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Blake and Sano had already departed before dawn for their second hunt. Umezawa, Jason, and James Thurgerson were settling the living spaces for the day and bundling up to fetch fuel and other consumables as may be found on the mountain in February. “Perhaps we can find some mushrooms,” they were saying.
“Look for something black and disgusting on birch trees,” Lars said. “It’s called chaga, and it might be good to have for tea and flavoring and such.”
“On birch trees?”
“Yeah, looks like a rotten human head. You can’t miss it. World War II soldiers learned to use it as a tea. Did them some good. Antioxidizing properties and such.”
When the trio left, Abe took some bear meat and lay down on a leafy couch in the main room, warming himself by a much more comfortable fire, breathing in the humidified air which was slowly circulating from a pot of melting snow on a stone by the fire. He looked up and saw the sky, and he was reminded of the Pawnee Indian exhibit in Chicago, how the wilderness was held at bay, but participation in the wild was attenuated only slightly. Last night’s sleep began to yield to drowsiness, and he laid his head to watch Lars work on the antenna.
At first, it was fascinating, with Lars sorting through and laying out various lengths of strips of aluminum and twisting together bits and pieces of copper wiring. When Abe closed his eyes once, he saw Lars sitting unmoving, pondering, muttering very lowly to himself. When he opened his eyes again, Jason was stoking the fire and checking the water level in the pot. He saw that Lars was using the awl of his multi-tool while James Thurgerson looked over his shoulder, whispering this and that about the project. They were trying to sew together aluminum strips with other aluminum strips. “Keep it too long for now,” they were saying. “Trim it later.”
Abe fell asleep again.
Lars was shaking him. “Abe, the bower won’t let me out. I need to get that spruce tree from the bear attack.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Abe said, rousing himself awake. Some boiled water was cooling near at hand in re-used plastic bottles, so he splashed a little on his eyes to refresh himself. “We had an agreement!” Abe said, raising his voice. “And no tricks, okay?” He and Lars approached the entryway area, which was now protected by a vestibule of sorts, the sight of which explained to Abe how people were coming and going without the concomitant blasts of cold air. The entryway opened.
Lars watched his feet while he stepped over the threshold, taking care not to get tripped by a mischievous and vengeful birch root or branch. When the entryway closed behind them, however, a twiggy branch reached up and smacked him across the face. “Lucky I have this balaclava on, but, boy that stings.”
“Come on!” Abe protested to the bower.
“Oh, never mind,” said Lars. “I deserve it. It was a bonehead move. Just so long as we have a truce, and the birch can keep it toward civility.” Lars checked himself. “Odd saying that, ain’t it? About trees that owe you one. ‘I hope they keep it civil.’” He adjusted his outer shell. “I can get it myself.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. Go ahead back in the warm. As rugged as we would like to be, this cold just wears you down after a while, especially since we don’t know our food supply situation. Go take it easy in the warm.”
Abe assented and turned to reenter the bower. “Stop with the pranks,” he said to the bower. “We need him, despite what he did. Great Elm is watching, you know.” Is there a bad tree amidst this grove? Who is Great Elm? What is Great Elm? We need Lars. Vengeful trees would be bad for us. He said, “Revenge will not bring back the sapling.”
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A short time later Lars reentered without incident. “Nary a scratch this time,” he said. “Hmph.” He seemed a little disappointed. “So who wants to make another trip to the crash site?”
All but Sano and Blake were in the bower, and all of them stared in utter disbelief at his words.
“Just kidding,” he said. “Yeesh, fellas. Although if you think about it, it’s probably safe now. How many helicopters can they have?”
“A few more,” said James Thurgerson.
“Yeah,” said Lars, wistfully. “My kingdom for braided coax cable.”
“I hear you,” said James Thurgerson. “Mine is all nano sized. I still haven’t figured out how they’ve got me grounded for RFI rejection.”
“RFI rejection?” said Umezawa.
“Radio Frequency Interference,” said James Thurgerson. “We’re trying to tune in a range of radio frequencies, but without shielding the antenna feed, we’re going to get nothing but noisy static. It’s a real problem. Coax cable is generally double-shielded with foil and braid, so if you can see any metal or such just lying around…”
“…Or if you can remember any other useful shards and such at the site,” said Lars.
“You can’t be serious,” said Abe drowsily.
“Serious as a heart attack,” Lars replied. “Ears, remember? We are deaf, dumb, and blind right now. With some shielding we can at least hear and speak. Although, speaking—I wouldn’t wanna do that just yet.”
“They know we’re around here somewhere,” said James Thurgerson. “Although why they haven’t set up a net, I don’t know.”
“Probably geography,” said Lars. “But they’ve got the pinch points manned, or my name ain’t Lars Malraven.” He paused. Then, excitedly, he said, “If we had ears, we’d be able to find out where those pinch points are!”
James Thurgerson smiled at Lars, saying to the party, “And if anyone has anything with a known length. We need a known length in order to tune the antenna. Anybody got anything? Like a four-inch screen that’s actually four inches and not nominally four inches?”
“They’ve all got something that’s nominally four inches,” Lars said. He and James Thurgerson laughed.
“What are you talking about?” Umezawa said.
“Phone screens,” James Thurgerson said.
“All our phones got lost and burned up by the crash.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Lars. “I’m so used to everyone having a phone. Easy to forget.”
Silence fell over the party.
“Hm…” said Umezawa. “My foot is exactly twenty-six centimeters.”
“How do you know?” James Thurgerson asked.
“I got my foot caught in one of those grates for subways to let off steam, or whatever—”
“A ventilation grate, yes,” said Lars.
“Anyway, I got my foot caught in it, and Jason pushed me down and my shoe tore, so I had to go to a shoe store to get a new pair of shoes.”
“What, back in NYC?” said Lars.
“Yeah, the day before we left.”
“How did you get your foot caught in a ventilation grate?”
“I don’t know; I just did.”
“It was hilarious,” said Jason, who was stoking the fire and boiling more water. “It was even funnier when Ume fell down and his shoe tore.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Lars said, cocking his head. “Let’s see your foot, Ume. Twenty-six centimeters?”
“Yeah,” he said, taking off his boots and socks, “exactly, from toe to heel.”
James Thurgerson rigged up a jig of leftover pieces of metal, made the measurement, transferred it to a length of cord, and resumed tuning the two antennas with Lars. Lars was wrapping a short length of solid-core copper wire with strips of cloth. After securing the cloth with tape from the first aid kit, he began to wrap the now-cloth-covered wire with braided copper wire. After a bit more tape he held it up to James Thurgerson. “What do you think, Jim? Homemade coax cable. Fifty ohms?” James Thurgerson shrugged.
After a bit more crafting, James Thurgerson and Lars called the party to gather around, and they held the two antennas aloft. One antenna was mounted on the small spruce trunk as a beam, with a crosspiece of aluminum in the middle, a longer piece of flat aluminum strip fastened across the beam toward one end, and a shorter piece of flat aluminum toward the other end. The other antenna was basically a long piece of aluminum twisted and shaped into a very narrow j-shape.
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“Here we are!” said Lars. “An omnidirectional j-pole to hear whatever may be out there on our side of the mountain, and a yagi to find the location of any source we hear.”
“Wow,” said Jason, Umezawa, and Abe.
“Hey, save your sarcasm for when it don’t work,” said Lars, laughing. “Here’s our best try for ears.”
“Yeah,” said Jason. “This is important.”
“But we’re so tired,” said Abe, looking up into the sky through the smoke vent, noticing that the daylight was fading. “I feel like I will never be not tired ever again.” Oh, Stoic, are you whining? “I’m so tired I can’t even do The Morose Alpaca past the season one OVA.”
Laughing, Lars pulled out his handheld shortwave radio transceiver and took off the short rubber antenna, saying, “Bye, rubber duckie!” He began to fiddle with the end of the homemade coaxial cable, muttering, “Gotta keep the shielding separate from the transmission line,” punctuated by a few mild epithets. He twisted it tight with some wiring still within its plastic sheathing, a thin piece of wire like a bread bag tie, then turned his attention to attaching the other end of the coaxial cable to the j-pole antenna.
“Well, fellas,” he said. “Here goes!” He clicked the radio on.
At that very moment, Sano came rushing in through the vestibule. “Jackpot!” she said, breathing heavily, radiating the joy of success. “We downed an elk! A big fat elk cow!”
“Food!” said Umezawa.
They hurried to follow Sano into the twilight to see the dead elk cow, leaving Lars alone with his electronic ears, leaving Lars alone with the bower.
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