Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)

1

Her knitting needles rested in a leather pouch in pairs, two matching sticks of wood, side by side like the delicate bones of the wrist wrapped in dried and ancient flesh. Wood and leather. Artifacts like clues handed down from generation to generation, innocuous winks from her ancestors, harmless things like children’s books and wood carvings that managed to survive the uprising and the purge. Each clue stood as a small hint of a world beyond their own, a world where buildings stood aboveground like the crumbling ruins visible over the gray and lifeless hills.

After much deliberation, Mayor Jahns selected a pair of needles. She always chose carefully, for proper gauge was critical. Too small a needle, and the knitting would prove difficult, the resulting sweater too tight and constricting. Too large a needle on the other hand, and it would create a garment full of large holes. The knitting would remain loose. One would be able to see straight through it.

Her choice made, the wooden bones removed from their leather wrist, Jahns reached for the large ball of cotton yarn. It was hard to believe, weighing that knot of twisted fibers, that her hands could make of it something ordered, something useful. She fished for the end of the yarn, dwelling on how things came to be. Right now, her sweater was little more than a tangle and a thought. Going back, it had once been bright fibers of cotton blooming in the dirt farms, pulled, cleaned, and twisted into long strands. Even further, and the very substance of the cotton plant itself could be traced to those souls who had been laid to rest in its soil, feeding the roots with their own leather while the air above baked under the full glory of powerful grow lights.

Jahns shook her head at her own morbidity. The older she got, the quicker her mind went to death. Always, in the end, the thoughts of death.

With practiced care, she looped the end of the yarn around the point of one needle and crafted a triangle-shaped web with her fingers. The tip of the needle danced through this triangle, casting the yarn on. This was her favorite part, casting on. She liked beginnings. The first row. Out of nothing comes something. Since her hands knew what to do, she was free to glance up and watch a gust of morning wind chase pockets of dust down the slope of a hill. The clouds were low and ominous today. They loomed like worried parents over these smaller darting clouds of windswept soil, which tumbled like laughing children, twirling and spilling, following the dips and valleys as they flowed toward a great crease where two hills collided to become one. Here, Jahns watched as the puffs of dust splashed against a pair of dead bodies, the frolicking twins of dirt evaporating into ghosts, solid playful children returning once more to dreams and scattered mist.

Mayor Jahns settled back in her faded plastic chair and watched the fickle winds play across the forbidding world outside. Her hands worked the yarn into rows, requiring only occasional glances to keep her place. Often, the dust flew toward the silo’s sensors in sheets, each wave causing her to cringe as if a physical blow were about to land. This assault of blurring grime was anytime difficult to watch, but especially brutal the day after a cleaning. Each touch of dust on the clouding lenses was a violation, a dirty man touching something pure. Jahns remembered what that felt like. And sixty years later, she sometimes wondered if this misting of grime that led to a different sort of bodily sacrifice wasn’t even more painful for her to abide.

“Ma’am?”

Mayor Jahns turned away from the sight of the dead hills cradling her recently deceased sheriff. She turned to find Deputy Marnes standing by her side.

“Yes, Marnes?”

“You asked for these.”

Marnes placed three manilla folders on the cafeteria table and slid them toward her through the scattered crumbs and juice stains of last night’s cleaning celebration. Jahns set her knitting aside and reluctantly reached for the folders. What she really wanted was to be left alone a little longer to watch rows of knots become something. She wanted to enjoy the peace and quiet of this unspoiled sunrise before the grime and the years dulled it, before the rest of the upper silo awoke, rubbed the sleep from their eyes and the stains from their consciences, and came up to crowd around her in their own plastic chairs and take it all in.

But duty beckoned; she was mayor by choice; and the silo needed a sheriff. So Jahns put aside her own wants and desires and weighed the folders in her lap. Caressing the cover of the first one, she looked down at her hands with something between pain and acceptance. The backs of them appeared as dry and crinkled as the pulp paper hanging out of the folders. She glanced over at Deputy Marnes, whose white mustache was flecked with the occasional black. She remembered when the colors there were the other way around. She remembered when his tall and thin frame were a mark of vigor and youth rather than gaunt fragility. He was handsome still, but only because she knew him from long ago, only because her old eyes still remembered.

“You know,” she told Marnes, “we could do this different this time. You could let me promote you to sheriff, hire yourself a deputy, and do this proper.”

Marnes laughed. “I’ve been deputy almost as long as you’ve been mayor, Ma’am. Don’t figure on being nothing else but dead one day.”

Jahns nodded. One of the things she loved about having Marnes around was that his thoughts could be so black as to make hers shine gray. “I fear that day is rapidly approaching for us both,” she said.

“Truer than true, I reckon. Never figured to outlive so many. Sure as sin don’t see me outliving you.” Marnes rubbed his mustache and studied the view of the outside. Jahns smiled at him, opened the folder on top, and studied the first bio.

“That’s three decent candidates,” Marnes said. “Just like you asked for. Be happy to work with any of them. Juliette, I think she’s in the middle there, would be my first pick. Works down in Mechanical. Don’t come up much, but me and Holston—”

Marnes paused and cleared his throat. Jahns glanced over and saw that her Deputy’s gaze had crept toward that dark crook in the hill. He covered his mouth with a fist of sharp knuckles and faked a cough.

“Excuse me,” he said. “As I was sayin’, the sheriff and me worked a death down there a few years back. This Juliette—I think she prefers Jules, come to think of it—was a right shiner. Sharp as a tack. Big help on this case, good at spotting details, handling people, being diplomatic but firm, all that. I don’t think she comes up past the eighties much. A down-deeper for sure, which we ain’t had in a while.”

Jahns sorted through Juliette’s folder, checking her family tree, her voucher history, her current pay in chits. She was listed as a shift foreman with good marks. No history in the lottery.

“Never married?” Jahns asked.

“Nope. Something of a johnboy. A wrencher, you know? We were down there a week, saw how the guys took to her. Now, she could have her pick of them boys but chooses not to. Kind of person who leaves an impression but prefers to go it alone.”

“Sure seems like she left an impression on you,” Jahns said, regretting it immediately. She hated the jealous tone in her own voice.

Marnes shifted his weight to his other foot. “Well, you know me, Mayor. I’m always sizing up candidates. Anything to keep from bein’ promoted.”

Jahns smiled. “What about the other two?” She checked the names, wondering if a down-deeper was a good idea. Or possibly worried about Marnes having a crush. She recognized the name on the top folder. Peter Billings. He worked a few floors down in judicial, as a clerk or a judge’s shadow.

“Honestly, ma’am? They’re filler to make it seem fair. Like I said, I’d work with them, but I think Jules is your girl. Been a long time since we had a lass for a Sheriff. Be a popular choice with an election comin’ up.”

“That won’t be why we choose,” Jahns said. “Whoever we decide on will probably be here long after we’re gone—” She stopped herself as she recalled having said the same thing about Holston, back when he’d been chosen.

Jahns closed the folder and returned her attention to the wallscreen. A small tornado had formed at the base of the hill, the gathering dust whipped into an organized frenzy. It built some steam, this small wisp, as it swelled into a larger cone, spinning and spinning on a wavering tip like a child’s top as it raced toward sensors that fairly sparkled in the wan rays of a clear sunrise.

“I think we should go see her,” Jahns finally said. She kept the folders in her lap, fingers like rolled parchment toying with the rough edges of handmade paper.

“Ma’am? I’d rather us fetch her up here. Do the interview in your office like we’ve always done. It’s a long way down to her and an even longer way back up.”

“I appreciate the concern, Deputy, I do. But it’s been a long while since I’ve been much past the fortieth. My knees are no excuse to not see my people—”

The Mayor stopped. The tornado of dust wavered, turned, and headed straight for them. It grew and grew—the wide angle of the lens distorting it into a monster much larger and more fierce than she knew it to actually be—and then it blew over the sensor array, the entire cafeteria descending into a brief darkness until the zephyr caromed past, retreating across the screen in the lounge and leaving behind it a view of the world now tainted with a slight, dingy film.

“Damn those things,” Deputy Marnes said through gritted teeth. The aged leather of his holster squeaked as he rested his hand on the butt of his gun, and Jahns imagined the old Deputy out on that landscape, chasing the wind on thin legs while pumping bullets into a cloud of fading dust.

The two of them sat silent a moment, surveying the damage. Finally, Jahns spoke.

“This trip won’t be about the election, Marnes. It won’t be for votes, either. For all I know, I’ll run again unopposed. So we won’t make a deal of it, and we’ll travel light and quiet. I want to see my people, not be seen by them.” She looked over at him, found that he was watching her. “It’ll be for me, Marnes. A getaway.”

She turned back to the view.

“Sometimes… sometimes I just think I’ve been up here too long. The both of us. I think we’ve been anywhere too long—”

The ringing of morning footsteps on the spiral staircase gave her pause, and they both turned toward the sound of life, the sound of a waking day. And she knew it was time to start getting the images of dead things out of her mind. Or at least, to bury them a while.

“We’ll go down and get us a proper gauge of this Juliette, you and me. Because sometimes, sitting here, looking out on what the world makes us do—it needles me deep, Marnes. It needles me straight through.”

They met after breakfast in Holston’s old office. Jahns still thought of it as his, a day later. It was too early for her to think of the room as anything else. She stood beyond the twin desks and old filing cabinets and peered into the empty holding cell while Deputy Marnes gave last minute instructions to Terry, a security worker from IT who often held down the fort while Marnes and Holston were away on a case. Standing dutifully behind Terry was a teenager named Marcha, a young girl with dark hair and bright eyes who was apprenticing for work in IT. She was Terry’s shadow—just about half the silo had one. They ranged in age from twelve to twenty, these ever-present sponges absorbing the lessons and techniques for keeping the silo operational one generation more.

Deputy Marnes reminded Terry how rowdy people got after a cleaning. Once the tension was released, people tended to live it up a little. Most of them were too young to remember the last double cleaning, so they thought it couldn’t happen. They thought, for a few months at least, that anything went.

The warning hardly needed saying—the revelry in the next room could be heard through the shut door. Most residents from the top forty were already packed into the cafeteria and lounge. Hundreds more from the mids and the down deep would trickle up throughout the day, asking off work and turning in holiday chits just to see the mostly clear view. It was a pilgrimage for many. Some only came up once every few years, stood around for an hour muttering that it looked the same as they remembered, then shooing their children down the stairs ahead of them, fighting the upward surging crowds.

Terry was left with the keys and a temporary badge. Marnes checked the batteries in his wireless, made sure the volume on the office unit was up, and inspected his gun. He shook Terry’s hand and wished him luck. Jahns sensed it was almost time for them to go and turned away from the empty cell. She said goodbye to Terry, gave Marcha a nod, and followed Marnes out the door.

“You feel okay leaving right after a cleaning?” she asked as they stepped out into the cafeteria. She knew how rowdy it would get later that night, and how testy the crowd. It seemed an awful time to drag him away on a mostly selfish errand.

“Are you kidding? I need this. I need to get away.” He glanced toward the wallscreen, which was obscured by the crowds. “I still can’t figure what Holston was thinking, can’t reckon why he never talked to me about all that was going on in that head of his. Maybe by the time we get back, I won’t feel him in the office anymore, ‘cause right now I can’t hardly breathe in there.”

Jahns thought about this as they fought through the crowd. Plastic cups sloshed with a mix of fruit juices, and she smelled the sting of tub-brewed alcohol in the air, but ignored it. People were wishing her well, asking her to be careful, promising to vote. News of their trip had leaked out faster than the spiked punch, despite hardly telling anyone. Most were under the impression that it was a goodwill trip. A reelection campaign. The younger silo residents, who only remembered Holston as sheriff, were already saluting Marnes and giving him that honorific title. Anyone with wrinkles in their eyes knew better. They nodded to the duo as they passed through the cafeteria and wished them a different sort of unspoken luck. Keep us going, their eyes said. Make it so my kids live as long as me. Don’t let it unravel, not just yet.

Jahns lived under the weight of this pressure, a burden brutal on more than knees. She kept quiet as they made their way to the central stairwell. A handful called for her to make a speech, but the lone voices did not gain traction. No chant formed, much to her relief. What would she say? That she didn’t know why it all held together? That she didn’t even understand her own knitting, how if you made knots, and if you did it right, things just worked out? Would she tell them it only took one snip for it all to unravel? One cut, and you could pull and pull and turn that garment into a pile. Did they really expect her to understand, when all she did was follow the rules, and somehow it kept working out, year after year after year?

Because she didn’t understand what held it together. And she didn’t understand their mood, this celebration. Were they drinking and shouting because they were safe? Because they’d been spared by fate, passed over for cleaning? Her people cheered while a good man, her friend, her partner in keeping them alive and well, lay dead on a hill next to his wife. If she gave a speech, if it weren’t full of the forbidden, it would be this: That no two better people had ever gone to cleaning of their own free wills, and what did that say about the lot of them who remained?

Now was not the time for speeches. Or for drinking. Or for being merry. Now was the hour of quiet contemplation, which was one of the reasons Jahns knew she needed to get away. Things had changed. Not just by the day, but by the long years. She knew better than most. Maybe old lady McNeil down in Supply knew, could see it coming. One had to live a long time to be sure, but now she was. And as time marched on, carrying her world faster and faster than her feet could catch up, Mayor Jahns knew that it would soon leave her completely behind. And her great fear, unspoken but daily felt, was that this world probably wouldn’t stagger very far along without her.

2

Jahns’ walking stick made a conspicuous ring as it impacted each metal step. It soon became a metronome for their descent, timing the music of the stairwell, which was crowded and vibrating with the energy of a recent cleaning. All the traffic save for the two of them seemed to be heading upward. They jostled against the flow, elbows brushing, cries of, “Hey, Mayor!” followed by nods to Marnes. And Jahns saw it on their faces: the temptation to call him sheriff tempered by their respect for the awful nature of his assumed promotion.

“How many floors you up for?” Marnes asked.

“Why, you tired already?” Jahns glanced over her shoulder to smirk at him, saw his bushy mustache twisted up in a smile of his own.

“Going down ain’t a problem for me. It’s the going back up I can’t stand.”

Their hands briefly collided on the twisted railing of the spiral staircase, Jahns’ hand trailing behind her, Marnes’ reaching ahead. She felt like telling him she wasn’t tired at all, but she did feel a sudden weariness, an exhaustion more mental than physical. She had a childish vision of more youthful times and pictured Marnes scooping her up and carrying her down the staircase in his arms. There would be a sweet release of strength and responsibility, a sinking in to another’s power, no need to feign her own. This was not a remembrance of the past—it was a future that had never happened. And Jahns felt guilty for even thinking it. She felt her husband beside her, his ghost perturbed by her thoughts—

“Mayor? How many you thinking?”

The two of them stopped and hugged the rail as a porter trudged up the stairs. Jahns recognized the boy, Conner, still in his teens but already with a strong back and steady stride. He had an array of bundles strapped together and balanced on his shoulders. The sneer on his face was not from exhaustion or pain, but annoyance. Who were all these people suddenly on his stairwell? These tourists? Jahns thought of something encouraging to say, some small verbal reward for these people who did a job her knees never could, but he was already gone on his strong young feet, carrying food and supplies up from the down deep, slowed only by the crush of traffic attempting to worm up through the silo for a peek of the clear and wide outside.

She and Marnes caught their breath for a moment between flights. Marnes handed her his canteen, and she took a polite sip before passing it back.

“I’d like to do half today,” she finally answered. “But I want to make a few stops on the way.”

Marnes took a swig of water and began twisting the cap back on. “House calls?”

“Something like that. I want to stop at the nursery on twenty.”

Marnes laughed. “Kissin’ babies? Mayor, ain’t nobody gonna vote you out. Not at your age.”

Jahns didn’t laugh. “Thanks,” she said, with a mask of false pain. “But no, not to kiss babies.” She turned her back and resumed walking; Marnes followed. “It’s not that I don’t trust your professional opinion about this Jules lady. You haven’t picked anything but a winner since I’ve been mayor—”

“Even—?” Marnes interrupted.

“Especially him, “Jahns said, knowing what he was thinking. “He was a good man, but he had a broken heart. That’ll take even the best of them down.”

Marnes grunted his agreement. “So what’re we checkin’ at the nursery? This Juliette weren’t born on the twentieth, not if I recall—”

“No, but her father works there now. I thought, since we were passing by, that we’d get a feel for the man, get some insight on his daughter.”

“A father for a character witness?” Marnes laughed. “Don’t reckon you’ll get much of an impartial, there.”

“I think you’ll be surprised,” Jahns said. “I had Alice do some digging while I was packing. She found something interesting.”

“Yeah?”

“This Juliette character still has every vacation chit she’s ever earned.”

“That ain’t rare for Mechanical,” Marnes said. “They do a lot of overtime.”

“Not only does she not get out, she doesn’t have visitors.”

“I still don’t see where you’re going.”

Jahns waited while a family passed. A young boy, six or seven probably, rode on his father’s shoulders, his head stooped to avoid the undersides of the stairs above. The mother brought up the rear, an overnight bag draped over her shoulder, a swaddled infant cradled in her arms. It was the perfect family, Jahns thought. Replacing what they took. Two for two. Just what the lottery aimed for and sometimes provided.

“Well then, let me tell you where I’m going with this,” she told Marnes. “I want to find this girl’s father, look him in the eyes, and ask him why, in the nearly twenty years since his daughter moved to Mechanical, he hasn’t visited her. Not once.”

She looked back at Marnes, saw him frowning at her beneath his mustache.

“And why she hasn’t once made her way up to see him,” she added.

The traffic thinned as they made their way into the teens and past the upper apartments. With each step down, Jahns dreaded having to reclaim those lost inches on the way back up. This was the easy part, she reminded herself. The descent was like the uncoiling of a steel spring, pushing her down. It reminded Jahns of nightmares she’d had of drowning. Silly nightmares, considering she’d never seen enough water to submerge herself in, much less enough that she couldn’t stand to breathe. But they were like the occasional dreams of falling from great heights, some legacy of another time, broken fragments unearthed in each of their sleeping minds that suggested: We weren’t supposed to live like this.

And so the descent, this spiraling downward, was much like the imagined drowning that swallowed her at night. It felt inexorable and inextricable. Like a weight pulling her down combined with the knowledge that she’d never be able to claw her way back up.

They passed the garment district next, the land of multi-colored coveralls and the place her balls of yarn came from. The smell of the dyes and other chemicals drifted over the landing. A window cut into the curving cinderblocks looked through to a small food shop at the edge of the district. It had been ransacked by the crowds, shelves emptied by the crushing demand of exhausted hikers and the extra post-cleaning traffic. Several porters crowded up the stairs with heavy loads, trying their best to satisfy demand, and Jahns recognized an awful truth about yesterday’s cleaning: The barbaric practice brought more than psychological relief, more than just a clear view of the outside—it also buttressed the silo’s economy. There was suddenly an excuse to travel. An excuse to trade. And as gossip flowed, and family and old friends met again for the first time in months or perhaps years, there was a vitality injected into the entire silo. It was like an old body stretching and loosening its joints, blood flowing to the extremities. A decrepit thing was becoming alive again.

“Mayor!”

She turned to find Marnes almost out of sight around the spiral above her. She paused while he caught up, watching his feet as he hurried.

“Easy,” he said. “I can’t keep up if you take off like that.”

Jahns apologized. She hadn’t been aware of any change in her pace.

As they entered the second tier of apartments, down below the sixteenth floor, Jahns realized she was already in territory she hadn’t seen in almost a year. There was the rattle, here, of younger legs chasing along the stairwell, getting tangled up in the slow climbers. The grade school for the upper third was just above the nursery. From the sound of all the traffic and voices, school had been canceled. Jahns imagined it was a combination of knowing how few would turn up for class (with parents taking their kids up to the view) plus how many teachers would want to do the same. They passed the landing for the school, where chalk games of Hop and Square-Four were blurred from the day’s traffic, where kids sat hugging the rails, skinned knees poking out, feet swinging below the jutting landings, and where catcalls and eager shouts faded to secret whispers in the presence of adults.

“Glad we’re almost there, I need a rest,” Marnes said, as they spiraled down one more flight to the nursery. “I just hope this feller is available to see us.”

“He will be,” Jahns said. “Alice wired him from my office that we were coming.”

They crossed traffic at the nursery landing and caught their breath. When Marnes passed his canteen, Jahns took a long pull and then checked her hair in its curved and dented surface.

“You look fine,” he said.

“Mayoral?”

He laughed. “And then some.”

Jahns thought she saw a twinkle in his old, brown eyes when he said this, but it was probably the light bouncing off the canteen as he brought it to his lips.

“Twenty floors in just over two hours. Don’t recommend the pace, but I’m glad we’re this far already.” He wiped his mustache and reached around to try and slip the canteen back into his pack.

“Here,” Jahns said. She took the canteen from him and slid it into the webbed pouch on the rear of his pack. “And let me do the talking in here,” she reminded him.

Marnes lifted his arms and showed his palms, as if no other thought had ever crossed his mind. He stepped past her and pulled one of the heavy metal doors open, the customary squeal of rusted hinges not coming as expected. The silence startled Jahns. She was used to hearing the chirp of old doors all up and down the staircase as they opened and closed. They were the stairwell’s version of the wildlife found in the farms, ever present and always singing. But these hinges were coated in oil, rigorously maintained. The signs on the walls of the waiting room reinforced the observation. They demanded silence in bold letters, accompanied by pictures of fingers over lips and circles with slashes through open mouths. The nursery evidently took their quietude seriously.

“Don’t remember so many signs last time I was here,” Marnes whispered.

“Maybe you were too busy yapping to notice,” Jahns replied.

A nurse glared at them through a glass window, and Jahns elbowed Marnes.

“Mayor Jahns to see Peter Nichols,” she told the woman.

The nurse behind the window didn’t blink. “I know who you are. I voted for you.”

“Oh, of course. Well, thank you.”

“If you’ll come around.” The woman hit a button on her desk and the door beside her buzzed faintly. Marnes pushed on the door, and Jahns followed him through.

“If you’ll don these.”

The nurse—Margaret, according to the hand-drawn tag on her collar—held out two neatly folded white cloth robes. Jahns accepted them both and handed one to Marnes.

“You can leave your bags with me.”

There was no refusing Margaret. Jahns felt at once that she was in this much younger woman’s world, that she had become her inferior when she passed through that softly buzzing door. She leaned her walking stick against the wall, took her pack off and lowered it to the ground, and then shrugged on the robe. Marnes struggled with his until Margaret helped, holding the sleeve in place. He wrestled the robe over his denim shirt and held the loose ends of the long fabric waist tie as if its working was beyond his abilities. He watched Jahns knot hers, and finally made enough of a mess of it for the robe to hold fairly together.

“What?” he asked, noticing the way Jahns was watching him. “This is what I’ve got cuffs for. So I never learned to tie a knot, so what?”

“In sixty years,” Jahns said.

Margaret pressed another button on her desk and pointed down the hall. “Doctor Nichols is in the nursery. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

Jahns led the way. Marnes followed, asking her: “Why is that so hard to believe?”

“I think it’s cute, actually.”

Marnes snorted. “That’s an awful word to use on a man my age.”

Jahns smiled to herself. At the end of the hall, she paused before a set of double doors before pushing them open a crack. The light in the room beyond was dim. She opened the door further, and they entered a sparse but clean waiting room. She remembered a similar one from the mid levels where she had waited with a friend to be reunited with her child. A glass wall looked into a room that held a handful of cribs and bassinets. It was too dark inside to see if any of the small beds stirred with newborns. Jahns, of course, was notified of every birth, signed a letter of congratulations and a birth certificate for each one, but the names ran together with the days. She could rarely remember what level the parents lived on, if it was their first or second. It made her sad to admit it, but those certificates had just become more paper for her to sign.

The shadowy outline of an adult moved among the small cribs, the shiny clamp of a clipboard and the flash of a metal pen winking from the light of the observation room. The dark shape was obviously tall, with the gait and build of a man. He took his time, noting something as he hovered over a crib, the two shimmers of metal uniting to jot a note. When he was done, he crossed the room and passed through a wide door to join Marnes and Jahns in the waiting room.

Peter Nichols was an imposing man, Jahns saw. Tall and lean, but not like Marnes, who seemed to fold and unfold unsure limbs to move about. Peter was lean like a habitual exerciser, like a few porters Jahns knew who could take the stairs two at a time and make it look like they’d been expressly designed for such a gait. It was height that lent confidence. Jahns could feel it as she took Peter’s outstretched hand and let him pump it firmly.

“You came,” Doctor Nichols said simply. It was a cold observation. There was only a hint of surprise. He shook Marnes’ hand, but his eyes returned to Jahns. “I explained to your secretary that I wouldn’t be much help. I’m afraid I haven’t seen Juliette since she became a shadow twenty years ago.”

“Well, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.” Jahns glanced at the cushioned benches where she imagined anxious grandparents, aunts, and uncles waited while parents were united with their newborns. “Could we sit?”

Doctor Nichols nodded and waved them over.

“I take each of my appointments for office very seriously,” Jahns explained, sitting across from the doctor. “At my age, I expect most judges and lawmen I install to outlive me, so I choose carefully.”

“But they don’t always, do they?” Doctor Nichols tilted his head, no expression on his lean and carefully shaven face. “Outlive you, I mean.”

Jahns swallowed. Marnes stirred on the bench beside her.

“You must value family,” Jahns said, changing the subject, realizing this was just another observation, no harm meant. “To have shadowed so long and to choose such a demanding line of work.”

Nichols nodded.

“Why do you and Juliette never visit? I mean, not once in almost twenty years. She’s your only child.”

Nichols turned his head slightly, his eyes drifting to the wall. Jahns was momentarily distracted by the sight of another form moving behind the glass, a nurse making the rounds. Another set of doors led off to what she assumed were the delivery rooms, where a convalescing new mother right now was probably waiting to be handed her most precious possession.

“I had a son as well,” Doctor Nichols said.

Jahns felt herself reaching for her bag to procure the folders within, but it wasn’t by her side. This was a detail she had missed, a brother.

“You couldn’t have known,” Nichols said, correctly reading the shock on Mayor Jahns’ face. “He didn’t survive. Technically, he wasn’t born. The lottery moved on.”

“I’m sorry—”

She fought the urge to reach over and hold Marnes’ hand. It had been decades since the two of them had purposefully touched, even innocently, but the sudden sadness in the room punctured that intervening time.

“His name was going to be Nicholas, my father’s father’s name. He was born prematurely. One pound eight ounces.”

The clinical precision in his voice was somehow sadder than his processing any feelings might have been.

“They intubated, moved him into an incubator, but there were… complications.” Doctor Nichols looked down at the backs of his hands. “Juliette was twelve at the time. She was as excited as we were, if you can imagine, to have a baby brother on the way. She was one year out from shadowing her mother, who was a delivery nurse.” Nichols glanced up. “Not here in this nursery, mind you, but in the old mid-level nursery. Where we both worked. I was still an intern then.”

“And Juliette?” Mayor Jahns still didn’t understand the connection.

“There was a failure with the incubator. When Nicholas—” the doctor turned his head to the side and reached halfway to his eyes, but was able to compose himself. “I’m sorry. I still call him that.”

“It’s okay.”

Mayor Jahns was holding Deputy Marnes’ hand. She wasn’t sure when or how that had happened. The doctor didn’t seem to notice, or more likely, care.

“Poor Juliette.” He shook his head. “She was distraught. She blamed Rhoda at first, this experienced delivery nurse who had done nothing but work a miracle to give our boy the slim chance he had. I explained this. I think Juliette knew. She just needed someone to hate.” He nodded to Jahns. “Girls that age, you know?”

“Believe it or not, I remember.” Jahns forced a smile and Doctor Nichols returned it. She felt Marnes squeeze her hand.

“It wasn’t until her mother died that she took to blaming the incubator that had failed. Well, not the incubator, but the poor condition it was in. The general state of rot all things become.”

“Your wife died from the complications?” It was another detail Jahns felt she must have missed from the file.

“My wife killed herself a week later.”

Again, the clinical detachment. Jahns wondered if this was a survival mechanism that had kicked in after these events, or a personality trait already in place.

“Seems like I would remember that,” Deputy Marnes said, the first words he’d uttered since introducing himself to the doctor.

“Well, I wrote the certificate myself. So I could put whatever cause I wanted—”

“And you admit to this?” Marnes seemed ready to leap off the bench. To do what, Jahns could hardly guess. She held his arm to keep him in place.

“Beyond the statute of limitations? Of course. I admit it. It was a worthless lie, anyway. Juliette was smart, even at that age. She knew. And this is what drove her—”

He stopped himself.

“Drove her what?” Mayor Jahns asked. “Crazy?”

“No.” Doctor Nichols shook his head. “I wasn’t going to say that. It’s what drove her away. She applied for a change in casters. Demanded to move down to Mechanical, to enter the Shop as a shadow. She was a year young for that sort of placement, but I agreed. I signed off on it. I thought she’d go, get some deep air, come back. I was naive. I thought the freedom would be good for her.”

“And you haven’t seen her since?”

“Once. For her mother’s funeral, just a few days later. She marched up on her own, attended the burial, gave me a hug, then marched back down. All without rest, from what I’ve heard. I try to keep up with her. I have a colleague in the deep nursery who will wire now and then with a bit of news. It’s all focus, focus, focus with her.”

Nichols paused and laughed.

“You know, when she was young, all I saw was her mother in her. But she grew up to be more like me.”

“Is there anything you know that would preclude her from or make her ill suited for the job of silo sheriff? You do understand what’s involved with the job, right?”

“I understand.” Nichols looked over at Marnes, his eye drifting to the copper badge visible through the open, shoddily tied robe, down to the bulge of a pistol at his side. “All the little lawmen throughout the silo have to have someone up top, giving commands, is that it?”

“More or less,” Jahns said.

“Why her?”

Marnes cleared his throat. “She helped us with an investigation once—”

“Jules? She was up here?”

“No. We were down there.”

“She has no training.”

“None of us have,” Marnes said. “It’s more of a… political office. A citizen’s post.”

“She won’t agree to it.”

“Why not?” Jahns asked.

Nichols shrugged. “You’ll see for yourself, I suppose.” He stood. “I wish I could give you more time, but I really should get back.” He glanced at the set of double doors. “We’ll be bringing a family in soon—”

“I understand.” Jahns rose and shook his hand. “I appreciate you seeing us.”

He laughed. “Did I have a choice?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I wish I would’ve known that sooner.”

He smiled, and Jahns saw that he was joking. Or attempting to. As they parted company and walked back down the hallway to collect their things and return the robes, Jahns found herself more and more intrigued by this nomination of Marnes’. It wasn’t his style, a woman from the down deep. A person with baggage. She wondered if his judgment was perhaps clouded by other factors. And as he held the door for her, leading out to the main waiting room, Mayor Jahns wondered if she was going along with him because her judgment was clouded as well.

3

It was lunchtime, but neither of them were powerfully hungry. Jahns nibbled on a cornbar while she walked, priding herself on “eating on the climb” like a porter. They continued to pass these tradesmen, and Jahns’ esteem of their profession grew and grew. There was a strange pang of guilt to be heading down under such a light load while these men and women trudged up carrying so much. And they moved so fast. She and Marnes pressed themselves against the rail as a downward porter apologetically stomped past. His shadow, a girl of fifteen or sixteen, was right behind him, loaded down with what looked to be sacks of garbage for the recycling center. Jahns watched the young girl spiral out of sight, sinewy and smooth legs hanging miles out of her shorts, and felt suddenly very old and very tired.

The two of them fell into a rhythmic pace, the reach of each foot hovering over the next tread, a sort of collapsing of the bones, a resignation to gravity, falling to that foot, sliding the hand, reaching the walking stick forward, repeat. Doubt crept into Jahns around the thirtieth floor. What seemed a fine adventure at sunrise now seemed a mighty undertaking. Each step was performed reluctantly, knowing how grueling it would be to win that elevation back.

They passed the upper water treatment plant on thirty two, and Jahns realized she was seeing portions of the silo that were practically new to her. It had been a lifetime ago that she’d been this deep, a shameful thing to admit. And in that time, changes had been made. Construction and repair were ongoing. Walls were a different color than she remembered. But then, it was hard to trust one’s memory.

The traffic on the stairs lightened as they neared the IT floors. Here were the most sparsely populated levels of the silo, where less than two dozen men and women—but mostly men—operated within their own little kingdom. The silo servers took up almost an entire floor, the machines slowly rebuilding with recent history, having been wiped completely during the uprising. Access to them was now severely restricted, and as Jahns passed the landing on the thirty third, she swore she could hear the mighty thrumming of all the electricity they consumed. Whatever the silo had been, or had been designed for, she knew without asking or being told that these strange machines were some organ of primacy. Their power draw was a constant source of contention during budget meetings. But the necessity of the cleaning, the fear of even talking about the outside and all the dangerous taboos that went with it, gave IT incredible leeway. They housed the labs that made the suits, each one tailored to the person waiting in the holding cell, and this alone set them apart from all else.

No, Jahns told herself, it wasn’t simply the taboo of the cleaning, the fear of the outside. It was the hope. There was this unspoken, deadly hope in every member of the silo. A ridiculous, fantastical hope. That maybe not for them, but perhaps for their children, or their children’s children, that life on the outside would be possible once again, and that it would be the work of IT and the bulky suits that emerged from their labs that would make it all possible.

Jahns felt a shiver even to think it. Living outside. The childhood conditioning was that strong. Maybe God would hear her thoughts and rat her out. She imagined herself in a cleaning suit, a far too common visual, placing herself into the flexible coffin into which she had condemned so many—

On the thirty-fourth, she slipped off onto the landing. Marnes joined her, his canteen in hand. Jahns realized she’d been drinking out of his all day while hers stayed strapped to her back. There was something childlike and romantic about this, but also something practical. It was more difficult to reach one’s own water than it was to grab that of the other from their pack.

“You need a break?” He passed the canteen, which had but two swallows left in it. Jahns took one of them.

“This is our next stop,” she said.

Marnes looked up at the faded number stenciled over the doorway. He had to know what floor they were on, but it was as if he needed to double check.

Jahns returned his canteen. “In the past, I’ve always wired them to get the okay on my nominations. It was something Mayor Humphries did before me, and Mayor Jeffers before him.” She shrugged. “Way of the world.”

“I didn’t know they had to approve.” He took the last swallow and patted Jahns on the back, twirled his finger for her to turn around.

“Well, they’ve never rejected any of my nominations—” Jahns felt her canteen tugged out of her pouch, Marnes’ canteen shoved in its place. Her pack felt a smidgen lighter. She realized Marnes wanted to carry her water and share it until it too was empty. “I think the unwritten rule is there just so we’ll carefully consider every judge and lawman, knowing there’s some informal oversight.”

“So this time you’re doing it in person.”

She turned back around to face her deputy. “I figured we were passing this way—” She paused while a young couple hurried up the stairs behind Marnes, holding hands and taking the treads two at a time. “And that it might feel even more conspicuous to not stop and check in.”

“Check in,” Marnes said. Jahns half expected him to spit over the railing—the tone seemed to require such punctuation. She suddenly felt another of her weaknesses exposed.

“Think of it as a goodwill mission,” she said, turning toward the door.

“I’m gonna think of it as a fact-finding raid,” Marnes muttered, following her.

Unlike at the nursery, Jahns could tell that they would not be buzzed through and sent back into the mysterious depths of IT. While they waited to be seen, she watched as even a member of the staff, identifiable from their red coveralls, was patted down and searched just to leave the wing and exit toward the stairs. A man with a wand—like Terry, a member of IT’s own internal security detail—seemed to have the job of checking everyone who passed through the metal gates. The receptionist on the outside of the gates was deferent enough and seemed pleased to have the Mayor for a visit. She expressed her condolences for the recent cleaning, an odd thing to say but something Jahns wished she heard more often. They were shown to a small conference room attached to the main foyer, a place, she supposed, for meeting with various departments without putting them through the hassle of passing through security.

“Look at all this space,” Marnes whispered, once they were alone in the room together. “Did you see the size of that entrance hall?”

Jahns nodded. She looked around the ceiling and walls for some peephole, something to confirm the creepy sensation that she was being watched. She set her bag and walking stick down and collapsed wearily into one of the plush chairs. When it moved, she realized the thing was on wheels. Nicely oiled wheels.

“Always wanted to check this place out,” Marnes said. He peered through the glass window that looked back into the wide foyer. “Every time I’ve passed this place—and it’s only been a dozen times or so—I’ve been curious to see what’s inside.”

Jahns nearly asked him to stop talking, but worried that it would hurt his feelings.

“Boy, he’s coming in a hurry. Must be because of you.”

Jahns turned and looked out the window to see Bernard Holland heading their way. He disappeared from view as he approached the door, the handle flicked down, and the small man whose job it was to keep IT running smoothly strode into the room.

“Mayor.”

Bernard was all teeth, the front ones crooked. He reached for Jahns’ hand as she rose from the chair, the blasted thing nearly scooting out from underneath her as she pressed down on the arm rests.

“Careful,” Bernard said, grabbing her elbow to steady her. “Deputy.” He nodded toward Marnes while Jahns steadied herself. “It’s an honor to have you down. I know you don’t take these trips often.”

“Thanks for seeing us on short notice,” Jahns said.

“Of course. Please, make yourselves comfortable.” He swept his hand over the lacquered conference table. It was nicer than the one in the Mayor’s office, though Jahns assuaged herself by assuming it was shiny from being less frequently employed. She sat, approaching the chair warily, then reached into her bag and produced the set of files.

“Straight to business, as always,” Bernard said, sitting beside her. He pushed his glasses up his nose and glided forward on the chair until his plump little belly met the desk. “Always appreciated that about you. We are, as you can imagine with yesterday’s unfortunate events, as busy as ever. Lots of data to go through.”

“How’s that going?” Jahns asked, while she arranged the material in front of her.

“Some positives and negatives, as always. Readouts from some of the seal sensors showed improvement. Atmospheric levels of eight of the known toxins have declined, though not by much. Two have risen. Most have remained unchanged.” He waved his hand. “It’s a lot of boring technical stuff, but it’ll all be in my report. I should have it ported up before you get back to your office.”

“That’ll be fine,” Jahns said. She wanted to say something else, to acknowledge his department’s hard work, to let him know that another cleaning had been successful, God knew why. But it was Holston out there, the closest thing she’d ever had to a shadow, the only man she ever saw running for her office when she was dead and feeding the roots of the fruit trees. It was too soon to mention it, much less applaud it.

“I normally wire this sort of thing to you,” she said, “but since we were passing by, and you won’t be up for the next committee meeting for, what, another three months?”

“The years go fast,” Bernard said.

“I just figured we could informally agree to this now, so I could offer our best candidate the job.” She glanced up at Marnes. “Once she accepts, we can finish the paperwork on our way back up, if you don’t mind.” She slid the folder toward Bernard, and was surprised when he produced one of his own, rather than accept hers.

“Well, let’s go over this,” Bernard said. He opened his folder, licked his thumb, and flipped through a few pieces of high quality paper. “We were wired about your visit, but your list of candidates didn’t hit my desk until this morning. Otherwise, I would have tried to save you the trip down and back up.” He pulled out a piece of paper devoid of creases. It didn’t even look bleached. Jahns wondered where IT got such things while her office was held together with cornstarch paste. “I’m thinking, of the three names listed here, that Billings is our man.”

“We may consider him next—” Deputy Marnes started to say.

“I think we should consider him now.” He slid the paper toward Jahns. It was an acceptance contract. There were signatures at the bottom. One line was left blank, the Mayor’s name neatly printed underneath.

She had to catch her breath.

“You’ve already contacted Peter about this?”

“He accepted. The judge’s robe was going to be a little stifling for him, being so young and full of energy. I thought he was a fine choice for that role, but I think he’s an even better one now for the job of sheriff.”

Jahns remembered Peter’s nomination process. It had been one of the times she’d gone along with Bernard’s suggestion, seeing it as a trade for a future pick of her own. She studied the signature, Peter’s hand familiar from his various notes sent up on behalf of Judge Wilson. She imagined one of the porters who had flown past them on the steps that day, apologizing as they went, rushing this very piece of paper down.

“I’m afraid Peter is currently third on our list,” Mayor Jahns finally said. Her voice suddenly felt tired. It sounded frail and weak in the cavernous and wasteful space of that underused and outsized conference room. She looked up at Marnes, who was glaring at the contract, his jaw clenching and unclenching.

“Well, I think we both know Donald’s name is on this list for flattery. He’s too old for the job—”

“Younger than me,” Marnes spat. “I hold up just fine.”

Bernard tilted his head. “Yes, well, your first choice simply won’t do, I’m afraid.”

“And why is that?” Jahns asked.

“I’m not sure how… thorough your background check has been, but we’ve had enough problems with this candidate that I recognized her name. Even though she is from Maintenance.”

Bernard said this last word like it was full of nails and might gut him to spit it out.

“What kinda problem?” Marnes demanded to know.

Jahns shot the deputy a look of warning.

“Nothing we would have wanted to report, mind you.” Bernard turned to Marnes. There was venom in the small man’s eyes, a raw hatred for the Deputy, or perhaps for the star on his chest. “Nothing worth involving the law. But there have been some… creative requisitions from her office, items rerouted from our use, improper claims of priority and the like.” Bernard took a deep breath and folded his hands together on top of the folder in front of him. “I wouldn’t go as far as calling it stealing, per se, but we have filed complaints with Deagan Knox as head of Mechanical to inform him of these… irregularities.”

“That’s it?” Marnes growled. “Requisitions?”

Bernard frowned. He spread his hands on the folder. “That’s it? Have you been listening? The woman has practically stolen goods, has had items rerouted from my department. It’s not clear if these are even for silo use. They could be for personal gain. God knows, the woman uses more than her allowance of electricity. Maybe she trades for chits—”

“Is this a formal accusation?” Marnes asked. He made a show of pulling his pad from his pocket and clicking his mechanical pen.

“Ah, no. As I said, we would not want to trouble your office. But, as you can see, this is not the sort of person to enter a career in high law. It’s what I expect of a mechanic, to be honest, which is where, I’m afraid, this candidate should stay.” He patted the folder as if putting the issue to rest.

“That’s your suggestion,” Mayor Jahns said.

“Why, yes. And I think since we have such a fine candidate ready and willing to serve and already living in the up-top—”

“I’ll take your suggestion into account.” Jahns took the crisp contract from the table and conspicuously folded it in half, pinching the crease with her fingernails as she slid them down its length. She stuck the piece of paper in one of her folders while Bernard watched, horrified.

“And since you have no formal complaints about our first candidate, I will take this as tacit approval to speak with her about the job.” Jahns stood and grabbed her bag. She slid the folders into the outside pouch and secured the flap, then grabbed her walking stick from where it leaned against the conference table. “Thank you for seeing us.”

“Yes, but—” Bernard scooted away from the table and hurried after her as Jahns made for the door. Marnes got up and followed, smiling.

“What should I tell Peter? He’s of the assumption that he starts any time!”

“You should never have told him anything,” Jahns said. She stopped in the foyer and glared at Bernard. “I gave you my list in confidence. You betrayed that. Now, I appreciate all you do for the silo. You and I have a long and peaceable history working together, overseeing what might be the most prosperous age our people have known—”

“Which is why—” Bernard began.

“Which is why I’m forgiving this trespass,” Mayor Jahns said. “This is my job. My people. They elected me to make these kinds of decisions. So my deputy and I will be on our way. We will give our top choice a fair interview. And I will be sure to stop by on my way up in case there is anything to sign.”

Bernard spread his hands in defeat. “Very well,” he said. “I apologize. I only hoped to expedite the process. Now please, rest a little, you are our guests. Let me get you some food, maybe some fruit?”

“We’ll be on our way,” Jahns said.

“Fine.” He nodded. “But at least some water? Top up your canteens?”

Jahns remembered one of them was already empty, and they had a few more flights to go.

“That would be a kind gesture,” she said. She waved to Marnes, who turned so she could grab his canteen from his pack. Then she turned her back so he could grab hers as well. Bernard waved to one of his workers to come fetch them and fill them up, but the entire time, he had his eyes on this curious and intimate exchange.

4

They were almost down to the fifties before Jahns could think straight. She imagined she could feel the weight of Peter Billings’ contract in her pack. Marnes muttered his own complaints from a few steps behind, bitching about Bernard and trying to keep up, and Jahns realized she was fixated, now. The weariness in her thighs and calves had become compounded by the growing sense that this trip was more than a mistake: it was probably futile. A father who warns her that his daughter won’t accept. Pressure from IT to choose another. Now, each step of their descent could be taken with dread. Dread and yet a new certainty that Juliette was their man. This woman from Mechanical would be convinced to take the job, if only to show Bernard, if only to keep the arduous journey from becoming a total waste.

Jahns was old, had been Mayor a long time, partly because she got things done, partly because she prevented worse things from happening, but mostly because she made little turmoil. She felt like it was about time. Now, while she was old enough for it to not matter the consequences. She glanced back at Marnes and knew the same went for him. Their time was almost up. The best, the most important thing they could do for the silo, was to make sure their legacy endured. No uprisings. No abuses of power. It was why she ran unopposed the last few elections. But now she could sense that she was gliding to the finish while stronger and younger runners were preparing to overtake her. How many judges had she signed off on at Bernard’s request? And now the sheriff, too? How long before Bernard was mayor? Or worse: a puppet master with strings interwoven throughout the silo.

“Take it easy,” Marnes huffed.

Jahns realized she was going too fast. She slowed her pace.

“That bastard’s got you riled up,” he said.

“And you better be as well,” she hissed back at him.

“You’re passing the gardens.”

Jahns checked the landing number and saw that he was right. If she’d been paying attention, she would’ve noticed the smell. When the doors on the next landing flew open, a porter bearing sacks of fruit on each shoulder strode out, the scent of lush and wet vegetation accompanying him and overpowering her.

It was past dinner time, and the smell was intoxicating. The porter, even overburdened, saw that they were leaving the stairwell for the landing and held the door open with a planted foot as his arms bulged around the weight of the large sacks.

“Mayor,” he said, bowing his head and then nodding to Marnes as well.

Jahns thanked him. Most of the porters looked familiar to her, having seen them over and over as they delivered throughout the silo. But they never stayed in one place long enough for her to catch and remember a name, a normally keen skill of hers. She wondered, as she and Marnes entered the hydroponic farms, if the porters made it home every night to be with their families. Or did they even have families? Were they like the priests? She was too old and too curious not to know these things. But then, maybe it took a day on the stairwell to appreciate their job, to fully notice them. The porters were like the air she breathed, always there, always serving, so necessary as to be ubiquitous and taken for granted. But now the weariness of the climb had opened her senses fully to them. It was like a sudden drop in the oxygen, triggering her appreciation.

“Smell those oranges,” Marnes said, snapping Jahns out of her thoughts. He sniffed the air as they passed through the low garden gates. A staff member in green coveralls waved them through. “Bags here, Mayor,” he said, gesturing to a wall of cubbies sporadically occupied with shoulder bags and bundles.

Jahns complied, leaving her kit in one of the cubbies. Marnes pushed hers to the back and added his to the same one. Whether it was to save space or merely his habitual protectiveness, Jahns found the act as sweet as the air inside the gardens.

“We have reservations for the evening,” Jahns told the worker.

He nodded. “One flight down for the rooms. I believe they’re still getting yours ready. Are you here just for a visit or to eat?”

“A little of both.”

The young man smiled. “Well, by the time you’ve had a bite, your rooms should be available.”

Rooms, Jahns thought. She thanked the young man and followed Marnes into the garden network.

“How long since you were here?” she asked the Deputy.

“Wow. A while back. Four years or so?”

“That’s right.” Jahns laughed. “How could I forget? The heist of the century.”

“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” Marnes said.

At the end of the hallway, the twisting spiral of the hydroponic gardens diverted off both ways. This main tunnel snaked through two levels of the silo, curving maze-like all the way to the edges of the distant concrete walls. The constant sound of water dripping from the pipes was oddly soothing, the splatters echoing off the low ceiling. The tunnel was open on either side, revealing the bushy green of plants, vegetables, and small trees growing amid the lattice of white plastic pipes, twine strung everywhere to give the creeping vines and stems something to hold. Men and women with their young shadows tended to the plants, all in green coveralls. Sacks hung around their necks bulged with the day’s harvest, and the cutters in their hands clacked like little claws that were a biological part of them. The pruning was mesmerizingly adroit and effortless, the sort of task that only came from day after week after year of practice and repetition.

“Weren’t you the first one to suggest the thievery was an inside job?” Jahns asked, still laughing to herself. She and Marnes followed the signs pointing toward the tasting and dining halls.

“Are we really going to talk about this?”

“I don’t know why it’s embarrassing. You’ve got to laugh about it.”

“With time.” He stopped and gazed through the mesh fencing at a stand of tomatoes. The powerful odor of their ripeness made Jahns’ stomach grumble.

“We were really hyped up to make a bust at the time,” Marnes said quietly. “Holston was a mess during all of this. He was wiring me every night for an update. I’ve never seen him want to take someone down so bad. Like he really needed it, you know?” He wrapped his fingers in the protective grate and stared past the vegetables as if into the years gone by. “Looking back, it’s almost like he knew something was up with Allison. Like he saw the madness coming.” Marnes turned to Jahns. “Do you remember what it was like before she cleaned? It had been so long. Everyone was on edge.”

Jahns had long since stopped smiling. She stood close to Marnes. He turned back to the plants, watched a worker snip off a red ripe tomato and place it in her basket.

“I think Holston wanted to let the air out of the silo, you know? I think he wanted to come down and investigate the thefts himself. Kept wiring me every day for reports like a life depended on it.”

“I’m sorry to bring it up,” Jahns said, resting a hand on his shoulder.

Marnes turned and looked at the back of her hand. His bottom lip was visible below his mustache. Jahns could picture him kissing her hand. She pulled it away.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Without all that baggage, I guess it is pretty funny.” He turned and continued down the hallway.

“Did they ever figure out how it got in here?”

“Up the stairwell,” Marnes said. “Had to be. Though I heard one person suggest that a child could’ve stolen one to keep as a pet and then released it up here.”

Jahns laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “One rabbit,” she said, “confounding the greatest lawman of our time and making off with a year’s salary of greens.”

Marnes shook his head and chuckled a little. “Not the greatest,” he said. “That was never me.” He peered down the hallway and cleared his throat, and Jahns knew perfectly well who he was thinking of.

After a large and satisfying dinner, they retired a level down to the guest rooms. Jahns had a suspicion that extra pains had been taken to accommodate them. Every room was packed, many of them double and triple booked. And since the cleaning had been scheduled well before this last-minute interview adventure of theirs, she suspected rooms had been bumped around to make space. The fact that they had given them separate rooms, the mayor’s with two beds, made it worse. It wasn’t just the waste, it was the arrangement. Jahns was hoping to be more… inconvenienced.

And Marnes must’ve felt the same way. Since it was still hours before bedtime, and they were both buzzing from a fine meal and strong wine, he asked her to his small room so they could chat while the gardens settled down.

His room was tastefully cozy, with only a single twin bed, but nicely appointed. The upper gardens were one of just a dozen large private enterprises. All the expenses for their stay would be covered by her office’s travel budget, and that money and the fares of the other travelers helped to afford finer things, like nice sheets from the looms and a mattress that didn’t squeak.

Jahns sat on the foot of the bed. Marnes took off his holster, placed it on the dresser, and plopped onto a changing bench just a few feet away. While she kicked off her boots and rubbed her sore feet, he went on and on about the food, the waste of separate rooms, brushing his mustache down with his hand as he spoke.

Jahns worked her thumbs into the soreness in her heels. “I feel like I’m going to need a week of rest at the bottom before we start the climb up,” she said during a pause.

“It’s not all that bad,” Marnes told her. “You watch. You’ll be sore in the morning, but once you start moving, you’ll find that you’re stronger than you were today. And it’s the same on the way up. You just lean into each step, and before you know it, you’re home.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Besides, we’ll do it in four days instead of two. Just think of it as an adventure.”

“Trust me,” Jahns said. “I already am.”

They sat quietly for a while, Jahns resting back on the pillows, Marnes staring off into space. She was surprised to find how calming and natural it was, just being in a room, alone, with him. The talk wasn’t necessary. They could just be. No badge, no office. Two people.

“You don’t take a priest, do you?” Marnes finally asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “Do you?”

“I haven’t. But I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Holston?”

“Partly.” He leaned forward and rubbed his hands down his thighs like he was squeezing the soreness out of them. “I’d like to hear where they think his soul has gone.”

“It’s still with us,” Jahns said. “That’s what they’d say, anyway.”

“What do you believe?”

“Me?” She leaned up from the pillows and rested on one elbow, watching him watch her. “I don’t know, really. I keep too busy to think about it.”

“Do you think Donald’s soul is still here with us?”

Jahns felt a shiver. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had uttered his name.

“He’s been gone more years than he was ever my husband,” she said. “I’ve been married more to his ghost than to him.”

“That don’t seem like the right thing to say.”

Jahns looked down at the bed, the world a little blurry. “I don’t think he’d mind. And yes, he’s still with me. He motivates me every day to be a good person. I feel him watching me all the time.”

“Me too,” Marnes said.

Jahns looked up and saw that he was staring at her.

“Do you think he’d want you to be happy? In all things, I mean?” He stopped rubbing his legs and sat there, hands on his knees, until he had to look away.

“You were his best friend,” Jahns said. “What do you think he’d want?”

He rubbed his face, glanced toward the closed door as a squealing kid thundered down the hallway. “I reckon he only ever wanted you to be happy. That’s why he was the man for you.”

Jahns wiped at her eyes while he wasn’t looking and peered curiously down at her wet fingers.

“It’s getting late,” she said. She slid to the edge of the small bed and reached down for her boots. Her bag and stick were waiting for her by the door. “And I think you’re right. I think I’ll be a little sore in the morning, but I think I’ll feel stronger, eventually.”

5

On the second and final day of their descent into the down deep, the novel gradually became the habitual. The clank and thrum of the great spiral staircase found a rhythm. Jahns was able to lose herself in her thoughts, daydreaming so serenely that she would glance up at the floor number, seventy-two, eighty-four, and wonder where a dozen landings went. The kink in her left knee was even soothed away, whether by the numbness of fatigue or an actual return to health, she didn’t know. She took to using the walking stick less, finding it only held up her pace as it often slipped between the treads and got caught there. With it tucked under her arm, it felt more useful. Like another bone in her skeleton, holding her together.

When they passed the ninetieth floor, with the stench of fertilizer and the pigs and other animals that produced this useful waste, Jahns pressed on, skipping the tour and lunch she’d planned, thinking only briefly of the small rabbit that somehow had escaped from another farm, made it twenty floors up without being spotted, and ate its fill for three weeks while it confounded half a silo.

Technically, they were already in the down deep when they reached ninety-seven. The bottom third. But even though the silo was mathematically divided into three sections of forty-eight floors each, her brain didn’t work that way. Floor one hundred was a better demarcation. It was a milestone. She counted the floors down until they reached the first landing with three digits, and stopped for a break.

Marnes was breathing deeply, she noticed. But she felt great. Alive and renewed in the way she had hoped the trip would make her. The futility, dread, and exhaustion from the day before were gone. All that remained was a small twinge of fear that these dour feelings could return, that this exuberant elation was a temporary high, that if she stopped, if she thought on it too long, it would spiral away and leave her dark and moody once more.

They split a small loaf of bread between them, sitting on the metal grating of the wide landing with their elbows propped up on the railings, their feet swinging over empty space, like two kids cutting class. Level one hundred teemed with people coming and going. The entire floor was a bazaar, a place for exchanging goods, for cashing in work chits for whatever was needed or merely coveted. Workers with their trailing shadows came and went, families yelled for one another among the dizzying crowds, merchants barked their best deals. The doors remained propped open for the traffic, letting the smells and sounds drift out onto the double-wide landing, the grating shivering with excitement.

Jahns reveled in the anonymity of the passing crowd. She bit into her half of the loaf, savoring the fresh yeastiness of bread baked that morning, and felt like just another person. A younger person. Marnes cut her a piece of cheese and a slice of apple and sandwiched them together. His hand touched hers as he passed it to her. Even the breadcrumbs in his mustache were part of the moment’s perfection.

“We’re way ahead of schedule,” Marnes said before taking a bite of fruit. It was just a pleasant observation. A pat on their elderly backs. “I figure we’ll hit one-forty by dinner.”

“Right now, I’m not even dreading the climb out,” Jahns said. She finished the cheese and apple and chewed contentedly. Everything tasted better while climbing, she decided. Or in pleasant company, or amid the music leaking out of the bazaar, some beggar strumming his uke over the noise of the crowd.

“Why don’t we come down here more often?” she asked.

Marnes grunted. “Because it’s a hundred flights down? Besides, we’ve got the view, the lounge, the bar at Kipper’s. How many of these people come up to any of that more than once every few years?”

Jahns chewed on that and on her last bite of bread.

“Do you think it’s natural? Not wandering too far from where we live?”

“Don’t follow,” Marnes said around a bite of food.

“Pretend, just as a hypothetical mind you, that people lived in those ancient aboveground silos poking up over the hillside. You don’t think they would move around so little, do you? Like stay in the same silo? Never wander over here or up and down a hundred flights of stairs?”

“I don’t think on those things,” Marnes said. Jahns took it as a hint that she shouldn’t, either. It was impossible sometimes to know what could and couldn’t be said about the outside. Those were discussions for spouses, and maybe the walk and the day together yesterday had gotten to her. Or maybe she was as susceptible to the post-cleaning high as anyone else: that sense that rules could be relaxed, temptations courted, the lack of pressure and the waste of a double cleaning giving excuse for a month of jubilant wiggling in one’s own skin.

“Should we get going?” Jahns asked, as Marnes finished his bread.

He nodded, and they stood and collected their things. A woman walking by turned and stared, a flash of recognition on her face, gone as she hurried to catch up to her children.

It was like another world down here, Jahns thought to herself. She had gone too long without a visit. And even as she promised herself to not let that happen again, some part of her knew, like a rusting machine that could feel its age, that this journey would be her last.

Floors passed without care. The lower gardens, the larger farm on the one-thirties, the pungent water treatment plant below that. Jahns found herself lost in thought, thinking on her conversation with Marnes the night before, the idea of Donald living with her more in memory than reality, when she came to the gate at one-forty.

She hadn’t even noticed the change in the traffic, the preponderance of blue denim coveralls, the porters with more satchels of parts and tools than clothes, food, or personal deliveries. But the crowd at the gate showed her that she’d arrived at the upper levels of Mechanical. Gathered at the entrance were workers in loose blue coveralls spotted with age-old stains. Jahns could nearly peg their professions by the tools they carried. It was late in the day, and she assumed most were returning home from repairs made throughout the silo. The thought of climbing so many flights of stairs and then having to work boggled her mind. And then she remembered she was about to do that very thing.

Rather than abuse her station or Marnes’ power, they waited in line while the workers checked through the gate. As these tired men and women signed back in and logged their travel and hours, Jahns realized the time she had wasted ruminating about her own life during the long descent, time she should’ve spent polishing her appeal to this Juliette. Rare nerves twisted her gut as the line shuffled forward. The worker ahead of them showed his ID, the card colored blue for Mechanical. He scratched his information on a dusty slate. When it was their turn, they pushed through the outer gate and showed their golden IDs. The station guard raised his eyebrows, then seemed to recognize the mayor.

“Your honor,” he said, and Jahns didn’t correct him. “Weren’t expecting you this shift.” He waved their IDs away and reached for a nub of chalk. “Let me.”

Jahns watched as he spun the board around and wrote their names in neat print, the side of his palm collecting dust from the old film of chalk below. For Marnes, he simply wrote “Sheriff,” and again, Jahns didn’t correct him.

“I know she wasn’t expecting us until later,” Jahns said, “but I wonder if we could meet with Juliette Nichols now.”

The station guard turned and looked behind him at the digital clock that recorded the proper time. “She won’t be off the generator for another hour. Maybe two, knowing her. You could hit the mess hall and wait.”

Jahns looked to Marnes, who shrugged. “Not entirely hungry yet,” he said.

“What about seeing her at work? It would be nice to see what she does. We’d try our best to stay out of the way.”

The guard lifted his shoulders. “You’re the mayor. I can’t say no.” He jabbed the nub of chalk down the hall, the people lined up outside the gate shifting impatiently as they waited. “See Knox. He’ll get someone to run you down.”

Knox was a man hard to miss. He amply filled the largest set of coveralls Jahns had ever seen. She wondered if the extra denim cost him more chits, and how a man managed to keep such a belly full. A thick beard added to his scope. If he smiled or frowned at their approach, it was impossible to know. He was as unmoved as a wall of concrete.

Jahns explained what they were after. Marnes said hello, and she realized they must’ve met the last time he was down. Knox listened, nodded, and then bellowed in a voice so gruff, the words were indistinguishable from one another. But they meant something to someone, as a young boy materialized from behind him, a waif of a kid with unusually bright orange hair.

“Gitemoffandowntojules,” Knox growled, the space between the words as slender as the gap in his beard where a mouth should have been.

The young boy, young even for a shadow, waved his hand and darted away. Marnes thanked Knox, who didn’t budge, and they followed after the boy.

The corridors in Mechanical, Jahns saw, were even tighter than elsewhere in the silo. They squeezed through the end-of-shift traffic, the concrete blocks on either side primed but not painted, and rough where they brushed against her shoulder. Overhead, parallel and twisting runs of pipe and wire conduit hung exposed. Jahns felt the urge to duck, despite the half foot of clearance. She did notice many of the taller workers walking with a stoop. The lights overhead were dim and spaced well apart, making the sensation of tunneling deeper and deeper into the earth overwhelming.

The young shadow with the orange hair led them around several turns, his confidence in the route seemingly habitual. They came to a flight of stairs, the square kind that made right turns, and went down two more levels. Jahns heard a rumbling grow louder as they descended. When they left the stairwell on one-forty-two, they passed an odd contraption in a wide open room just off the hallway. A steel arm the size of several people end to end was lifting up and down, driving a piston through the concrete floor. Jahns slowed to watch its rhythmic gyrations. The air smelled of something chemical, something rotten. She couldn’t place it.

“Is this the generator?”

Marnes laughed in a patronizing, uniquely manly way.

“That’s a pump,” he said. “Oil well. It’s how you read at night.”

He squeezed her shoulder as he walked past, and Jahns forgave him instantly for laughing at her. She hurried after him and Knox’s young shadow.

“The generator is that thrumming you hear,” Marnes said. “The pump brings up oil, they do something to it in a plant a few floors down, and then it’s ready to burn.”

Jahns vaguely knew some of this, possibly from a committee meeting. She was amazed, once again, at how much of the silo was alien to even her, she who was supposed to be—nominally at least—running things.

The persistent grumbling in the walls grew louder as they neared the end of the hall. When the boy with the orange hair pulled open the doors, the sonic blast was immediate. Jahns felt wary about approaching further, and even Marnes seemed to stall. The kid waved them forward with frantic gestures, and Jahns found herself willing her feet to carry her toward the noise. She wondered, suddenly, if they were being led outside. It was an illogical, senseless idea, borne of imagining the most dangerous threat she could possibly summon.

As she broke the plane of the door, cowering behind Marnes, the boy let the door slam shut, trapping them inside with the onslaught. He pulled headphones—no wires dangling from them—from a rack by the wall. Jahns followed his lead and put a pair over her own ears. The noise deadened, remaining only in her chest and nerve endings. She wondered why, for what cause, this rack of ear protection would be located inside the room rather than outside.

The boy waved and said something, but it was just moving lips. They followed along a narrow passageway of steel grating, a floor much like the landings on each silo floor. When the hallway turned, one wall fell away and was replaced with a railing of three horizontal bars. Beyond, a machine beyond reckoning loomed. It was the size of her entire apartment and office put together, in a room larger than many in the gardens. Nothing seemed to be moving at first, nothing to justify the pounding she could feel in her chest and across her skin. It wasn’t until they fully rounded the machine that she saw the steel rod sticking out of the back of the unit, spinning ferociously, and disappearing into another massive metal machine which had cables as thick as a man’s waist rising up toward the ceiling.

The power and energy in the room were palpable. As they reached the end of the second machine, Jahns finally saw a solitary figure working beside it. A young looking woman in coveralls, a hardhat on, brown braided hair hanging out the back, was leaning into a wrench nearly as long as she was tall. Her presence gave the machines a terrifying sense of scale, but she didn’t seem to fear them. She threw herself into her wrench, her body frightfully close to the roaring unit, reminding Jahns of an old children’s tale where a mouse pulled a barb out of an imaginary beast called an elephant. The idea of a woman this size fixing a machine of such ferocity seemed absurd. But she watched the woman work while the young shadow slipped through a gate and ran up to tug on her coveralls.

The woman turned, not startled, and squinted at Jahns and Marnes. She wiped her forehead with the back of one hand, her other hand swinging the wrench around to rest on her shoulder. She patted the young shadow on the head and walked out to meet them. Jahns saw that the woman’s arms were lean and defined with muscle. She wore no undershirt, just blue coveralls cut high up over her chest, exposing a bit of olive skin that gleamed with sweat. She had the same dark complexion as the farmers who worked under grow lights, but it could have been as much from the grease and grime if her denims were any indication.

She stopped short of Jahns and Marnes and nodded at them. She smiled at Marnes with a hint of recognition. She didn’t offer a hand, for which Jahns was grateful. Instead, she pointed toward a door by a glass partition, and then headed that way herself.

Marnes followed on her heels like a puppy, Jahns close behind. She turned to make sure the shadow wasn’t underfoot, only to see him scurrying off the way he had come, his hair glowing in the wan overhead lights of the generator room. His duty, as far as he was concerned, was done.

Inside the small control room, the noise lessened. It dropped almost to nothing as the thick door was shut tight. Juliette pulled off her hardhat and earmuffs and dropped them on a shelf. Jahns took hers away from her head tentatively, heard the noise reduced to a distant hum, and removed them all the way. The room was tight and crowded with metal surfaces and winking lights unlike anything she had ever seen. It was strange to her that she was Mayor of this room as well, a thing she hardly knew existed and certainly couldn’t operate.

While the ringing in Jahns’ ears subsided, Juliette adjusted some spinning knobs, watching little arms waver under glass shields. “I thought we were doing this tomorrow morning,” she said. She concentrated intently on her work.

“We made better time than I’d hoped.”

Jahns looked to Marnes, who was holding his ear protection in both hands, shifting uncomfortably.

“Good to see you again, Jules,” he said.

She nodded and leaned down to peer through the thick glass window at the gargantuan machines outside, her hands darting over the large control board without needing to look, adjusting large black dials with faded white markings.

“Sorry about your partner,” she said, glancing down at a bank of readouts. She turned and studied Marnes, and Jahns saw that this woman, beneath the sweat and grime, was beautiful. Her face was hard and lean, her eyes bright. She had a fierce intelligence you could measure from a distance. And she peered at Marnes with utmost sympathy, visible in the furrow of her brows. “Really,” she said. “I’m terribly sorry. He seemed like a good man.”

“The best,” Marnes sputtered, his voice cracking.

Juliette nodded as if that was all that needed saying. She turned to Jahns.

“That vibration you feel in the floor, Mayor? That’s a coupling when it’s barely two millimeters off. If you think it feels bad in here, you should go put your hands on the casing. It’ll jiggle your fingers numb immediately. Hold it long enough, and your bones will rattle like you’re coming apart.”

She turned and reached between Jahns and Marnes to throw a massive switch, then turned back to the control board. “Now imagine what that generator is going through, shaking itself to pieces like that. Teeth start grinding together in the transmission, small bits of metal shavings cycle through the oil like sandpaper grit. Next thing you know, there’s an explosion of steel and we’ve got no power but whatever the backup can spit out.”

Jahns held her breath.

“You need us to get someone?” Marnes asked.

Juliette laughed. “None of this is news or different from any other shift. If the backup unit wasn’t being torn down for new gaskets, and we could go to half power for a week, I could pull that coupler, adjust the mounts, and have her spinning like a top.” She shot a look at Jahns. “But since we have a mandate for full power, no interruptions, that’s not happening. So I’m going to keep tightening bolts while they keep trying to shake loose, and try and find the right revolutions in here to keep her fairly singing.”

“I had no idea, when I signed that mandate—”

“And here I thought I dumbed down my report enough to make it clear,” Juliette said.

“How long before this failure happens?”

Jahns suddenly realized she wasn’t here interviewing this woman. The demands were heading the opposite direction.

“How long?” Juliette laughed and shook her head. She finished a final adjustment and turned to face them with her arms crossed. “It could happen right now. It could happen a hundred years from now. The point is: it’s going to happen, and it’s entirely preventable. The goal shouldn’t be to keep this place humming along for our lifetimes—” She looked pointedly at Jahns. “—or our current term. If the goal ain’t forever, we should pack our bags right now.”

Jahns saw Marnes stiffen at this. She felt her own body react, a chill coursing across her skin. This last line was dangerously close to treason. The metaphor only half saved it.

“I could declare a power holiday,” Jahns suggested. “We could stage it in memory of those who clean.” She thought more about this. “It could be an excuse to service more than your machine here. We could—”

“Good luck getting IT to power down shit,” Juliette said. She wiped her chin with the back of her wrist, then wiped this on her coveralls. She looked down at the grease transferred to the denim. “Pardon my language, Mayor.”

Jahns wanted to tell her it was quite all right, but the woman’s attitude, her power, reminded her too much of a former self that she could just barely recall. A younger woman who dispensed with niceties and got what she wanted. She found herself glancing over at Marnes. “Why do you single out their department? For the power, I mean.”

Juliette laughed and uncrossed her arms. She tossed her hands toward the ceiling. “Why? Because IT has, what, three floors out of one forty-four? And yet they use up over a quarter of all the power we produce. I can do the math for you—”

“That’s quite alright.”

“And I don’t remember a server ever feeding someone or saving someone’s life or stitching up a hole in their britches.”

Jahns smiled. She suddenly saw what Marnes liked about this woman. She also saw what he had once seen in her younger self, before she married his best friend.

“What if we had IT ratchet down for some maintenance of their own for a week? Would that work?”

“I thought we came down here to recruit her away from all this,” Marnes grumbled.

Juliette shot him a look. “And I thought I told your—or your secretary—not to bother. Not that I’ve got anything against what you do, but I’m needed down here.” She raised her arm and checked something dangling from her wrist. It was a timepiece. But she was studying it as if it still worked.

“Look, I’d love to chat more.” She looked up at Jahns. “Especially if you can guarantee a holiday from the juice, but I’ve got a few more adjustments to make and I’m already into my overtime. Knox gets pissed if I push into too many extra shifts.”

“We’ll get out of your hair,” Jahns said. “We haven’t had dinner yet, so maybe we can see you after? Once you punch out and get cleaned up?”

Juliette looked down at herself, as if to confirm she even needed cleaning. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “They’ve got you in the bunkhouse?”

Marnes nodded.

“Alright. I’ll find you later. And don’t forget your muffs.” She pointed to her ears, looked Marnes in the eye, nodded, then returned to her work, letting them know the conversation, for now, was over.

6

Marnes and Jahns finished their meals, which consisted of large bowls of soup and hunks of dry, almost stale bread, and exited a mess hall nearly as noisy as the generator room. During the entire meal, Jahns had regretted not bringing those plastic and foam ear protection muffs to dinner. The men and women of Mechanical were as loud and boisterous as they were filthy. She wondered if perhaps they all yelled because they were going deaf in the constant hammering of the place.

Outside, they followed Knox’s directions to the bunkroom, where they found a cot made up for Marnes, and one of the attached private rooms reserved for Jahns. They bided their time in the small room, rubbing aches in their legs, talking about how different the down deep was, until there was a knock on their door and Juliette pushed it open and stepped inside.

“They got you both in one room?” she asked, surprised.

Jahns laughed. “No, they’ve got a bunk set aside as well. And I would’ve been happy staying out there with the others.”

“Forget it,” Juliette said. “They put up recruits and visiting families in here all the time.”

Jahns watched as Juliette placed a length of string in her mouth, then gathered her hair, still wet from a shower, and tied it up in a tail. She had changed into another pair of coveralls, and Jahns guessed the stains in them were permanent, that the fabric was actually laundered and ready for another shift.

“So how soon could we announce this power holiday?” Juliette asked. She finished her knot and crossed her arms, leaning back against the wall beside the door. “I would think you’d wanna take advantage of the post-cleaning mood, right?”

“How soon can you start?” Jahns asked. She realized, suddenly, that part of the reason she wanted this woman as her sheriff was that she felt unattainable. Jahns glanced over at Marnes and wondered how much of his attraction to her, all those many years ago when she was young and with Donald, had been as simply motivated.

“I can start tomorrow,” Juliette said. “We could have the backup generator online by morning. I could work another shift tonight to make sure the gaskets and seals—”

“No,” Jahns said, raising her hand. “How soon can you start as sheriff?” She dug through her open bag, sorting folders across the bed, looking for the contract.

“I’m—I thought we discussed this. I have no interest in being—”

“They make the best ones,” Marnes said. “The ones who have no interest in it.” He stood across from Juliette, this thumbs tucked into his coveralls, leaning against one of the small apartment’s walls.

“I’m sorry, but there’s no one down here who can just slip into my boots,” Juliette said, shaking her head. “I don’t think you two understand all that we do—”

“I don’t think you understand what we do up top,” Jahns said. “Or why we need you.”

Juliette tossed her head and laughed. “Look, I’ve got machines down here that you can’t possibly—”

“And what good are they?” Jahns asked. “What do these machines do?”

“They keep this whole goddamned place running!” Juliette declared. “The oxygen you breathe? We recycle that down here. The toxins you exhale? We pump them back into the earth. You want me to write up a list of everything oil makes? Every piece of plastic, every ounce of rubber, all the solvents and cleaners, and I’m not talking about the power it generates, but everything else!”

“And yet it was all here before you were born,” Jahns pointed out.

“Well it wouldn’t have lasted my lifetime, I’ll tell you that. Not in the state it was in.” She crossed her arms again and leaned back against the wall. “I don’t think you get what mess we’d be in without these machines.”

“And I don’t think you get how pointless these machines are going to become without all these people.”

Juliette looked away. It was the first time Jahns had seen her flinch.

“Why don’t you ever visit your father?”

Juliette snapped her head around and looked at the other wall. She wiped loose hair back on her forehead. “Go look at my work log,” she said. “Tell me when I’d fit it in.”

Before Jahns could reply, could say that it was family, that there’s always time, Juliette turned to face her. “Do you think I don’t care about people? Is that it? Because you’d be wrong. I care about every person in this silo. And the men and women down here, the forgotten eight floors of Mechanical, this is my family. I visit with them every day. I break bread with them several times a day. We work, live, and die alongside one another.” She looked to Marnes. “Isn’t that right? You’ve seen it.”

Marnes didn’t say anything. Jahns wondered if she was referring specifically to the “dying” part.

“Did you ask him why he never comes to see me? Because he has all the time in the world. He has nothing up there.”

“Yes, we met with him. Your father seemed like a very busy man. As determined as you.”

Juliette looked away.

“And as stubborn.” Jahns left the paperwork on the bed and went to stand by the door, just a pace away from Juliette. She could smell the soap in the younger woman’s hair. Could see her nostrils flare with her rapid, heavy breathing.

“The days pile up and weigh small decisions down, don’t they? That decision to not visit. The first few days slide by easy enough, anger and youth powers them along. But then they pile up like unrecycled trash. Isn’t that right?”

Juliette waved her hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about days becoming weeks becoming months becoming years—” She almost said that she’d been through the same exact thing, was still piling them up, but Marnes was in the room, listening. “After a while, you’re staying mad just to justify an old mistake. Then it’s just a game. Two people staring away, refusing to look back over their shoulders, afraid to be the first one to take that chance—”

“It wasn’t like that,” Juliette said. “I don’t want your job. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of others who do.”

“If it’s not you, it’s someone I’m not sure I can trust. Not anymore.”

“Then give it to the next girl.” She smiled.

“It’s you or him. And I think he’ll be getting more guidance from the thirties than he will from me, or from the Pact.”

Juliette seemed to react to this. Her arms loosened across her chest. She turned and met Jahns’ gaze. Marnes was studying all of this from across the room.

“The last sheriff, Holston, what happened to him?”

“He went to cleaning,” Jahns said.

“He volunteered,” Marnes added gruffly.

“I know, but why?” She frowned. “I heard it was his wife.”

“There’s all kinds of speculation—”

“I remember him talking about her, when you two came down to look into Rick’s death. I thought, at first, that he was flirting with me, but all he could talk about was this wife of his.”

“They were in the lottery while we were down here,” Marnes reminded her.

“Yeah. That’s right.” She studied the bed for a while. Paperwork was spread across it.

“I wouldn’t know how to do this job. I only know how to fix things.”

“It’s the same thing,” Marnes told her. “You were a big help with our case down here. You see how things work. How they fit together. Little clues that other people miss.”

“You’re talking about machines,” she said.

“People aren’t much different,” Marnes told her.

“I think you already know this,” Jahns said. “I think you have the right attitude, actually. The right disposition. This is only slightly a political office. Distance is good.”

Juliette shook her head and looked back to Marnes. “So you nominated me for this, is that it? I wondered how this came up. Seemed like something right out of the ground.”

“You’d be good at it,” Marnes told her. “I think you’d be damned good at anything you set your mind to. And this is more important work than you think.”

“And I’d live up top?”

“Your office is on level one. Near the airlock.”

Juliette seemed to mull this over. Jahns was excited to have her even asking questions.

“The pay is more than you’re making now, even with the extra shifts.”

“You checked?”

Jahns nodded. “I took some liberties before we came down.”

“Like talking to my father.”

“That’s right. He would love to see you, you know. If you come with us.”

Juliette looked down at her boots. “Not sure about that.”

“There’s one other thing,” Marnes said, catching Jahns’ eye. He glanced at the paperwork on the bed. The crisply folded contract for Peter Billings was on top. “IT,” he reminded her.

Jahns caught his drift.

“There’s one matter to clear up, before you accept.”

“I’m not sure I’m accepting. I’d want to hear more about this power holiday, organize the work shifts down here—”

“According to tradition, IT signs off on all nominated positions—”

Juliette rolled her eyes and blew out her breath. “IT.”

“Yes, and we checked in with them on the way down as well, just to smooth things over.”

“I’m sure,” Juliette said.

“It’s about these requisitions,” Marnes interjected.

Juliette turned to him.

“We know it probably ain’t nothing, but it’s gonna come up—”

“Wait, is this about the heat tape?”

“Heat tape?”

“Yeah.” Juliette frowned and shook her head. “Those bastards.”

Jahns pinched two inches of air. “They had a folder on you this thick. Said you were skimming supplies meant for them.”

“No they didn’t. Are you kidding?” She pointed toward the door. “We can’t get any of the supplies we need because of them. When I needed heat tape—we had a leak in a heat exchanger a few months back—we couldn’t get any because Supply tells us the backing material for the tape is all spoken for. Now, we had that order in a while back, and then I find out from one of our porters that the tape is going to IT, that they’ve got miles of the stuff for the skins of all their test suits.”

Juliette took a deep breath.

“So I had some intercepted.” She looked to Marnes as she admitted this. “Look, I’m keeping the power on so they can do whatever it is they do up there, and I can’t get basic supplies. And even when I do, the quality is complete crap, probably because of unrealistic quotas, rushing the manufacturing chain—”

“If these are items you really needed,” Jahns interrupted, “then I understand.”

She looked to Marnes, who smiled and dipped his chin as if to say he told her this was the right woman for the job.

Jahns ignored him. “I’m actually glad to hear your side of this,” she told Juliette. “And I wish I made this trip more often, as sore as my legs are. There are things we take for granted up top, mostly because they aren’t well understood. I can see now that our offices need to be in better communication, have more of the constant contact I have with IT.”

“I’ve been saying that for just about twenty years,” Juliette said. “Down here, we joke that this place was laid out to keep us well out of the way. And that’s how it feels, sometimes.”

“Well, if you come up top, if you take this job, people will hear you. You could be the first link in that chain of command.”

“Where would IT fall?”

“There will be resistance, but that’s normal with them. I’ve handled it before. I’ll wire my office for some emergency waivers. We’ll make them retroactive, get these acquisitions above board.” Jahns studied the younger woman. “As long as I have your assurance that every one of these diverted supplies were absolutely necessary.”

Juliette did not flinch away from the challenge. “They were,” she said. “Not that it mattered. The stuff we got from them was crap. Couldn’t have fallen apart better if it’d been designed to. I’ll tell you what, we finally got our shipment from Supply and have extra tape. I’d love to drop off a peace offering on our way up. Our design is so much better—”

“Our way up?” Jahns asked, making sure she understood what she was saying, what she was agreeing to.

Juliette looked them both over. She nodded. “You’ll have to give me a week to sort out the generator. I’m holding you to that power holiday. And just so you understand, I’ll always consider myself Mechanical, and I’ll be doing this partly because I see what happens when problems are ignored. My big push down here has been preventive maintenance. No more waiting for things to break before we fix them, but to go around and make them hum while they’re still working. Too many issues have been ignored, let degrade. And I think, if the silo can be thought of as one big engine, we are like the dirty oil pan down here that needs some people’s attention.” She reached her hand out to Jahns. “Get me that power holiday, and I’m your man.”

Jahns smiled and took her hand, admired the warmth and power in her confident handshake.

“I’ll get on it first thing in the morning,” she said. “And thank you. Welcome aboard.”

Marnes crossed the room to shake Juliette’s hand as well. “Nice to have you on, Boss.”

Juliette smirked as she took his hand. “Well, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I think I’ll have a lot to learn before you go calling me that.”

7

It felt appropriate that their climb back to the up-top would occur during a power holiday. Jahns could feel her own energy complying with the new decree, draining away with each laborious step. The agony of the descent had been a tease, the discomfort of constant movement disguising itself as the fatigue of exercise. But now her frail muscles were really put to work. Each step was something to be conquered. She would lift a boot to the next tread, place a hand on her knee, and push herself another ten inches up what felt like a million feet of spiral staircase.

The landing to her right displayed the number “58.” Each landing seemed to be in view forever. Not like the trip down, where she could daydream and skip right past several floors. Now they loomed in sight gradually beyond the outer railing, and held there, taunting in the dim green glow of the emergency lights, as she struggled up one plodding and wavering step at a time.

Marnes walked beside her, his hand on the inner rail, hers on the outer, the walking stick clanging on the lonely treads between them. Occasionally, their arms brushed against one another. It felt as though they’d been away for months, away from their offices, their duties, their cold familiarity. The adventure down to wrangle a new sheriff had played out differently than Jahns had imagined it would. She had dreamed of a return to her youth and had instead found herself haunted by old ghosts. She had hoped to find a renewed vigor and instead felt the years of wear in her knees and back. What was to be a grand tour of her silo was instead trudged in relative anonymity, and now she wondered if its operation and upkeep even needed her.

The world around her was stratified. She saw that ever more clearly. The up-top concerned itself with a blurring view, taking for granted the squeezed juice enjoyed with breakfast. The people who lived below and worked the gardens or cleaned animal cages orbited their own world of soil, greenery, and fertilizer. To them, the outside view was peripheral, ignored until there was a cleaning. And then there was the down deep, the machine shops and chemistry labs, the pumping oil and grinding gears, the hands-on world of grease limned fingernails and the musk of toil. To these people, the outside world and the food that trickled down were mere rumors and bodily sustenance. The point of the silo was for the people to keep the machines running, when Jahns had always, her entire long life, seen it the other way around.

Landing fifty-seven appeared through the fog of darkness. A young girl sat on the steel grate, her feet tucked up against herself, arms wrapped around her knees, a children’s book in its protective plastic cover held out into the feeble light spilling from an overhead bulb. Jahns watched the girl, who was unmoved save her eyes as they darted over the colorful pages. The girl never looked up to see who was passing the apartment’s landing. They left her behind, and she gradually faded in the darkness as Jahns and Marnes struggled ever upward, exhausted from their third day of climbing, no vibrations or ringing footsteps above or below them, the silo quiet and eerily devoid of life, room enough for two old friends, two comrades, to walk side by side on the crumbling steps of chipping paint, their arms swinging and every now and then, and very occasionally, brushing together.

They stayed that night at the mid-level deputy station, the officer of the mids insisting they take his hospitality and Jahns eager to buttress support for yet another sheriff nominated from outside the profession. After a cold dinner in near darkness and enough idle banter to satisfy their host and his wife, Jahns retired to the main office where a convertible couch had been made as comfortable as possible, the linens borrowed from a nicer elsewhere and smelling of two-chit soap. Marnes had been set up on a cot in the holding cell, which still smelled of tub-gin and a drunk who had gotten too carried away after the cleaning.

It was impossible to notice when the lights went out, they were so dim already. Jahns rested on the cot in the darkness, her muscles throbbing and luxuriating in her body’s stillness, her feet cramped and feeling like solid bone, her back tender and in need of stretching. Her mind, however, continued to move. It drifted back to the weary conversations that had passed the time on their most recent day of climbing.

She and Marnes seemed to be spiraling around one another, testing the memory of old attractions, probing the tenderness of ancient scars, looking for some soft spot that remained among brittle and broken bodies, across wrinkled and dried-paper skin, and within hearts calloused by law and politics.

Donald’s name came up often and tentatively, like a child sneaking into the adult bed, forcing wary lovers to make room in the middle. Jahns grieved anew for her long lost husband. She grieved for the first time in her life for the subsequent decades of solitude. What she had forever seen as her calling—this living apart and serving the greater good—now felt more a curse. Her life had been taken from her. Squeezed into pulp. The juice of her efforts and sacrificed years had dripped down through a silo that, just forty levels below her, hardly knew and barely cared.

The saddest part of this journey had been this understanding she’d come to with Holston’s ghost. She could admit it now: A great reason for her hike, perhaps even the reason for wanting Juliette as sheriff, was to fall all the way to the down deep, away from the sad sight of two lovers nestled together in the crook of a hill as the wind etched away all their wasted youth. She had set out to escape Holston, and had instead found him. Now she knew, if not the mystery of why all sent out to clean actually did so, why a sad few would dare volunteer for the duty. Better to join a ghost than be haunted by them, Jahns now knew. Better no life than an empty one—

The door to the deputy’s office squeaked on a hinge long worn beyond the repair of grease. Jahns tried to sit up, to see in the dark, but her muscles were too sore, her eyes too old. She wanted to call out, to let her hosts know that she was okay, in need of nothing, but she listened instead.

Footsteps came to her, nearly invisible in the worn carpet. There were no words, just the creaking of old joints as they approached the bed, the lifting of expensive and fragrant sheets, and an understanding between two living ghosts.

Jahns’ breath caught in her chest. Her hand groped for a wrist as it clutched her sheets. She slid over on the small convertible bed to make room and pulled him down beside her.

Marnes wrapped his arms around her back, wiggled beneath her until she was lying on his side, a leg draped over his, her hands on his neck. She felt his mustache brush against her cheek, heard his lips purse and peck the corner of hers.

Jahns held his cheeks and burrowed her face into his shoulder. She cried, like a schoolchild, like a new shadow who felt lost and afraid in the wilderness of a strange and terrifying job. She cried with fear, but that soon drained away. It drained like the soreness in her back as his hands rubbed her there. It drained until numbness found its place, and then, after what felt like a forever of shuddering sobs, with sensation taking the place of that.

Jahns felt alive in her skin. She felt the tingle of flesh touching flesh, of just her forearm against his hard ribs, her hands on his shoulder, his hands on her hips. And then the tears were some joyous release, some mourning of the lost time, some welcomed sadness of a moment long delayed and finally there, arms wrapped around it and holding tight.

She fell asleep like that, exhausted from far more than the climb, nothing more than a few trembling kisses, hands interlocking, a whispered word of tenderness and appreciation, and then the depths of sleep pulling her down, the weariness in her joints and bones succumbing to a slumber she didn’t want but sorely needed. She slept with a man in her arms for the first time in decades, and woke to a bed familiarly empty, but a heart strangely full.

In the middle of their fourth and final day of climbing, they approached the mid-thirties of IT. Jahns had found herself taking more breaks for water and to rub her muscles along the way, not for the exhaustion she feigned, but the dread of this stopover and seeing Bernard, the fear of their trip ever coming to an end.

The dark and deep shadows cast by the power holiday followed them up, the traffic sparse as most merchants had closed for the silo-wide brownout. Juliette, who had stayed behind to oversee the repairs, had warned Jahns of the flickering lights from the backup generator. Still, the effect of the shimmering illumination had worn on her during the long climb. The inconstancy was bothersome.

When they reached the thirty-fourth, Jahns felt like they were, in a sense, home again. Back in the realm of the familiar, at the main landing for IT. She waited by the railing, leaning on it and her walking stick, while Marnes got the door. As it was cracked open, the pale glow of diminished power was swept off the stairwell by the bright lights blooming inside. It hadn’t been widely publicized, but the reason for the severe power restrictions on other levels was largely due to the exemption IT maintained it possessed in spite of this holiday. Bernard had pointed to various clauses in the Pact to support this. Juliette had bitched that servers shouldn’t get priority over grow lights, but resigned herself to getting the main generator re-aligned, and taking what she could. Jahns told Juliette to view this as her first lesson in political compromise. Juliette said she saw it as a display of weakness.

Inside, Jahns found Bernard waiting on them, a look on his face like he’d swallowed sour fruit juice. A conversation between several IT workers standing off to the side quickly silenced with their entry, leaving Jahns little doubt that they’d been spotted on the way up and expected.

“Bernard,” she said, trying to keep her breathing steady. She didn’t want him to know how tired she was. Let him think she was strolling by on her way up from the down deep, like it was no big deal.

“Marie.”

It was a deliberate slight. He didn’t even look Marnes’ way or acknowledge that the deputy was in the room.

“Would you like to sign these here? Or in the conference room?” She dug into her bag for the contract with Juliette’s name on it.

“What games are you playing at, Marie?”

Jahns felt her temperature rise. The cluster of workers in silver IT jumpsuits were following the exchange. “Playing at?” she asked.

“You think this power holiday of yours is cute? Your way of getting back at me?”

“Getting back—?”

“I’ve got servers, Marie—”

“Your servers have their full allocation of power,” Jahns reminded him, her voice rising.

“But their cooling comes ducted from Mechanical, and if temps get any higher, we’ll be ramping down, which we’ve never had to do!”

Marnes stepped between the two of them, his hands raised. “Easy,” he said cooly, his gaze on Bernard.

“Call off your little shadow here,” Bernard said.

Jahns placed a hand on Marnes’ arm.

“The Pact is clear, Bernard. It’s my choice. My nomination. You and I have a nice history of signing off on each others—”

“And I told you this girl from the pits will not do—”

“She’s got the job,” Marnes said, interrupting. Jahns noticed his hand had fallen to the butt of his gun. She wasn’t sure if Bernard noticed or not, but he fell silent. His eyes, however, did not leave Jahns’.

“I won’t sign it.”

“Then next time, I won’t ask.”

Bernard smiled. “You think you’ll outlive another sheriff?” He turned toward the workers in the corner and waved one of them over. “Why do I somehow doubt that?” The worker approached. Bernard nodded to the young man, a face familiar to Jahns from level meetings. “Sign whatever she needs, I refuse to. Make copies. Take care of the rest.” He waved his hand dismissively, turned and looked Marnes and Jahns up and down one final time, as if disgusted with their condition, their age, their positions, something. “Oh, and top off their canteens and see that they have food enough to stagger back to their homes. Whatever it takes to power their decrepit legs to wherever it is they belong.”

And with that, Bernard strode off toward the barred gates that led into the heart of IT, back to his brightly lit offices where servers hummed happily, the temperature rising in the slow-moving air like the heat of angered flesh as capillaries squeezed, the blood in them rising to a boil.

8

The floors flew by faster as they approached home. In the darkest sections of the staircase, between quiet floors of people hunkered down and awaiting a return to normalcy, old hands wrapped around each other and swung between two climbers, brazenly and open, grasping each other while their other hands slid up the cool steel of the rails.

Jahns only let go sporadically to check that her walking stick was secure against her back, or to grab Marnes’ canteen from his pack and take a sip. They had taken to drinking each other’s water, it being easier to reach across than around one’s own back. There was a sweetness to it as well, this carrying the sustenance another needed, this being able to provide and reciprocate in a perfectly equitable relationship. It was a thing worth dropping hands for. Momentarily, at least.

Jahns finished a sip, screwed on the metal cap with its dangling chain, and replaced it in his outer pouch. She was dying to know if things would be different once they got back. They were only twenty floors away. An impossible distance yesterday now seemed like something that could slip away without noticing. And as they arrived, would familiar surroundings bring familiar roles? Would last night feel more and more like a dream? Or would old ghosts become more and more solid?

She wanted to ask these things, but talked of trivialities instead. When would Jules, as she insisted they call her, be ready for duty? What case files did he and Holston have open that needed tending to first? What concession would they make to keep IT happy, to calm down Bernard? And how would they handle Peter Billings’ disappointment? What impact would this have on hearings he might one day preside over as judge?

Jahns felt butterflies in her stomach as they discussed these things. Or perhaps it was the nerves of all she wanted to say, but couldn’t. These topics were as numerous as grains of dust in the outside air, and just as likely to dry her mouth and still her tongue. She found herself drinking more and more from his thermos, her own water making noises at her back, her stomach lurching with every landing, each number counting down toward the conclusion of their journey, an adventure that had been a complete success in so many ways.

To start with, they had their sheriff. A fiery girl from the down deep who seemed every bit as confident and inspiring as Marnes had intimated. Jahns saw her kind as the future of the silo. People who thought long term. Who planned. Who got things done. There was precedence of sheriffs running for mayor. She thought Juliette would eventually make a fine choice.

And speaking of running, the trip had fired up her own goals and ambitions. She was excited for the upcoming elections, however unopposed she might be, and had even come up with dozens of short speeches during the climb. She saw how things could run better, how she could perform her duties more diligently, and how the silo could have new life breathed into old bones.

But the biggest change was whatever had grown between herself and Marnes. She had even begun to suspect, just in the last hours, that the real reason for him never taking a promotion was because of her. As deputy, there was enough space between them to contain his hope, his impossible dream of holding her. As sheriff, it couldn’t happen. Too much conflict of interest, too much his immediate superior. This theory of hers contained a powerful sadness and an awe-inspiring sweetness. She squeezed his hand as she thought on this theory, and it filled her with a deep hollowness, a cramp in her gut at all he had silently sacrificed, a massive debt to live up to no matter what happened next.

They approached the landing to the nursery, and had no plans for stopping to see Juliette’s father, to urge him to receive his daughter on the way up, but Jahns changed her mind as she felt her bladder beg for release.

“I’ve got to go pretty bad,” she told Marnes, embarrassed as a child to admit she couldn’t hold it. Her mouth was dry and her stomach churning from so much fluid, and maybe from a little fear of the journey being over and done. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Juliette’s father, either,” she added.

Marnes’ mustache bent up at the corners with the excuse. “Then we should stop,” he said.

The waiting room was empty, the signs reminding them to be quiet. Jahns peered through the glass partition and saw a nurse padding through the dark corridor toward her, a frown becoming a slight smile of recognition.

“Mayor,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry not to have wired ahead, but I was hoping to see Doctor Nichols? And possibly use your restroom?”

“Of course.” She buzzed the door and waved them through. “We’ve had two deliveries since you last stopped by. Things have been crazy with this generator mess—”

“Power holiday,” Marnes corrected, his voice gruff and louder than theirs.

The nurse shot him a look, but nodded as if duly noted. She took two robes from the racks and held them out, told them to leave their stuff by her desk.

In the waiting room, she waved toward the benches and said she would find the doctor. “The bathrooms are through there.” She pointed at a door, the old sign painted on its surface nearly eroded clean away.

“I’ll be right back,” Jahns told Marnes. She fought the urge to reach out and squeeze his hand, as normal as that dark and hidden habit had lately become.

The bathroom was almost completely devoid of light. Jahns fumbled with an unfamiliar lock on the stall door, cursed under her breath as her stomach churned noisily, then finally threw the stall open and hurried to sit down. Her stomach felt like it was on fire as she relieved herself. The mixture of welcomed release and the burn of having held it too long left her unable to breathe. She went for what felt like forever, remained sitting as her legs shook uncontrollably, and realized she had pushed herself too hard on the climb up. The thought of another twenty levels mortified her, made her insides feel hollow with dread. She finished and moved over to the adjoining toilet to splash herself clean, then dried herself with one of the towels. She flushed both units to cycle the water. It all required fumbling in the darkness, unable to see and unfamiliar with the spacing and location that were second nature in her apartment and office.

She staggered out of the bathroom on weak legs, wondering if she might need to stay one more night, sleep in a delivery bed, wait until the morning to make the climb to her office. She could barely feel her legs as she pulled open the door and returned to Marnes in the waiting room.

“Better?” he asked. He sat on one of the family benches, a space left conspicuously beside him. Jahns nodded and sat heavily. She was breathing in shallow pants and wondered if he’d find her weak to admit she couldn’t go any further that day.

“Jahns? You okay?”

Marnes leaned forward. He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking toward the ground. “Jahns. What the hell happened?”

“Lower your voice,” she whispered.

He screamed, instead.

“Doctor!” he yelled. “Nurse!”

A form moved beyond the dusky glass of the nursery. Jahns laid her head back against the seat cushion, trying to form the words on her lips, to tell him to keep it down.

“Jahns, sweetheart, what did you do?”

He was holding her hand, patting the back of it. He shook her arm. Jahns just wanted to sleep. There was the slapping of footsteps running their way. Lights turned up forbiddingly bright. A nurse yelled something. There was the familiar voice of Juliette’s father, a doctor. He would give her a bed. He would understand this exhaustion—

There was talk of blood. Someone was examining her legs. Marnes was crying, tears falling into his white mustache, peppered with black. He was shaking her shoulders, looking her in the eye.

“I’m okay,” Jahns tried to say.

She licked her lips. So dry. Mouth, so damned dry. She asked for water. Marnes fumbled for his canteen, brought it to her lips, splashing water against and into her mouth.

She tried to swallow, but couldn’t. They were stretching her out on the bench, the doctor touching her ribs, shining a light in her eyes. But things were getting darker anyway.

Marnes clutched the canteen in one hand, rubbed her hair back with the other. He was blubbering. So sad for some reason. So much more energy than her. She smiled at him and reached for his hand, a miraculous effort. She held his wrist and told him that she loved him. That she had for as long as she could remember. Her mind was tired, loosing its grip on her secrets, mouthing them to him as his eyes flowed with tears.

His eyes, bright and wrinkled, peering down at her, then turning to the canteen in his hand.

The canteen that he had carried.

The water, and poison, meant for him.

9

The generator room was unusually crowded and eerily silent. Mechanics in worn coveralls stood three deep behind the railing and watched the first shift crew work. Juliette was only dimly aware of them; she was more keenly aware of the silence.

She leaned over a device of her own making, a tall platform welded to the metal floor and arrayed with mirrors and tiny slits that bounced light across the room. This light shined on mirrors attached to the generator and its large dynamo, helping her get them in perfect alignment. It was the shaft between the two of them that she cared about, that long steel rod the size of a man’s waist where the power of combusting fuel was transformed into the spark of electricity. She was hoping to have the machines on either end of this rod aligned to within a thousandth of an inch. But everything they were doing was without precedent. The procedures had been hurriedly planned in all-night sessions while the backup generator was put online. Now, she could only concentrate, could only hope the eighteen hour shifts had been good for something, and trust in plans made back when she’d had some decent rest and could soundly think.

While she guided the final placement, the chamber around her stood deathly quiet. She gave a sign, and Marck and his team tightened several of the massive bolts on the new rubber floor mounts. They were four days into the power holiday. The generator needed to be up and running by morning and at full power that next evening. With so much done to it—the new gaskets and seals, the polishing of cylinder shafts that had required young shadows to crawl down into the heart of the beast—Juliette was worried about it even starting up. The generator had never been fully powered down during her lifetime. Old Knox could remember it shutting itself down in an emergency once, back when he was a mere shadow, but for everyone else the rumble was as constant and close as their own heartbeats. Juliette felt inordinate pressure for everything to work. She was the one who had come up with the idea to do a refit. She calmed herself with reassurances that it was the right thing to do, and that the worst that could happen now was that the holiday would get extended until they sorted out all the kinks. That was much better than a catastrophic failure years from now.

Marck signaled that the bolts were secure, the lock nuts tightened down. Juliette jumped off her homemade platform and strolled over to the generator to join him. It was difficult to walk casually with so many eyes on her. She couldn’t believe this rowdy crew, this extended and dysfunctional family of hers, could be so perfectly silent. It was like they were all holding their breath, wondering if the crushing schedule of the last few days was going to be for naught.

“You ready?” she asked Marck.

He nodded, wiping his hands on a filthy rag that always seemed to be draped over his shoulder. Juliette checked her watch. The sight of its second hand ticking around in its constant path comforted her. Whenever she had doubts about something working, she looked at her wrist. Not to see the time, but to see a thing she had fixed. A repair so intricate and impossible—one that had taken years of cleaning and setting parts almost too small to see—that it made her current task, whatever it was, feel small by comparison.

“We on schedule?” Marck asked, grinning.

“We’re doing fine.” She nodded to the control room. Whispers began to stir through the crowd as they realized the restart was imminent. Dozens of them pulled sound protection from their necks and settled the muffs over their ears. Juliette and Marck joined Shirly in the control room.

“How’s it going?” Juliette asked the second shift foreman, a young woman, small but fiery.

“Golden,” Shirly said as she continued to make adjustments, zeroing out all the corrections that had built up over the years. They were starting from the ground up, none of the patches and fixes of old to disguise any new symptoms. A fresh start. “We’re good to go,” she said.

She backed away from the controls and moved to stand near her husband. The gesture was transparent, leaving the controls. This was Juliette’s project, perhaps the last thing she would ever try and fix in the down deep of Mechanical. She would have the honor, and the full responsibility, of firing the generator up.

Juliette stood over the control board, looking down at knobs and dials that she could locate in utter darkness. It was hard to believe that this phase of her life was over, that some new one was about to begin. The thought of traveling to the up-top frightened her more than this project could. The idea of leaving her friends and family, of dealing with politics, did not taste as sweet to her as the sweat and grease on her lips. But at least she had allies up there. If people like Jahns and Marnes were able to get by, to survive, she figured she’d be okay.

With a trembling hand, more from exhaustion than nerves, Juliette engaged the starter motor. There was a loud whine as a small electrical engine tried to get the massive diesel generator moving. It seemed to be taking forever, but Juliette had no idea what normal sounded like. Marck stood by the door, propping it open so they could better hear any shouts to abort. He glanced over at Juliette as she continued to hold the ignition, creases of worry in his brow as the starter whined and groaned in the next room.

Someone outside waved both arms, trying to signal her through the glass.

“Shut it off, shut it off,” Marck said. Shirly hurried over toward the control panel to help.

Juliette let go of the ignition and reached for the kill switch, but she stopped herself from pressing it. There was a noise outside. A powerful hum. She thought she could feel it through the floor, but not like the vibration of old.

“It’s already running!” someone yelled.

“It was already running,” Marck said, laughing.

The mechanics outside were cheering. Someone pulled off their ear protection and hurled the muffs up into the air. Juliette realized the starter motor was louder than the rebuilt generator, that she’d been holding the ignition even as it had already started and continued to run.

Shirly and Marck hugged one another. Juliette checked the temps and pressures on all the zeroed gauges and saw little to adjust, but she wouldn’t be sure until it warmed up. Her throat constricted with emotion, the release of so much pressure. Work crews were leaping over the railing to crowd around the rebuilt beast. Some who rarely visited the generator room were reaching out to touch it, almost with reverent awe.

Juliette left the control room to watch them, to listen to the sound of a perfectly working machine, of gears in alignment. She stood behind the railing, hands on a steel bar that used to rattle and dance while the generator labored, and watched an unlikely celebration take place in a normally avoided workspace. The hum was magnificent. Power without dread. The culmination of so much hurried labor and planning.

The success gave her a new confidence for what lay ahead, for what lay above. She was in such fine spirits and so fixated on the powerful and improved machines that she didn’t notice the young porter hurry into the room, his face ashen, his chest swelling with the deep gulps of a long and frantic run. She barely noticed the way the news traveled from mouth to mouth throughout the room, spreading among the mechanics until fear and sadness registered in their eyes. It wasn’t until the celebration died completely, the room falling into a different sort of quiet, one studded with sobs and gasps of disbelief, of grown men wailing, that Juliette knew something was amiss.

Something had happened. A great and powerful thing had fallen out of alignment.

And it had nothing to do with her generator.