“Not today, but maybe tomorrow,” Kurt said. “Come by around lunchtime.”

“You sure you can’t use us today?”

“Not today,” Kurt said. “I’m busy today.”

“All right,” the other said, and they slouched away.

“Word of mouth,” Kurt said, with a jingling shrug. “Kids just turn up, looking for work with the trash.”

“You think they’ll come back tomorrow?” Alan was pretty good at evaluating kids and they hadn’t looked very reliable.

“Those two? Fifty-fifty chance. Tell you what, though: there’s always enough kids and enough junk to go around.”

“But you need to make arrangements to get your access points mounted and powered. You’ve got to sort it out with people who own stores and houses.”

“You want to knock on doors?” Kurt said.

“I think I would,” Alan said. “I suspect it’s a possibility. We can start with the shopkeepers, though.”

“I haven’t had much luck with merchants,” Kurt said, shrugging his shoulders. His chains jingled and a whiff of armpit wafted across the claustrophobic hollow. “Capitalist pigs.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Alan said.

“Wales Avenue, huh?” Kurt said.

They were walking down Oxford Street, and Alan was seeing it with fresh eyes, casting his gaze upward, looking at the lines of sight from one building to another, mentally painting in radio-frequency shadows cast by the transformers on the light poles.

“Just moved in on July first,” Alan said. “Still getting settled in.”

“Which house?”

“The blue one, with the big porch, on the corner.”

“Sure, I know it. I scored some great plumbing fixtures out of the dumpster there last winter.”

 Prev. P 70/295 next