Whisper Point

You can find Whisper Point from twelve miles out if you know where to look. The mast catches the last light after the valley has already gone dark, and it holds it, a thin bright line standing up off a bald ridge.

The mast is a windmill tower that used to pump water for cattle. The Signal Corps stripped the blades off, bolted forty feet of pipe on top, and strung it with more wire than seems reasonable. Guy lines run out in six directions and disappear into the scrub. Twice a year somebody has to walk the whole ridge and re-tension all of them, and it takes two days.

At the base sits the truck. It has not moved since 2139. The tires went flat, then went to pieces, and now it rests on stacked railroad ties with the bed sunk into the ground. Inside, behind a canvas flap, there is a tube set that hums when it warms up and takes four full minutes before it will do anything useful.

Reyes has the night shift. She sits with one headphone on and one off, listening to the chain hand its messages up the line, ridge to ridge, all the way to the coast. Most of it is grain numbers and river levels. Sometimes it is a name, repeated three times, which means somebody is looking for somebody.

At three in the morning the signal from the next station west drops out. Reyes waits ten minutes, then keys her set and sends the check tone. Nothing. She writes the time in the log, puts on her coat, and starts the generator so she can raise power and try again.

The Silence took the world in a day. The Signal Corps exists so it does not happen twice.