"But Parliament's not going to throw the airwaves open because no elected politician can be responsible for screwing up the voters' televisions, because that's the surest-fire way to not get reelected. Which means that when you say, 'Hey, our freedom of speech is being clobbered by bad laws,' the other side can say, 'Go study some physics, hippie, or produce a working network, or shut up.' "The radios we're installing now are about one millionth as smart as they could be, and they use one millionth as much spectrum as they could without stepping on anyone else's signal, but they're legal, and they're letting more people communicate than ever. There are people all over the world doing this, and whenever the policy wonks go to the radio cops to ask for more radio spectrum to do this stuff with, they parade people like us in front of them. We're like the Pinocchio's nose on the face of the radio cops: They say that only their big business buddies can be trusted with the people's airwaves, and we show them up for giant liars." He fell silent and looked at them. Adam held his breath. Sara nodded and broke the silence. "You know, that sounds pretty cool, actually." # Kurt insisted on putting up that access point, while Alan and Lyman steadied the ladder. Sara came out and joked with Lyman, and Alan got distracted watching them, trying to understand this notion of "cousins." They had an easy rapport, despite all their differences, and spoke in a shorthand of family weddings long past and crotchety relatives long dead. So none of them were watching when Kurt overbalanced and dropped the Makita, making a wild grab for it, foot slipping off the rung, and toppled backward. It was only Kurt's wild bark of panic that got Adam to instinctively move, to hold out his arms and look up, and he caught Kurt under the armpits and gentled him to the ground, taking the weight of Kurt's fall in a bone-jarring crush to his rib cage. "You okay?" Alan said once he'd gotten his breath back. "Oof," Kurt said. "Yeah." They were cuddled together on the sidewalk, Kurt atop him, and Lyman and Sara bent to help them apart. "Nice catch," Lyman said. Kurt was helped to his feet, and he declared that he'd sprained his ankle and nothing worse, and they helped him back to his shop, where a couple of his kids doted over him, getting him an ice pack and a pillow and his laptop and one of the many dumpster-dived discmen from around the shop and some of the CDs of old punk bands that he favored. There he perched, growly as a wounded bear, master of his kingdom, for the next two weeks, playing online and going twitchy over the missed dumpsters going to the landfill every night without his expert picking over. Alan visited him every day and listened raptly while Kurt gave him the stats for the day's network usage, and Kurt beamed proud the whole while. #