reached the first landing with three digits, and stopped for a break.
Marnes was breathing deeply, she noticed. But she felt great. Alive and renewed in the way she had hoped the trip would make her. The futility, dread, and exhaustion from the day before were gone. All that remained was a small twinge of fear that these dour feelings could return, that this exuberant elation was a temporary high, that if she stopped, if she thought on it too long, it would spiral away and leave her dark and moody once more.
They split a small loaf of bread between them, sitting on the metal grating of the wide landing with their elbows propped up on the railings, their feet swinging over empty space, like two kids cutting class. Level one hundred teemed with people coming and going. The entire floor was a bazaar, a place for exchanging goods, for cashing in work chits for whatever was needed or merely coveted. Workers with their trailing shadows came and went, families yelled for one another among the dizzying crowds, merchants barked their best deals. The doors remained propped open for the traffic, letting the smells and sounds drift out onto the double-wide landing, the grating shivering with excitement.
Jahns reveled in the anonymity of the passing crowd. She bit into her half of the loaf, savoring the fresh 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 hand touched hers as he passed it to her. Even the breadcrumbs in his mustache were part of the moment’s perfection.
“We’re way ahead of schedule,” Marnes said before taking a bite of fruit. It was just a pleasant observation. A pat on their elderly backs. “I figure we’ll hit one-forty by dinner.”
“Right now, I’m not even dreading the climb out,” Jahns said. She finished the cheese and apple and chewed contentedly. Everything tasted better while climbing, she decided. Or in pleasant company, or amid the music leaking out of the bazaar, some beggar strumming his uke over the noise of the crowd.
“Why don’t we come down here more often?” she asked.
Marnes grunted. “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 few years?”
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 silos poking up over the hillside. You don’t think they would move around so little, do you? Like stay in the 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. It was impossible sometimes to know what could and couldn’t be said about the outside. Those were discussions for spouses, and maybe the walk and the day together yesterday had gotten to her. Or maybe she was as susceptible to the post-cleaning high as anyone else: that sense that rules could be relaxed, temptations courted, the lack of pressure and the waste of a double cleaning giving excuse for a month 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, a flash of recognition on her face, gone as she hurried to catch up to her children.
It was like another world down here, Jahns thought to herself. She had gone too long without a visit. And even as she promised herself to not let that happen again, some part of her knew, like a rusting machine that could feel its age, that this journey would be her last.
Floors passed without care. The lower gardens, the larger farm on the one-thirties, the pungent water treatment plant below that. Jahns found herself lost in thought, thinking on her conversation with Marnes the night before, the idea of Donald living with her more in memory than reality, when she came to the gate at one- forty.
She hadn’t even noticed the change in the traffic, the preponderance of blue denim coveralls, the porters with more satchels of parts and tools than clothes, food, or personal deliveries. But the crowd at the gate showed her that she’d arrived at the upper levels of Mechanical. Gathered at the entrance were workers in loose blue coveralls spotted with age-old stains. Jahns could nearly peg their professions by the tools they carried. It was late in the day, and she assumed most were returning home from repairs made throughout the silo. The thought of climbing so many flights of stairs and
Rather than abuse her station or Marnes’ power, they waited in line while the workers checked through the gate. As these tired men and women signed back in and logged their travel and hours, Jahns realized the time she had wasted ruminating about her own life during the long descent, time she should’ve spent polishing her appeal to this Juliette. Rare nerves twisted her gut as the line shuffled forward. The worker ahead of them showed his ID, the card colored blue for Mechanical. He scratched his information on a dusty slate. When it was their turn, they pushed through the outer gate and showed their golden IDs. The station guard raised his eyebrows, then seemed to recognize the mayor.
“Your honor,” he said, and Jahns didn’t correct him. “Weren’t expecting you this shift.” He waved their IDs away and reached for a nub of chalk. “Let me.”
Jahns watched as he spun the board around and wrote their names in neat print, the side of his palm collecting dust from the old film of chalk below. For Marnes, he simply wrote “Sheriff,” and again, Jahns didn’t correct him.
“I know she wasn’t expecting us until later,” Jahns said, “but I wonder if we could meet with Juliette 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 generator for another hour. Maybe two, knowing her. You could hit the mess hall and wait.”
Jahns looked to Marnes, who shrugged. “Not entirely 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 stay out of the way.”
The guard lifted his shoulders. “You’re the mayor. I can’t say no.” He jabbed the nub of chalk down the hall, the people lined up outside the gate shifting impatiently as they waited. “See Knox. He’ll get someone to run you down.”
Knox was a man hard to miss. He amply filled the largest set of coveralls Jahns had ever seen. She wondered if the extra denim cost him more chits, and how a man managed to keep such a belly 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 the last time he was down. Knox listened, nodded, and then bellowed in a voice so gruff, the words were indistinguishable from one another. But they meant something to someone, as a young boy materialized from behind him, a waif of a kid with unusually bright orange hair.
“Gitemoffandowntojules,” Knox growled, the space between the words as slender as the gap in his beard where a mouth should have been.
The young boy, young even for a shadow, waved his hand and darted away. Marnes thanked Knox, who didn’t budge, and they followed after the boy.
The corridors in Mechanical, Jahns saw, were even tighter than elsewhere in the silo. They squeezed 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 and wire conduit hung exposed. Jahns felt the urge to duck, despite the half foot of clearance. She did notice many 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 route seemingly habitual. They came to a flight of stairs, the square kind that made right turns, and went down two more levels. Jahns heard a rumbling grow louder as they descended. When they left the stairwell 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 lifting up and down, driving a piston through the concrete floor. Jahns slowed to watch its rhythmic gyrations. The air smelled of something chemical, something rotten. She couldn’t place it.
