“Mostly Joey’s work.”

“And Joey, come to that. He’s turning into a human being. You treat him with a certain amount of respect. That’s a new thing for him.”

“You ever see that tattoo on his shoulder?” Matt nodded.

“’Worthless,’” Kindle said. “You suppose he believes that?”

He thought about it. He didn’t know Joey Commoner particularly well. Joey must have been eighteen years old when he had that word dyed into his skin, and it was precisely the kind of thing a pissed-off eighteen-year-old might do. It might mean nothing.

Still, if he had to render an opinion—“I think he might believe it, yes,”

Kindle shook his head.

“Shit,” he said finally. “I didn’t sign on to be anybody’s husband… and I sure as hell didn’t sign on to be a goddamn parent”

Come eight o’clock, Joey established contact with the community of survivors in Toronto. The weather was bad and the signal was poor; voices faded in ghostly fashion. But the contact across all that distance was heartening. Everybody gathered around the microphone and sang “Adeste Fidelis”—they had rehearsed this—and the Canadians sang “Silent Night” through the static. It was snowing there, the Canadian radioman said. The streets were knee-deep and the municipal plows weren’t out this year; the survivors were partying in a downtown hotel: “Lots of rooms and an emergency generator in the basement. We’re cozy.”

The Canadian chorus was bigger than Buchanan’s: perhaps eighty people, almost as large as the nearly one hundred in the Boston community Joey had contacted a few days ago. Which meant, Matt knew, there must be more such groups, but only a few of them had thought to attempt radio communication.

Toronto said “Merry Christmas” and signed off. Joey tried for Boston and a third contact in Duluth, but the weather wasn’t cooperating—“The skip isn’t in,” Joey said.

“We could phone ’em,” Kindle said. “Guy in Boston gave me his telephone number.” But the long-distance exchanges were unreliable these days and, anyway, a phone call wasn’t the same as radio contact; they could wait until tomorrow to pass on Christmas sentiments.

“Telephone service won’t last the winter,” Jacopetti predicted. “Wires go down. Relay towers. I doubt anybody’ll fix ’em.”

Joey went on DXing. Kindle said Joey had twice made brief contacts with other continents—a ham in Costa Rica, and on one memorable clear night a voice speaking what Joey said was Russian but might have been Polish or Ukrainian… the signal faded before he could respond.

Beth Porter, in a gesture that took Matt by surprise, had brought along a VCR and two tapes from the big video store on Ocean Avenue : White Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life. “Because I used to watch those movies every year. You know, I just thought it would be nice.”

Joey took time away from the radio to hook up the tape machine. Kindle freshened the punch and Miriam Flett, in another surprise move, volunteered to make popcorn.

Somewhere between Bing Crosby and Jimmy Stewart, Matt thought: My God, there are only ten of us. But this might work. This might still work. This might still be a town.

Sometime after midnight, the rain turned to sleet and the roads began to ice. It’s a Wonderful Life cranked to an end, and in the silence that followed, without warning, Paul Jacopetti began to weep—racking sobs that shook his large body like seizures. Beth retrieved her videotape: “Jeez, I’m sorry, maybe that was the wrong thing to show.”

“It was fine,” Matt told her. “Don’t apologize.”

But the party was over. Kindle offered bedroll space to anyone who wanted to stay the night. Tim Belanger had confined his drinking to Diet Pepsi and offered a drive to those who hadn’t; he left with Bob Ganish and the still-teary Paul Jacopetti.

Joey was still working the transceiver. Beth told him a couple of times she wanted to go home, she was tired, the streets weren’t getting any safer. “Just wait,” Joey said, turning the dial with a relentlessness that looked nearly compulsive to Matt.

Kindle said Beth could take one of the spare rooms, if she didn’t mind sleeping on the floor, but she shook her head and pursed her lips: “I want to go home.”

“I can drop you off,” Matt said. “If it’s okay with Joey?”

Joey shrugged, his back turned. Another voice crackled from the radio speaker: “…read you, Joseph… signal’s faint.…”

“It’s that Colonel Tyler,” Kindle said. “I swear, that son of a bitch never sleeps.”

“ Tyler,” Matt said. “He’s the guy down south?”

“He moves around. Loner type.” Kindle escorted Matt to the door, out of Joey’s earshot. “You should talk to him some night when the signal’s less feeble. Joey thinks the guy is hot shit.”

“You don’t?”

“Well… it’s too soon to be choosy about the friends we make, right? But Tyler’s full of all kinds of ideas. He says we should form a defense committee or something. Says he’s seen some mayhem out on the road. A lot of peculiar people turned down Contact, he says. He keeps talking about some big project out in Colorado he’s heard about… Matt, he claims the aliens are building a spaceship out there. Is that possible?”

“I guess it’s possible. I suspended judgment last August. You don’t believe him?”

“Oh, I believe him, I guess.” Kindle rubbed his chin. “I believe him, all right. I just don’t, you know, trust him.”

“He’s in no position to do us harm.”

“Not at the moment,” Kindle said.

Beth huddled into the passenger seat. Matt asked her to fasten her seat belt. The roads were slick with sheet ice, and it was easy to imagine his little import sliding into a ditch.

Beth strapped herself in and gazed through the window at dark suburban houses.

He signalled a left turn on Marina, crossing town to Beth’s house, but she touched his arm: “No, keep going… I don’t live there anymore.”

He frowned but crossed the intersection. “Moved out from your family?”

“It never was much of a family, Dr. Wheeler. Mainly just my dad, and he’s—you know. Changed.”

“I guess it’s hard to talk to him.”

“It used to be hard. Now he wants to talk—but it’s worse, in a way. I think part of the deal is that if you want to live forever you have to understand what a shit you were in real life. He figures he kicked me around too much, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. He wants to apologize or make it better somehow.”

“You don’t want that?”

She shook her head fiercely. “I’m not ready for that. Christ, no. It’s hard even being around him since he changed. He even looks different now. You remember how big he used to be? Now he’s almost skinny. None of his clothes fit. He looks—” She chose a word. “Empty.”

She used the nail of her right index finger to draw an oval in the fog on the passenger window. She gave it eyes, eyelashes, a pursed mouth. A self-portrait, Matt thought. “So I’m staying at the Crown Motel. The one by the waterfront, past the ferry dock.”

Matt turned right at the next intersection, toward a blankness of fog and rain, the ocean. “You could have done better than a motel. Look at Tom Kindle.”

“The room is big enough. It has a kitchenette, so I can cook. I get along.”

The rain turned icy again, clattering against the roof of the car. Matt eased past the sign that said CROWN MOTOR INN, the car fishtailing on a slick of ice. He realized he hadn’t seen a single other vehicle during this drive from Tom Kindle’s house-—no traffic of any kind.

A light was burning in Beth’s room. She left it on, she said, so she could find the door at night. “It gets lonely in this big parking lot.” She cocked her head at him. “You want to see the place?”