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
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
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
“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.
