63

　　• Silo 18 •

　　Lukas sat at the little desk constructed from an embarrassment¹ of wood and stared down at a bookstuffed with a fortune in crisp paper. The chair beneath him was probably worth more than he’d makein a lifetime, and he was sitting on it. If he moved, the joints² of the dainty thing twisted and squeaked,like it could come apart at any moment.

　　He kept his boots firmly planted on either side, his weight on his toes, just in case.

　　Lukas flipped³ a page, pretending to read. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be reading, he just didn’twant to be reading this. Entire shelves of more interesting works seemed to mock him from withintheir tin boxes. They sang out to be perused⁴, for him to put away the Order with its rigid⁵ writing,bulleted lists, and internal labyrinth⁶ of page references that led in more circles than the great stairwellitself.

　　Each entry in the Order pointed⁷ to another page, every page another entry. Lukas flipped througha few and wondered if Bernard was keeping tabs on him. The head of IT sat on the other side of thesmall study, just one room of many in the well-stocked hideaway beneath the servers. While Lukaspretended to shadow for his new job, Bernard alternated between fiddling⁸ with the small computer onthe other desk and going over to the radio mounted on the wall to give instructions to the securityforces in the down deep.

　　Lukas pinched a thick chunk⁹ of the Order and flopped¹⁰ it to the side. He skipped past all the recipesfor averting¹¹ silo disasters and checked out some of the more academic reference material toward theback. This stuff was even more frightening: chapters on group persuasion¹², on mind control, on theeffects of fear during upbringing; graphs and tables dealing¹³ with population growth …He couldn’t take it. He adjusted his chair and watched Bernard for a while as the head of IT andacting mayor scrolled¹⁴ through screen after screen of text, his head notching¹⁵ back and forth¹⁶ as hescanned the words there.

　　After a moment, Lukas dared to break the silence. “Hey, Bernard?”

　　“Hm?”

　　“Hey, why isn’t there anything in here about how all this came to be?”

　　Bernard’s office chair squealed¹⁷ as he swiveled it around to face Lukas. “I’m sorry, what?”

　　“The people who made all this, the people who wrote these books. Why isn’t there anything in theOrder about them? Like how they built all this stuff in the first place.”

　　“Why would there be?” Bernard half turned back to his computer.

　　“So we would know. I dunno, like all the stuff in the other books—”

　　“I don’t want you reading those other books. Not yet.” Bernard pointed to the wooden desk.

　　“Learn the Order first. If you can’t keep the silo together, the Legacy¹⁸ books are pulp¹⁹. They’re as goodas processed wood if no one’s around to read them.”

　　“Nobody can read them but the two of us if they stay locked up down here—”

　　“No one alive. Not today. But one day, there’ll be plenty of people who’ll read them. But only ifyou study.” Bernard nodded toward the thick and dreadful book before turning back to his keyboardand reaching for his mouse.

　　Lukas sat there awhile, staring at Bernard’s back, the knotted cord of his master keys sticking outof the top of his undershirt.

　　“I figure they must’ve known it was coming,” Lukas said, unable to stop himself fromperseverating about it. He had always wondered about these things, had suppressed them, had foundhis thrills in piecing together the distant stars that were so far away as to be immune to the hillsidetaboos. And now he lived in this vacuum, this hollow of the silo no one knew about where forbiddentopics were allowed and he had access to a man who seemed to know the precious truth.

　　“You aren’t studying,” Bernard said. His head remained bent²⁰ over his keyboard, but he seemed toknow that Lukas was watching him.

　　“But they had to’ve seen it coming, right?” Lukas lifted his chair and turned it around a littlemore. “I mean, to have built all these silos before it got so bad out there …”

　　Bernard turned his head to the side, his jaw²¹ clenching²² and unclenching. His hand fell away fromthe mouse and came up to smooth his mustache. “These are the things you want to know? How ithappened?”

　　“Yes.” Lukas nodded. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I want to know.”

　　“Do you think it matters? What happened out there?” Bernard turned and looked up at theschematics on the wall, then at Lukas. “Why would it matter?”

　　“Because it happened. And it only happened one way, and it kills me not to know. I mean, theysaw it coming, right? It would take years to build all—”

　　“Decades,” Bernard said.

　　“And then move all this stuff in, all the people—”

　　“That took much less time.”

　　“So you know?”

　　Bernard nodded. “The information is stored here, but not in any of the books. And you’re wrong.

　　It doesn’t matter. That’s the past, and the past is not the same thing as our Legacy. You’ll need tolearn the difference.”

　　Lukas thought about the difference. For some reason, a conversation with Juliette sprang to mind,something she was forever telling him—

　　“I think I know,” he said.

　　“Oh?” Bernard pushed his glasses up his nose and stared at him. “Tell me what you think youknow.”

　　“All our hope, the accomplishments²³ of those before us, what the world can be like, that’s ourLegacy.”

　　Bernard’s lips broke into a smile. He waved his hand for Lukas to continue.

　　“And the bad things that can’t be stopped, the mistakes that got us here, that’s the past.”

　　“And what does this difference mean? What do you think it means?”

　　“It means we can’t change what’s already happened, but we can have an impact on what happensnext.”

　　Bernard clapped his small hands together. “Very good.”

　　“And this”—Lukas turned and rested one hand on the thick book, then continued, unbidden—“theOrder. This is a road map for how to get through all the bad that’s piled up between our past and thefuture’s hope. This is the stuff we can prevent, that we can fix.”

　　Bernard raised his eyebrows²⁴ at Lukas’s last statement, as if it were a new way of looking at an oldtruth. Finally, he smiled, his mustache curling up, his glasses rising on the wrinkled bridge of hisnose.

　　“I think you’re almost ready,” he said. “Soon.” Bernard turned back to his computer, his handfalling to his mouse. “Very soon.”

 

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