content. What he does with it is his business, and his problem. I don’t know what you guys are or what you want me for, but I’m telling you, Andy is the one you need to talk to.”

“Perhaps,” said one of the men. “But first, tell us more about your arrangement with Mister Chang. Give us all the details you can.”

• • •

Andy got my yes by phone. The next morning he drove back over and we signed a few pages worth of faxed stuff. By the weekend, two professional microwave technicians were poking around at my equipment and rigging a line-of-sight microwave sender part way up the main broadcast antenna. It was aimed at a similar microwave device a few miles away, at Andy’s place. Once the microwave link was up and running, Andy complained loudly about how crappy my output was, what with the humming and background buzz. Not to mention the A/C chugging away.

I presented Andy with a wish list of equipment that would clear it all up.

Andy wrote me a check.

It was a very
big
check.

I got online and did some shopping.

During the weeks it took for the new equipment to be shipped to Bullfrog, I trained Andy in the use of the nearly identical production and on-air studios. Then I set him up with his own show slot on the grid. He wanted to do some New-Agey stuff, late night, which suited me just fine. His library of the genre was bottomless. Like all fledgling radio programmers he
ummed
and
erred
his way through the first few shows, speaking way too much and making the usual rookie mistakes. But he eventually settled into a groove and by the fifth show he was genuinely enjoying himself.

They put the centralized A/C in first. Beautiful piece of equipment, that. New vents in the trailer ceiling didn’t make hardly a whisper.

When the new mixer boards arrived for both production and on-air use, I had to re-train Andy and the rest of the staff all over again—the modern slide-pot boards and Digital Audio Workstations were
that
different from the seventies-era dinosaurs we’d used before. I was probably in such glorious joy to be working on brand new broadcast equipment that I overlooked how exhausted I was becoming with the constant work. But it was worth it. Or so I’d thought at the time.

• • •

We were in silence the whole way out to Andy’s place.

They’d seemed satisfied with what I’d told them, but they didn’t let me go either.

Again, I’d not seen any of them show a gun. But I suspected they didn’t need to.

When we got to the fences surrounding minicebo, we didn’t even slow down as one of the men driving the van reached an arm out the window and held a black box aloft. The automated gate barring Andy’s main drive withdrew rapidly, and we rolled right through as if we owned the place.

I wanted to warn Andy. In a very bad way. But I’d not gotten my cell phone before leaving the trailer, and doubted they’d have let me use it anyway.

We arrived at the circular drive in front of Andy’s residence, and the four people with the hideous eyes and the generic looks quickly piled out and began circling.

“You stay here and don’t move,” Spingath ordered as I began to butt-cheek sneak out of my seat towards the door.

“I’ve been sitting in here for hours,” I complained. “I’ve got to stand up.”

Spingath seemed to consider, then nodded her assent.

I climbed out and began working the kinks out of my aged spine.

Motion lights had sprung on all around Andy’s compound. The full moon was almost hidden beyond the horizon now, and pretty soon the eastern sky would begin to grow light. If I’d been tired when they’d gotten me at the station, I didn’t feel it. Adrenaline still surged through me as I watched the four suited figures move across Andy’s property with frightening speed, the aircraft warning lights blinking on the tips of minicebo’s masts in the distance.

I went to the front seat of the van and tried the radio. Yup. I’d pushed the CD repeat. Thank goodness, no dead air. Hopefully Sheri wouldn’t be too weirded out when she got in at six and found the door wide open and a CD cycling endlessly.

Now what?

There have been few times in my life when I’ve felt as if my destiny was utterly and totally beyond my control.

One of them was when I first set foot on Fort Benning for Basic Training.

The other was while I stood there in the quiet night, watching the outside of Andy’s house in the floodlights.

How the hell could this be happening to me?

There was a yell. Then another yell. Both from inside the house.

The chattering rip of a modified AR15 cut through the night like a chainsaw.

Andy came sprinting out the front door of his house, the automatic rifle in one hand and a hastily-donned combat vest over his shoulders. He wore nothing save for his boxer briefs and leather sandals.

“Ron!”

“Andy,” I said, not moving, “what the fuck is going on?”

“Get to the garage!”

I looked behind Andy to see a headless shape shambling through the door. Sickly green stains spread across the torso from where the .223 had pierced the body.

I ran for the garage, which was already opening. Andy’s Escalade—along with several other expensive vehicles—was waiting.

I heard the AR15 rip again. Something hit the ground, wet and heavy.

I turned and Andy pressed the weapon into my hands.

“You were Army, Ron. You know how to use this.”

“Christ, Andy, that was forty years ago.”

“Just take it. And the Camaro. Keys are in the ignition.”

“Andy, would you tell me for a second what the hell I’m supposed to do?”

“Get out of here. There’s water, some food, and full magazines in the trunk. Ron, whatever you do, don’t let them catch you!”

“Mister Chang.”

We both turned to see Spingath approaching. Her sunglasses were off and her eye-socket cluster thingies were wiggling obscenely. One of her arms was missing.

“Don’t come any closer,” Andy warned, taking a .44 caliber M1911 from a vest holster.

“You are in violation of Interstellar Articles Sixty Three and Seventy Eight, as they pertain to the proper regulation of the Hydrogen Band—”

Andy worked the slide and took aim with the pistol.

“Back off! I have full operating authority from the United States Government!”

“—under the authority of the Grand Council. Your rights as a sentient being have been suspended until you can be brought to trial before a panel of—”

Andy’s index finger twitched once. The bullet was a little wide, but it took away most of Spingath’s neck. Oddly green gore sprayed across the driveway and Spingath’s head flopped hideously across her left shoulder as she continued to walk towards us.

Andy fired again. Then again. Then he emptied the clip.

Spingath lay in a growing pool of goo, twitching.

In the distance, lights began silently moving.
Lights in the sky.

“Ron,” Andy said to me as he turned and pointed at the dark blue Camarro, “I’m sorry I ever got you into this. If only I’d known…“

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

“The only thing I can do,” he said, looking resigned.

I nodded to him, putting a hand on his shoulder, then went to the Camaro and climbed into the luxurious leather bucket seat. I’d owned one of the car’s ancestors in the early 80s, gold like on Rockford Files.

“What should I tell people?” I said out the window as I fired up the Camaro’s throaty engine.

“I sent an emergency e-mail to the proper agencies,” Andy replied. “Just get your ass out of sight for a few days until this can be resolved.”

The lights appeared to be growing closer.

“More of
them?
” I said, moving my head in the direction of the lights.

“Probably. They’re coming for the dish now. Ron, if you don’t leave soon, you might not be able to.”

He holstered the empty pistol and extended me his hand.

I shook it, then gripped the shifter and depressed the clutch, putting the Camaro into first.

The doors on the government van hung open forlornly as I sped past and back down the main drive. An opener on the visor cleared me through the gate, and I was out into the blackness of the desert.

The lights seemed to ignore me as I hit the highway and never looked back, the V8 getting me up to speed and my heart hammering my ribs as I headed for home. There was something I had to take care of.

• • •

It took a few minutes to get the cabling for the microwave sender unplugged. I’d have climbed the tower and thrown down the dish, if I’d not feared falling. My hands were shaking from post-adrenaline shock, I was tired, and I was old.

Sun would be up soon. Sky was already turning blue in the east and I knew I had to be gone before Sheri got there. I swapped Van Morrison for some Tears For Fears and hit the disc repeat again, scribbling some notes to the volunteers on the front of the station log.