12

　　On the second and final day of their descent into the down deep, the novel gradually became thehabitual. The clank and thrum of the great spiral staircase found a rhythm. Jahns was able to loseherself in her thoughts, daydreaming² so serenely³ 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 waseven soothed⁵ away, whether by the numbness⁶ of fatigue⁷ or an actual return to health, she didn’tknow. She took to using the walking stick less, finding it only held up her pace as it often slippedbetween the treads and got caught there. With it tucked under her arm, it felt more useful. Likeanother bone in her skeleton, holding her together.

　　When they passed the ninetieth floor, with the stench of fertilizer and the pigs and other animalsthat produced this useful waste, Jahns pressed on, skipping the tour and lunch she’d planned, thinkingonly briefly⁸ of the small rabbit that somehow had escaped from another farm, made it twenty floorsup without being spotted⁹, and ate its fill for three weeks while it confounded half a silo.

　　Technically¹⁰, they were already in the down deep when they reached ninety-seven. The bottomthird. But even though the silo was mathematically divided into three sections of forty-eight floorseach, her brain didn’t work that way. Floor one hundred was a better demarcation. It was a milestone¹¹.

　　She counted the floors down until they reached the first landing with three digits¹² and stopped for abreak.

　　Marnes was breathing deeply, she noticed. But she felt great. Alive and renewed in the way shehad hoped the trip would make her feel. The futility¹³, dread¹⁴, and exhaustion¹⁵ from the day before weregone. All that remained was a small twinge of fear that these dour¹⁶ feelings could return, that thisexuberant elation¹⁷ was a temporary high, that if she stopped, if she thought on it too long, it wouldspiral away and leave her dark and moody¹⁸ once more.

　　They split a small loaf of bread between them, sitting on the metal grating of the wide landingwith their elbows propped¹⁹ up on the railings, their feet swinging over empty space, like two kidscutting class. Level one hundred teemed²⁰ with people coming and going. The entire floor was abazaar, a place for exchanging goods, for cashing in work chits for whatever was needed or merelycoveted. Workers with their trailing shadows came and went, families yelled for one another amongthe dizzying crowds, merchants barked their best deals. The doors remained propped open for thetraffic, letting the smells and sounds drift out onto the double-wide landing, the grating shivering withexcitement.

　　Jahns reveled in the anonymity²² of the passing crowd. She bit into her half of the loaf, savoring²³ thefresh 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 handtouched hers as he passed it to her. Even the bread crumbs²⁴ in his mustache were part of the moment’sperfection.

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

　　“Right now, I’m not even dreading²⁵ the climb out,” Jahns said. She finished the cheese and appleand chewed contentedly²⁶. Everything tasted better while climbing, she decided²⁷. Or in pleasantcompany, or amid the music leaking out of the bazaar²¹, some beggar strumming his uke over the noiseof the crowd.

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

　　Marnes grunted²⁸. “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 fewyears?”

　　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 silospoking up over the hillside. You don’t think they would move around so little, do you? Like stay inthe 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. Itwas impossible sometimes to know what could and couldn’t be said about the outside. Those werediscussions for spouses²⁹, and maybe the walk and the day together yesterday had gotten to her. Ormaybe she was as susceptible³⁰ to the post-cleaning high as anyone else: the sense that some rulescould be relaxed, a few temptations courted, the release of pressure in the silo giving excuse for amonth 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, aflash of recognition on her face, gone as she hurried to catch up with her children.

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

　　????

　　Floors drifted in and out of sight. The lower gardens, the larger farm in the one-thirties, thepungent water treatment plant below that. Jahns found herself lost in thought, remembering herconversation with Marnes the night before, the idea of Donald living with her more in memory thanreality, when she came to the gate at one-forty.

　　She hadn’t even noticed the change in the traffic, the preponderance of blue denim³¹ overalls³², theporters with more satchels³³ of parts and tools than clothes, food, or personal deliveries. But the crowdat the gate showed her that she’d arrived at the upper levels of Mechanical. Gathered at the entrancewere workers in loose blue overalls spotted with age- old stains. Jahns could nearly peg³⁴ theirprofessions by the tools they carried. It was late in the day, and she assumed most were returninghome from repairs made throughout the silo. The thought of climbing so many flights of stairs andthen having to work boggled her mind. And then she remembered she was about to do that verything.

　　Rather than abuse her station or Marnes’s power, they waited in line while the workers checkedthrough the gate. As these tired men and women signed back in and logged their travel and hours,Jahns thought of the time she had wasted ruminating³⁵ about her own life during the long descent, timeshe should’ve spent polishing her appeal to this Juliette. Rare nerves twisted her gut³⁶ as the lineshuffled forward. The worker ahead of them showed his ID, the card colored blue for Mechanical. Hescratched his information on a dusty slate³⁷. When it was their turn, they pushed through the outer gateand showed their golden IDs. The station guard raised his eyebrows³⁸, then seemed to recognize themayor.

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

　　Jahns watched as he spun³⁹ the board around and wrote their names in neat print, the side of hispalm collecting dust from the old film of chalk below. For Marnes, he simply wrote “Sheriff,” andagain, Jahns didn’t correct him.

　　“I know she wasn’t expecting us until later,” Jahns said, “but I wonder if we could meet withJuliette 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 generator⁴⁰ for another hour. Maybe two, knowing her. You could hit the messhall and wait.”

　　Jahns looked at Marnes, who shrugged⁴¹. “Not entirely⁴² 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 stayout of the way.”

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

　　He’ll get someone to run you down.”

　　The head of Mechanical was a man hard to miss. Knox amply filled the largest set of overallsJahns had ever seen. She wondered if the extra denim cost him more chits and how a man managedto keep such a belly⁴³ 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 thelast time he was down. Knox listened, nodded, and then bellowed⁴⁴ in a voice so gruff, the words wereindistinguishable from one another. But they meant something to someone, as a young boymaterialized from behind him, a waif of a kid with unusually bright orange hair.

　　“Gitemoffandowntojules,” Knox growled⁴⁵, the space between the words as slender as the gap in hisbeard where a mouth should have been.

　　The young boy, young even for a shadow, waved his hand and darted⁴⁶ away. Marnes thankedKnox, who didn’t budge⁴⁷, and they followed after the boy.

　　The corridors in Mechanical, Jahns saw, were even tighter than elsewhere in the silo. Theysqueezed 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 andwire conduit hung exposed. Jahns felt the urge to duck, despite the half foot of clearance⁴⁸; she noticedmany 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 routeseemingly habitual¹. They came to a flight of stairs, the square kind that made right turns, and wentdown two more levels. Jahns heard a rumbling⁴⁹ grow louder as they descended⁵⁰. When they left thestairwell 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 moving up and down, driving a piston⁵¹ throughthe concrete floor. Jahns slowed to watch its rhythmic⁵² gyrations. The air smelled of somethingchemical, something rotten. She couldn’t place it.

　　“Is this the generator?”

　　Marnes laughed in a patronizing, uniquely manly⁵³ 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 dosomething to it in a plant a few floors down, and then it’s ready to burn.”

　　Jahns vaguely⁵⁴ knew some of this, possibly from a committee meeting. She was amazed, onceagain, at how much of the silo was alien to even her, she who was supposed to be—nominally at least—running things.

　　The persistent⁵⁵ grumbling⁵⁶ in the walls grew louder as they neared the end of the hall. When theboy with the orange hair pulled open the doors, the sound was deafening⁵⁷. Jahns felt wary⁵⁸ aboutapproaching further, and even Marnes seemed to stall. The kid waved them forward with franticgestures, 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, born of imagining themost dangerous threat she could possibly summon.

　　As she broke the plane of the door, cowering⁵⁹ behind Marnes, the boy let the door slam shut,trapping them inside with the onslaught. He pulled headphones—no wires dangling⁶⁰ from them—from a rack by the wall. Jahns followed his lead and put a pair over her own ears. The noise wasdeadened, remaining only in her chest and nerve endings. She wondered why, for what cause, thisrack 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 him along anarrow passageway of steel grating, a floor much like the landings on each silo floor. When thehallway turned, one wall fell away and was replaced with a railing of three horizontal bars. Amachine beyond reckoning loomed⁶¹ on the other side. It was the size of her entire apartment and officeput together. Nothing seemed to be moving at first, nothing to justify⁶² the pounding she could feel inher chest and across her skin. It wasn’t until they fully⁶³ rounded the machine that she saw the steel rodsticking out of the back of the unit, spinning ferociously⁶⁴ and disappearing into another massive metalmachine that 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 solitary⁶⁵ figure working beside it. A young-looking woman in overalls, a hard haton, brown braided hair hanging out the back, was leaning into a wrench⁶⁶ nearly as long as she wastall. Her presence gave the machines a terrifying sense of scale, but she didn’t seem to fear them. Shethrew herself into her wrench, her body frightfully close to the roaring unit, reminding Jahns of anold children’s tale where a mouse pulled a barb⁶⁷ out of an imaginary beast called an elephant. Theidea of a woman this size fixing a machine of such ferocity seemed absurd. But she watched thewoman work while the young shadow slipped through a gate and ran up to tug⁶⁸ on her overalls.

　　The woman turned, not startled, and squinted⁶⁹ at Jahns and Marnes. She wiped her forehead withthe back of one hand, her other hand swinging the wrench around to rest on her shoulder. She pattedthe young shadow on the head and walked out to meet them. Jahns saw that the woman’s arms werelean and well defined with muscle. She wore no undershirt, just blue overalls cut high up over herchest, exposing a bit of olive skin that gleamed with sweat. She had the same dark complexion⁷⁰ as thefarmers who worked under grow lights, but it could have been as much from the grease and grime ifher denims were any indication.

　　She stopped short of Jahns and Marnes, and nodded at them. She smiled at Marnes with a hint ofrecognition. She didn’t offer a hand, for which Jahns was grateful. Instead, she pointed⁷¹ toward a doorby 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 theshadow wasn’t underfoot, only to see him scurrying⁷² off the way he had come, his hair glowing in thewan overhead lights of the generator room. His duty, as far as he was concerned, was done.

　　Inside the small control room, the noise lessened⁷³. It dropped almost to nothing as the thick doorwas shut tight. Juliette pulled off her hard hat and earmuffs and dropped them on a shelf. Jahns tookhers away from her head tentatively, heard the noise reduced to a distant hum, and removed them allthe way. The room was tight and crowded with metal surfaces and winking⁷⁴ lights unlike anything shehad ever seen. It was strange to her that she was mayor of this room as well, a thing she hardly knewexisted and certainly couldn’t operate.

　　While the ringing in Jahns’s ears subsided⁷⁵, Juliette adjusted some spinning knobs, watching littlearms waver under glass shields. “I thought we were doing this tomorrow morning,” she said,concentrating 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, shiftinguncomfortably.

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

　　She nodded and leaned down to peer through the thick glass window at the gargantuan⁷⁶ machinesoutside, her hands darting⁷⁷ over the large control board without needing to look, adjusting large blackdials with faded white markings.

　　“Sorry about your partner,” she said, glancing down at a bank of readouts. She turned and studiedMarnes, and Jahns saw that this woman, beneath the sweat and grime, was beautiful. Her face washard and lean, her eyes bright. She had a fierce intelligence you could measure from a distance. Andshe peered at Marnes with utmost sympathy, visible in the furrow⁷⁸ of her brows. “Really,” she said.

　　“I’m terribly sorry. He seemed like a good man.”

　　“The best,” Marnes sputtered⁷⁹, his voice cracking.

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

　　“That vibration⁸⁰ you feel in the floor, Mayor? That’s a coupling when it’s barely two millimetersoff. If you think it feels bad in here, you should go put your hands on the casing. It’ll jiggle yourfingers numb⁴ immediately. Hold it long enough, and your bones will rattle⁸¹ like you’re coming apart.”

　　She turned and reached between Jahns and Marnes to throw a massive switch, then turned back tothe control board. “Now imagine what that generator is going through, shaking itself to pieces likethat. Teeth start grinding together in the transmission, small bits of metal shavings cycle through theoil like sandpaper grit⁸². Next thing you know, there’s an explosion of steel and we’ve got no powerbut 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’tbeing 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 amandate for full power, no interruptions, that’s not happening. So I’m going to keep tightening⁸³ boltswhile they keep trying to shake loose, and try to find the right revolutions in here to keep her fairlysinging.”

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

　　“And here I thought I’d 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 inthe opposite direction.

　　“How long?” Juliette laughed and shook her head. She finished a final adjustment and turned toface them with her arms crossed. “It could happen right now. It could happen a hundred years fromnow. The point is: it’s going to happen, and it’s entirely preventable. The goal shouldn’t be to keepthis place humming along for our lifetimes”—she looked pointedly⁸⁴ at Jahns—“or our current term. Ifthe goal ain’t forever, we should pack our bags right now.”

　　Jahns saw Marnes stiffen⁸⁵ at this. She felt her own body react, a chill coursing across her skin. Thislast line was dangerously close to treason. The metaphor⁸⁶ only half saved it.

　　“I could declare a power holiday,” Jahns suggested. “We could stage it in memory of those whoclean.” 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 herwrist, then wiped this on her overalls. 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 hertoo much of a former self that she could just barely recall. A younger woman who dispensed⁸⁷ withniceties and got what she wanted. She found herself glancing over at Marnes. “Why do you single outtheir department? For the power, I mean.”

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

　　“That’s quite all right.”

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

　　Jahns smiled. She suddenly saw what Marnes liked about this woman. She also saw what he hadonce 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 thatwork?”

　　“I thought we came down here to recruit her away from all this,” Marnes grumbled⁸⁸.

　　Juliette shot him a look. “And I thought I told you— or your secretary—not to bother. Not thatI’ve got anything against what you do, but I’m needed down here.” She raised her arm and checkedsomething 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 holidayfrom the juice, but I’ve got a few more adjustments to make and I’m already into my overtime⁸⁹. Knoxgets 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 youafter? 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.

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

 

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