Finally. A name!
At any rate, while we were waiting for the charge to go through, he actually asked me a question! “You’re that guy from the Feds, ain’t you?” (I’m not going to try to duplicate his accent, which was so thick it sounded like a joke.) “The one doing the survey?”
“Yes, I am!” I replied, putting on my I’m-from-the-government-but-we’re-all-better-now face. “I’ll be going through the area this week, looking for good sites for the Weaving hookups. Not on private property!” I hastened to add. “Not without permission, at least. We’ll be putting them up on public lands.”
“That’s good,” the owner told me. At first I had thought he was an older man, but as I got a closer look I realized that was mostly him prematurely graying. “That’s real good. Lots of stuff there, Outside. Good to get some of that on here. Whatcha looking for your, eh, sites? Maybe a few of us could set you right on where to put your towers up.” He gave me a smile; God help me, but I expected him to be missing half his teeth. “You’ll find people around here’ll be right eager to help out.”
Well, that sounded unexpectedly promising. I’d been expecting to have to overcome resistance to the Reweaving process by the locals. “Mostly, I need to find suitable high ground. Nothing too elevated, but it’s got to be stable. Small hills are good, especially if they’re bare. The fewer trees we have to cut down, the better.”
He laughed at that, harder than I expected. “Bare hills? You’ve come to the right place, Mister Fed! We got plenty of those! And we’ve sussed out every one around here worth sussing, too.”