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　　• Silo 17 •

　　The panic she felt from donning the suit was unexpected.

　　Juliette had anticipated some degree of fear from slipping into the water, but it was the simple actof putting on the cleaning suit that filled her with a hollow dread¹, that gave her a cold and empty achein the pit of her stomach. She fought to control her breathing while Solo zipped up the back andpressed the layers of Velcro into place.

　　“Where’s my knife?” she asked him, patting the pockets on the front and searching among hertools.

　　“It’s over here,” he said. He bent² down and fished it out of her gear bag, out from under a toweland change of clothes. He passed her the knife handle-first, and Juliette slotted it into the thick pocketshe’d added on the suit’s belly³. It was easier to breathe just having it within reach. This tool from theupper café was like a security blanket of sorts. She found herself checking for it the way she used tocheck her wrist for that old watch.

　　“Let’s wait with the helmet,” she told Solo as he lifted the clear dome⁴ from the landing. “Grabthat rope first.” She pointed⁵ with her puffy mitts⁷. The thick material and the two layers of undersuitwere making her warm. She hoped that boded⁸ well for not freezing to death in the deep water.

　　Solo lifted the coils of spliced⁹ rope, a large adjustable¹⁰ wrench¹¹ the length of his forearm knotted atthe end.

　　“Which side?” he asked.

　　She pointed to where the gracefully¹² curving steps plunged¹³ into the green-lit water. “Lower it oversteady. And hold it out so it doesn’t get caught on the steps below.”

　　He nodded. Juliette checked her tools while he dropped the wrench into the water, the weight ofthe hunk of metal tugging¹⁴ the rope straight down to the very bottom of the great stairwell. In onepocket, she had a range of drivers. Each one was tied to the pocket with a few feet of string. She hada spanner in another pocket, cutters behind pocket number four. Looking down at herself, morememories flooded back from her walk outside. She could hear the sound of fine grit¹⁶ pelting¹⁷ herhelmet, could sense her air supply running thin, could feel the clomp of her heavy boots on thepacked earth …

　　She gripped the railing ahead of her and tried to think of something else. Anything else. Wire forpower and hose for air. Concentrate. She would need a lot of both. She took a deep breath andchecked the tall coils of tubing and electrical wire laid out on the deck. She had flaked¹⁸ them in figureeights so they would be impossible to tangle¹⁹. Good. The compressor was ready; all Solo had to dowas make sure everything fed down to her, didn’t get caught up—“It’s on the bottom,” Solo said. She watched him knot the line to the stairway railing. He was ingood spirits today. Lucid²⁰ and energetic. This would be a good time to get it over with. Shifting theflood to the treatment plant would’ve been an inelegant, temporary solution. It was time to get thosebig pumps down below churning through that water properly, pumping it through the concrete wallsand back into the earth beyond.

　　Juliette shuffled²¹ to the edge of the landing and looked down at the silvery surface of the foulwater. Was this plan of hers crazy? Shouldn’t she be afraid? Or was it the years of waiting and doingthis safely that was more terrifying to her? The prospect²² of going mad, inch by inch, seemed thegreater risk. This would be just like going outside, she reminded herself, which she had already doneand had survived. Except … this was safer. She was taking an unlimited²³ supply of air, and there wasnothing toxic²⁴ down there, nothing to eat away at her.

　　She gazed at her reflection in the still water, the bulky suit making her look enormous. If Lukaswere standing²⁵ there with her, if he could see what she was about to do, would he try to talk her out ofit? She thought he might. How well did they really know each other? They had had what, two, threeencounters in person?

　　But then there were the dozens of talks since. Could she know him from just his voice? Fromstories about his childhood? From his intoxicating²⁶ laughter when everything else in her day made herwant to cry? Was this why wires and e-mails were expensive, to prevent this kind of life, this kind ofrelationship? How could she be standing there, thinking of a man she hardly knew rather than theinsanity of the task before her?

　　Maybe Lukas had become her lifeline, some slender thread of hope connecting her to home. Orwas he more like a tiny spot of light seen occasionally through the murk, a beacon²⁸ guiding herreturn?

　　“Helmet?” Solo stood beside her, watching her, the clear plastic dome in his hands, a singleflashlight strapped²⁹ to its top.

　　Juliette reached for it. She made sure the flashlight was securely fastened and tried to clear herhead of pointless ruminations.

　　“Hook up my air first,” she said. “And turn on the radio.”

　　He nodded. She held the dome while he clicked the air hose into the adapter she’d threadedthrough the collar. There was a hiss³⁰ and spit of residual³¹ air from the line as it locked into place. Hishand brushed the back of her neck as he reached in to flick³² on the radio. Juliette dipped her chin,squeezing the handmade switch sewn into her undersuit. “Hello, hello,” she said. There was a strangesqueal from the unit on Solo’s hip²⁷ as her voice blared out of it.

　　“Little loud,” he said, adjusting his volume.

　　She lifted the dome into place. It had been stripped of its screen and all the plastic linings³³. Onceshe’d scraped the paint off the exterior³⁴, she was left with an almost completely transparent³⁵ halfsphere of tough plastic. It felt good to know, clicking it into the collar, that whatever she saw out of itwas really there.

　　“You good?”

　　Solo’s voice was deadened by the airtight connection between the helmet and the suit. She liftedher glove and gave him a thumbs-up. She pointed to the compressor.

　　He nodded, knelt down by the unit, and scratched his beard. She watched him flick the portableunit’s main power, push the priming bulb five times, then yank the starting cord. The little unit spatout a breath of smoke and whirred to life. Even with its rubber tires, it danced and rattled³⁶ the landing,sending vibrations³⁷ up through her boots. Juliette could hear the awful acoustics³⁸ through her helmet,could imagine the violent racket echoing up through the abandoned silo.

　　Solo held the choke an extra second, just like she’d shown him, and then pushed it all the way in.

　　While the machine pattered and chugged, he looked up at her, smiling through his beard, looking likeone of the dogs in Supply staring up at its faithful owner.

　　She pointed to the red can of extra fuel and gave him another thumbs-up. He returned the gesture.

　　Juliette shuffled toward the steps, her gloved hand on the railing for balance. Solo squeezed past andwent to the railing and the knotted rope. He held out a hand to steady her while she lumbered³⁹ downthe slippery treads in the suit’s clunky boots.

　　Her hope was that it would be easier to move once she was in the water, but she had no way ofknowing, just an intuitive feel for the physics of it all, the way she could gauge⁴⁰ a machine’s intentsimply by poring over it. She took the last dry steps, and then her boots broke the oily surface of thewater and found the step below. She waded⁴¹ down two more, anticipating the frigid⁴² cold that wouldseep through, but it never came. The suit and her undergarments kept her toasty. Almost too warm, infact—she could see a humid mist forming on the inside of her helmet. She dipped her chin into theradio switch and told Solo to open her valve to let the air in.

　　He fumbled⁴³ at her collar and twisted the lever to allow the flow of air. It hissed⁴⁴ by her ear, quitenoisily, and she could feel the suit puff⁶ out around her. The overflow⁴⁵ valve she’d screwed into theother side of the collar squealed⁴⁶ as it opened and let out the excess pressure, preventing her suit—andher head, she suspected—from bursting.

　　“Weights,” she said, clicking the radio.

　　He ran back to the landing and returned with the round exercise weights. Kneeling on the last drystep, he strapped these below her knees with heavy Velcro, then looked up to see what was next.

　　Juliette struggled to lift one foot, then the other, making sure that the weights were secure.

　　“Wire,” she said, getting the hang of working the radio.

　　This was the most important part: the power from IT would run the lifeless pumps below. Twenty-four volts⁴⁷ of juice. She had installed a switch on the landing so Solo could test it while she was downthere. She didn’t want to travel with the wires live.

　　Solo unspooled a dozen feet of the two-connector wire and tied a loop around her wrist. His knotswere good, both with the rope and the wire. Her confidence in the endeavor was growing by theminute, her discomfort⁴⁸ in the suit lessening⁴⁹.

　　Solo smiled down through her clear plastic dome from two steps above, yellow teeth flashing inhis scraggly beard. Juliette returned the smile. She stood still while he fumbled with the flashlightstrapped to her helmet, clicking it on. The battery was freshly charged and would last a full day,much longer than she possibly needed.

　　“Okay,” she said. “Help me over.”

　　Releasing the radio contact with her chin, she turned and leaned against the railing, worked herbelly up onto it, then eased her head over. It was an incredible sensation, throwing herself over thatrail. It felt suicidal. This was the great stairwell; this was her silo; she was four levels up fromMechanical; all that space below her, that long plummet⁵⁰ only madmen dived into, and she was goingjust as willingly.

　　Solo helped with her weighted feet. He splashed down onto the first wet step to assist her. Juliettethrew her leg over the railing as he lifted. Suddenly, she was straddling that narrow bar of slipperysteel, wondering if the water would truly hold her, if it would catch and slow her fall. And there wasa moment of raw panic, the taste of metal in her mouth, the sinking of her stomach, and the dire⁵¹ needto urinate, all while Solo heaved her other foot over the railing, her gloved hands clawing madly forthe rope he’d tied, her boots splashing noisily and violently into the silvery skin of the floodedwaters.

　　“Shit!”

　　She blew her breath out into the helmet, gasping⁵² from the shock of splashing in so quickly, herhands and knees wrapping around the twisting rope, her body moving inside the puffy suit like a layerof too-large skin had become detached.

　　“You okay?” Solo shouted, his hands cupped around his beard.

　　She nodded, her helmet unmoving. She could feel the tug¹⁵ of the weights on her shins, trying todrag her down. There were a dozen things she wanted to say to Solo, reminders⁵³ and tips, words ofluck, but her mind was racing⁵⁴ too fast to think of using the radio. Instead, she loosened her grip withher gloves and knees, felt the rope slide against her body with a distant squeak⁵⁵, and she began herlong plummet down.

 

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