“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?”
I hesitated. Mobiles had been common in Newcago, where Steelheart had had a deal with the Knighthawk Foundry. While that sounded altruistic of him, there was a simpler truth to it. With everyone carrying mobiles, he could force upon them “obedience programs” and other warnings to keep them in line.
Apparently Regalia didn’t have something similar.
“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?
Exel didn’t seem bothered. He tuned to another frequency, then took out his pen, leaning in, writing. I scooted my chair closer. From what I could tell, he was just listening to random chatter of townspeople. He made a few notes, then moved on. He listened to this frequency for a while without making notes before going to the next one, where he scribbled things down furiously.
He really seemed to know what he was doing. His notes were neat and efficient, and he seemed to be searching to see if some of the people might be speaking in code. I took one of his sheets off the table; he glanced at me but didn’t stop me.
It looked like he was also scanning for mentions of Regalia and stories regarding her direct appearance. Most of what he had was hearsay, but I was impressed with the detail of the notes, and with the conclusions he was drawing. Some of the notes indicated the frequency had been muffled, or static-filled, but he’d managed to re-create entire conversations—the words he actually heard underlined, the rest filled in.
I looked up from the sheet. “You’re a mortician,” I said, skeptical.
“Third generation,” he said proudly. “Was there for my own grandfather’s embalming. Stuffed the eyes with cotton myself.”
“They teach this in mortician school?” I said, holding up the paper.
“Nope,” Exel said with a grin. “Learned that in the CIA.”
“You’re a spook?” I asked, shocked.
“Hey, even the CIA needed morticians.”
“Uh, no. I don’t think it did.”
“More than you think,” Exel said, tuning to another frequency. “Back in the old days there were hundreds like me. Not all morticians, of course—but similar. People living normal lives, doing regular jobs, placed in areas where we could do a little good here and there. I spent years teaching mortuary science in Seoul, listening to the radios at night with my team. Everyone imagines spies to be the ‘cocktails and bow tie’ sort, but there weren’t actually many of those. Most of us were regular folks.”
“You,” I said. “Regular?”
“Within plausible limits of believability,” Exel said.
I found myself smiling. “I don’t get you, Exel,” I said, picking up another sheet from his stack. “The other day you almost seemed to sympathize with the do-nothings who flock to this city.”
“I do sympathize with them,” Exel said. “I’d love to do nothing. Seems like a grand profession. It’s never because of the ‘do-nothings’ that people go to war.”
“Says the former spy.”
“Former?” Exel asked, waggling a pencil at me.
“Exel, if nobody changes the world, if nobody works to make it better, then we stagnate.”
“I could live with stagnation,” Exel said, “if it meant no war. No killing.”
I wasn’t certain I agreed. Maybe I was naive, as I’d never lived through any human-on-human wars—my life had been dominated by the conflict with the Epics. But I figured the world would be pretty boring if all you did was stay the same.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Exel continued. “That can’t be. My job now is about doing what I can to make sure people get to live their lives how they want to. If that means basking in the sun and not worrying, then good for them. At least someone in this sorry world is enjoying themselves.”