Dawnslight

Feeling welcome for the first time all day, I walked in and settled into a seat beside him. “A radio?” I guessed as he turned a dial.

“Specifically, a scanner,” he said.

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It just lets me look for signals, mostly local ones, and see if I can hear them.”

“How … old-fashioned,” I said.

“Well, maybe not as much as you think,” he answered. “This isn’t actually the radio, just a control mechanism. We’re buried far enough underwater that I wouldn’t get good signals here; the real radio is stashed above.”

“Still—radio?” I tapped my new mobile. “We have something better.”

“And most people above do not,” Exel said, sounding amused. “You think the people partying and lounging in this city have the resources to use mobiles? Knighthawk mobiles no less?”

> > [...]

“Radios,” Exel said, tapping his receiver. “Some things just work. There is elegance in simplicity. If I were up there living a relatively normal life, I’d want a radio instead of a mobile. I can fix a radio; I know how it works. Calamity only knows what goes on inside one of those modern devices.”

“But how do the radios get power?” I asked.

Exel shook his head. “Radios just work here in Babilar.”

“You mean …”

“No explanation for it,” he said with a shrug of his ample shoulders. “Nothing else works without a power source—blenders, clocks, whatever you try. Won’t work. But radios turn on, even if you don’t have batteries in them.”

That gave me a shiver. Even more than the strange lights in the darkness, this creeped me out. Ghostly powered radios? What was happening in this city?

> Page 206 Chapter 26 Firefight