27

　　Juliette showed up at Walker’s electronics workshop at five, worried she might find him asleep on hiscot, but smelling instead the distinctive¹ odor of vaporized solder² wafting³ down the hallway. Sheknocked on the open door as she entered, and Walker looked up from one of his many greenelectronics boards, corkscrews of smoke rising from the tip of his soldering⁴ iron.

　　“Jules!” he shouted. He lifted the magnifying lens off his gray head and set it and the solderingiron down on the steel workbench. “I heard you were back. I meant to send a note, but …” He wavedaround at the piles of parts with their work- order tags dangling⁵ from strings⁶. “Super busy,” heexplained.

　　“Forget it,” she said. She gave Walker a hug, smelling the electrical-fire scent⁷ on his skin thatreminded her so much of him. And of Scottie. “I’m going to feel guilty enough taking some of yourtime with this,” she said.

　　“Oh?” He stepped back and studied her, his bushy white brows and wrinkled skin furrowed⁸ withworry. “You got something for me?” He looked her up and down for something broken, a habitformed from a lifetime of being brought small devices that needed repairing.

　　“I actually just wanted to pick your brain.” She sat down on one of his workbench stools, andWalker did the same.

　　“Go ahead,” he said. He wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve, and Juliette saw how oldWalker had become. She remembered him without so much white in his hair, without the wrinklesand splotchy skin. She remembered him with his shadow.

　　“It has to do with Scottie,” she warned him.

　　Walker turned his head to the side and nodded. He tried to say something, tapped his fist againsthis chest a few times and cleared his throat. “Damn shame,” was all he could manage. He peereddown at the floor for a moment.

　　“It can wait,” Juliette told him. “If you need time—”

　　“I convinced him to take that job,” Walker said, shaking his head. “I remember when the offercame, being scared he’d turn it down. Because of me, you know? That he’d be too afraid of me bein’

　　upset at him for leaving, that he might just stay forever, so I urged him to take it.” He looked up ather, his eyes shining. “I just wanted him to know he was free to choose. I didn’t mean to push himaway.”

　　“You didn’t,” Juliette said. “Nobody thinks that, and neither should you.”

　　“I just don’t figure he was happy up there. That weren’t his home.”

　　“Well, he was too smart for us. Don’t forget that. We always said that.”

　　“He loved you,” Walker said, and wiped his eyes. “Damn, how that boy looked up to you.”

　　Juliette felt her own tears welling up again. She reached into her pocket and brought out the wireshe’d transcribed⁹ onto the back of the note. She had to remind herself why she was there, to hold ittogether.

　　“Just don’t seem like him to take the easy way—” Walker muttered.

　　“No, it doesn’t,” she said. “Walker, I need to discuss some things with you that can’t leave thisroom.”

　　He laughed. Mostly, it seemed, to keep from sobbing¹⁰. “Like I ever leave this room,” he said.

　　“Well, it can’t be discussed with anyone else. No one. Okay?”

　　He bobbed his head.

　　“I don’t think Scottie killed himself.”

　　Walker threw up his hands to cover his face. He bent¹¹ forward and shook as he started to cry.

　　Juliette got off her stool and went to him, put her arm around his trembling back.

　　“I knew it,” he sobbed¹² into his palms. “I knew it, I knew it.” He looked up at her, tears coursingthrough several days of white stubble. “Who did this? They’ll pay, won’t they? Tell me who did it,Jules.”

　　“Whoever it was, I don’t think they had far to travel,” she said.

　　“IT? Goddamn them.”

　　“Walker, I need your help sorting this out. Scottie sent me a wire not long before he … well,before I think he was killed.”

　　“Sent you a wire?”

　　“Yeah. Look, I met with him earlier that day. He asked me to come down to see him.”

　　“Down to IT?”

　　She nodded. “I’d found something in the last sheriff’s computer—”

　　“Holston.” He dipped his head. “The last cleaner. Yeah, Knox brought me something from you. Aprogram, looked like. I told him Scottie would know better than anyone, so we forwarded it along.”

　　“Well, you were right.”

　　Walker wiped his cheeks and bobbed his head. “He was smarter than any of us.”

　　“I know. He told me this thing, that it was a program, one that made very detailed¹³ images. Likethe images we see of the outside—”

　　She waited a beat to see how he would respond. It was taboo¹⁴ even to use the word in mostsettings. Walker was unmoved. As she had hoped, he was old enough to be beyond childhood fears—and probably lonely and sad enough not to care anyway.

　　“But this wire he sent, it says something about p-x-l’s being too dense¹⁵.” She showed him the copyshe’d made. Walker grabbed his magnifiers and slipped the band over his forehead.

　　“Pixels,” he said, sniffing¹⁶. “He’s talking about the little dots that make up an image. Each one is apixel.” He took the note from her and read some more. “He says it’s not safe there.” Walker rubbedhis chin and shook his head. “Damn them.”

　　“Walker, what kind of screen would be eight inches by two inches?” Juliette looked around at allthe boards, displays, and coils of loose wire strewn about his workshop. “Do you have anything likethat?”

　　“Eight by two? Maybe a readout, like on the front of a server or something. Be the right size toshow a few lines of text, internal temps, clock cycles …” He shook his head. “But you’d never makeone with this kind of pixel density¹⁷. Even if it were possible, it wouldn’t make sense. Your eyecouldn’t make out one pixel from its neighbor if it were right at the end of your nose.”

　　He rubbed his stubble and studied the note some more. “What’s this nonsense about the tape andthe joke? What’s that mean?”

　　Juliette stood beside him and looked over the note. “I’ve been wondering about that. He mustmean the heat tape he scored for me a while back.”

　　“I think I remember something about that.”

　　“Well, do you remember the problems we had with it? The exhaust we wrapped in it almostcaught fire. The stuff was complete crap. I think he sent a note asking if the tape had gotten hereokay, and I sorta recall writing back that it did, and thanks, but the tape couldn’t have self-destructedbetter if it’d been engineered to.”

　　“That was your joke?” Walker swiveled in his stool and rested his elbows on the workbench. Hekept peering over the copied charcoal¹⁸ letters like they were the face of Scottie, his little shadowcoming back one last time to tell him something important.

　　“And he says my joke was truth,” Juliette said. “I’ve been up the last three hours thinking aboutthis, dying to talk to someone.”

　　Walter looked back over his shoulder at her, his eyebrows¹⁹ raised.

　　“I’m not a sheriff, Walk. Never born to be one. Shouldn’t have gone. But I know, as sure aseveryone, that what I’m about to say should send me to cleaning …”

　　Walker immediately slid off his stool and walked away from her. Juliette damned herself forcoming, for opening her mouth, for not just clocking into first shift and saying to hell with it all—Walker shut the door to his workshop and locked it. He looked at her and lifted a finger, went tohis air compressor and pulled out a hose. Then he flipped²⁰ the unit on so the motor would start to buildup pressure, which just leaked out the open nozzle in a steady, noisy hiss²¹. He returned to the bench,the clatter²² from the noisy compressor engine awful, and sat down. His wide eyes begged her tocontinue.

　　“There’s a hill up there with a crook²³ in it,” she told him, having to raise her voice a little. “I don’tknow how long it’s been since you’ve seen this hill, but there are two bodies nestled together in it,man and wife. If you look hard, you can see a dozen shapes like this all over the landscape, all thecleaners, all in various states of decay. Most are gone, of course. Rotted to dust over the long years.”

　　Walker shook his head at the image she was forming.

　　“How many years have they been improving these suits so the cleaners have a chance?

　　Hundreds?”

　　He nodded.

　　“And yet nobody gets any further. And never once have they not had enough time to clean.”

　　Walker looked up and met her gaze. “Your joke is truth,” he said. “The heat tape. It’s engineeredto fail.”

　　Juliette pursed her lips. “That’s what I’m thinking. But not just the tape. Remember those sealsfrom a few years back? The ones from IT that went into the water pumps, that were delivered to usby accident?”

　　“So we’ve been making fun of IT for being fools and dullards—”

　　“But we’re the fools,” Juliette said. And it felt so damned good to say it to another human being.

　　So good for these new ideas of hers to swim in the air. And she knew she was right about the cost ofsending wires, that they didn’t want people talking. Thinking was fine; they would bury you withyour thoughts. But no collaboration²⁴, no groups coordinating²⁵ together, no exchange of ideas.

　　“You think they have us down here to be near the oil?” she asked Walker. “I don’t think so. Notanymore. I think they’re keeping anyone with a lick of mechanical sense as far from them aspossible. There’re two supply chains, two sets of parts being made, all in complete secrecy²⁶. And whoquestions them? Who would risk being put to cleaning?”

　　“You think they killed Scottie?” he asked.

　　Juliette nodded. “Walk, I think it’s worse than that.” She leaned closer, the compressor rattling,the hiss of released air filling the room. “I think they kill everybody.”

 

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