People have gathered around us now, listening and watching. There are quiet murmurings and shocked intakes of breath.
I see the pain on the Sheriff’s face. She is a good woman, and she will not be happy to escort me to my certain death.
There is no pain in speaking these words for me. Only sweet serenity, and anticipation. Finally, I am completing the circle that began when Grace, decades ago, took my place and went out to Clean in my stead. She told me then that it was not yet my time. Now, it is.
Let them think this old woman has gone mad. Even a madwoman must be sent out to Clean, according to the rules.
And they always follow the rules.
I find myself smiling, and turn to face the gathered crowd. I say it again, for the power, the freedom, the simplicity. The wonder.
“I want to go Outside.”
30
There is all the time in the world now to remember. A long night stretches ahead of me in the holding cell.
I remember a day when Ruth leaned across my tiny table as she dandled one of the twins on her lap. My other grandson, Abe, was crawling across the kitchen toward the stove. I jumped up to grab him before he got close to the hot water bubbling on the top.
In those days, I could still move quickly.
Once retrieved, he howled briefly and then settled down with me, sucking his thumb. My lips touched his soft hair, still sweet from a morning bath. His eyelids fluttered as he fought against sleep.
“Thanks for catching him, Grandma,” Ruth said, smiling. “I’m hoping there’s a nap in their future.”
I nodded. “How was the trip down to see your family?”
“They were thrilled to see the twins again. My parents met them just once—you remember when they came up here right after Abe and Ben were born? Of course, I wasn’t in shape to walk down at that point. So it seemed fair that we do the traveling this time.” Ruth rocked Ben as he grabbed for the collar of her coveralls. “And it seemed like we should make the journey while these guys are still pretty portable.”
“How did Celeste do?”
“It’s a long trip for seven-year-old legs. But we stopped a lot along the way. You know, the farms, the bazaar…saw the sights. She ate it up. Quite the inquisitive little girl.”
“Yes, she’s sharp, that one. Nothing gets by her.”
Ruth looked down and saw that Ben was finally sleeping, while Abe, in my arms, sucked rhythmically on his thumb. Her eyes met mine.
“I’m glad Rick isn’t here and we can talk. I learned some things down there, Karma, that you need to pass on to the Resistance.” She lowered her voice. “There is massive support—massive—down below. More than half of the families count themselves on our side. They managed to get through the drug dosing phase, after the uprising, with their memories intact—by watching water intake. And of course they have their local cells that share information about the time before.”
Ben snuffled in his sleep, and Ruth shifted him on her shoulder. She looked toward the door. “There’s some information that they’ve learned—in working with some people in the Mids—about what comes in here from elsewhere.”
“What do you mean comes in?” I asked.
Ruth looked at me and I think now that it was the beginning of a change in her. When curiosity about the remembered past, and the search for truth, bumped into knowledge about those who were still pulling the strings in the present. When it dawned on her that her husband’s position as the voice of IT was both more and less than it seemed.
“I know,” she said to me then. “I know about Silo 1.”
31
My first visitor is Rick. He stands outside the bars, his frame bent slightly, his hair now white and wispy.
How long has he moved like an old man? I never saw it as clearly as at this moment.
My heart gives a sudden squeeze at the thought of the fifty years I have lived with Rick. Fifty years constricted by the painful walls of our concrete home. Filled, at first, with my bewilderment and fear, and then anger. Later, I felt pity for his limited understanding. Finally, a partnership based on trust and reconciliation. The long unfolding that was our “marriage.”
How could it have been different if we hadn’t been living in this hole in the ground?
Of course, there would have been no Rick and me if there were no Silo. Our fates are intertwined with the concrete cylinder in which we lived those decades.
I will never see him again.
He is speaking to me now, softly, so that the Sheriff, if she is nearby, cannot hear.
“Karma. I asked them for you. I asked your question.” His voice gets even quieter. “Silo 1.”
I gasp and move closer to him, my hands clasping his ropy dry ones through the bars. “What did they say?”
“They said…” He stops and his eyes move away from mine. They seem to gaze at the wallscreen behind me.
“They said what?”
“They didn’t want to tell me, of course.”
“And…?” I want to shake the bars, shout, reach through and take him by the shoulders and wring it out of him. “What did they say? Did you speak to Donald himself?”
“No. No… I…” He looks at me now, his white eyebrows overgrown and drawn together over his dark eyes. “I had to explain who I was—whoever was on the desk, of course, didn’t know me. And didn’t know a Donald Keene. All the names have been changed.”
My hands are twisting on the bars now, and I can feel the sweat as I slide them around and around.
“But I know Donald,” he says. “He would go by the name Troy. I’m sure of it.”
Helen of Troy. A little bubble of love memory arises in me. Over there, Donald is Troy. And over here, Helen is Karma. Theater of the absurd.
My impatience is boiling over.
“Tell me. What did he say?” The pounding in my ears is deafening. I feel confused. I feel foolish. I feel overjoyed.
My love, my love! Donald, over the hill for half a century. Communication at last.
“Karma.” And I hear it in the groan of his voice. Donald is dead. I’ve missed him. All these years, and I got there too late.
“Karma.” Rick moves his hands over to cover mine again. “Helen. Donald is asleep.”
I almost laugh. “What? Well… they should wake him up, then! Tell him his wife… tell him I’m here, and I want to talk to him.” And then I do laugh. What a silly problem. Easily solved. But Rick’s face looks grave.
He shakes his heard. “He is… asleep and frozen. He has been sleeping for years. Fifty years. Cryogenically frozen. And they tell me it’s not yet time for him to be awakened.”
A wail comes from somewhere, and it is coming from inside me.
“Make them wake him up.” I plead, clawing at Rick’s hands now.
He tries to stop my frantic clutching by holding my wrists gently.
“Helen, sweetheart. They won’t do anything for us. Not for me and not for you. I’m sorry.”
I sag against the bars and let my weakened body sob. Rick holds me as well as he can through the barrier. Slowly I let out all the longing of the decades. I will never see Donald again.
Rick strokes my cheek gently through the bars. “We must be content that they aren’t doing anything to destroy us.”
32
“Karma?”
I must have fallen asleep. My eyes are gritty and I am stiffer than usual as I try to orient myself and sit up. Of course. I’m in the holding cell. The wallscreen is darker than ever, only shades of blackness showing as the omnipresent clouds swirl outside.
“Karma?” the voice comes again.
“Rose,” I say, pushing upward from the hard bed and moving slowly toward the bars. “Thank you for coming.”
I feel her younger hands reach out to mine in the dim light drifting from the Sheriff’s office. As she grasps me, I remember that even young Rose is in her fifties. So much time has passed.
“Of course I came, Karma. They all wanted to come, but
I told the cell that I would carry their message. You must recant, Karma. Tell the Sheriff that you just had some sort of… fit. That your mind is not always clear. That you’re sorry you ever said those things about… going Outside.”
“Rose, I—”
“Everyone loves you, Karma. You’re one of the oldest—and most beloved—people in the Silo. They’ll have to let you go.”
“The Sheriff would never let me off now that I’ve—”
“And if she doesn’t, we’ll stage an uprising. There are a lot of us now, Karma. We have great support in the Down Deep. And all of us would stake our lives for you—”
“Absolutely not, Rose.” I shake my head firmly. “I would never let you risk your lives for me. And I don’t want to change my mind.” I reach as far as I can through the bars and touch her cheek softly. “I am ready. I want to go out there. Really.”
I feel Rose step back, and hear her quick intake of breath. “No,” she says. “No. Karma. We won’t allow it.”
“Child,” I say. “There is no allowing.” I laugh once. “It is done.”
“We all know why you’re doing this. You don’t have to be a hero! They’ll figure out a way to map the outside cameras. There’s no need to sacrifice yourself.”
I pat her hands. “I’m not really such a hero. I am dying, Rose. Let my death be of some help to those who will live long past me. I want it to count for something.”
She bites her lip and seems to be trying not to cry.
“Karma. They’re lining up on the stairs for you. Everyone who is… part of the movement. You should see it… down in Mechanical. They’ve declared a day off. All the Gearheads—”
“The gang?” I’m puzzled.
“Yes. The word has been passed up. In the Down Deep the Gears are bringing all our supporters together. And in the Mids, the Dirt gang—”
“And they’re not fighting?”
“No. They’re cooperating. With each other. And with the resistance.”
I smile and squeeze her hands. “That is great news. I guess the message got through—we aren’t the enemy.”
“You did it, Karma. You started this. Bringing the Silo together.”
“I’m counting on you, Rose, to continue the work. To keep the resistance going. And to keep it peaceful.”
She nods. “I will do my best, Karma. For you.”
I give her arms a final squeeze as she smiles through her tears.
33
Deep in the night, my daughter Athena comes to me. I recognize her uneven tread on the floor, the limp she still carries, and when I rise from the hard surface on which I cannot sleep, I turn and see her half-ruined face. A face which is now so dear to me I can’t imagine it any other way.
She doesn’t speak, she simply weeps as she approaches the bars.
I make my way slowly to her.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I am ill. I am dying. This is my last wish, and I am glad to go.”
Her hands tremble as they grasp mine outside the bars. She sniffles and finally speaks. “I knew they couldn’t persuade you not to do this.”
“You know me well, Athena.”
“What can I say to Erica? She’s devastated to think that her grandmother is going to her death tomorrow. She doesn’t understand at all. And she’ll have to look at you—your body—forever. Rotting out there.” I feel a shiver that comes through her fingers to me.
“I’ll do my best to… to place myself… out of view.” It had occurred to me that my moldering body in the slowly disintegrating suit would be a feature of the landscape for decades or centuries to come if I didn’t get to the right spot so as to avoid the cameras. “I don’t want that… for her or for anybody.”
“But why did you ask to go out? Why do you want to do this?”
“Athena, you never lived outside. You were born in this place. These walls… they don’t close you in, like they do me.”
“No,” she says, and I can see puzzlement in her dark eyes. “I don’t understand why you would want to go out. You’ll die.”
“I want to see the sky again,” I say. “I want to feel the openness all around me, and no concrete, no stairs, no ceiling, no floor. I want to be on top of the Earth again. The way we were born to live.”
“Were we?” she says. “All I see out there is death, Mom.”
“All I see is freedom. At last. Before I take my last breath, Athena, I want to feel free again.”
“If you’re really going…” her voice falters. “If you’re really going to do this, I want you to tell me. Now.”
“Tell you what?” And as I say it, I realize.
“Mom, I’ve known for years. Dad is not—is not my real father.”
I let out a breath that feels as though I have been holding it in for half a century. Her whole life.
For a moment I flash back to the first months here in the Silo, when we were all in a daze from the effects of the drugs. When I discovered I was pregnant and so confused about how and when that happened that I didn’t realize that I had conceived before we got swept into this life underground.
Athena is speaking again, and I rouse myself from ancient memories. “I heard you and Dad—you and Rick—talking. Years ago. I was a teenager.”
Yes. Rick and I did talk about it. Exactly once.
“Tell me the truth. You owe that to me.” I hear more tears in her voice.
“Athena. Your father—your real father—was a good man. He loved me. He would have loved you.” I stop. “We wanted children. I’m so sorry… so sorry you couldn’t know him.”
“Did he do something terrible? You were so angry when you said his name to Dad… to Rick.”
I sigh. “He didn’t do anything terrible. Neither one of them did. Neither Rick nor Donald—your biological father. They were both doing their best, trying to… simply to do the right thing. They were caught up in a scheme they didn’t really comprehend.”
“Do you still love him? My father?”
I shake my head. “I love the memory of him. I love the world the way it was, and I’d give a thousand lifetimes if you could just once step out onto soft green grass and smell fresh air. But you can’t. And neither can I.”
I wrap my hands around hers through the bars. “So Rick and I made the best life we could, under the ground, in this concrete hole—for you and for us. And Rick loves you like you were his own.”
“I know,” she says. “I know.”
“Take care of him when I’m gone, Athena. He doesn’t have Mars any more. You are his only child, now.”
She bows her head and her warm tears hit my wrist.
34
With the slight lightening of the sky on my wallscreen, I know it is dawn. Or what remains of dawn. And with it, I hear the slow, heavy trundling of the rack that carries my suit.
My adventure is beginning, and to my amazement, I feel only excitement.
At last! Outside again. My heart starts to pound with the adrenaline of anticipation. For a moment I wonder… what if my heart gives out before I make it to the outside? And then I laugh off the notion. It wouldn’t even matter. What happens is that I am going. And in the going out is the joy.
The noisy wheels come closer and as the suit on its rack comes into view I see the young face pushing it along. Celeste.
My own granddaughter will be suiting me up for my walk outside.
35
There is pride and sadness in Celeste’s face as she approaches me. “You don’t have to do this,” she says. “You know that.”
“I know. It’s my choice.”
She nods, as though this is the answer she expected. She unlocks the door to the holding cell and motions me out.
“Come with me.”
I walk behind her through the Sheriff’s office, which is empty. I am surprised to realize that Celeste isn’t leading me over to the airlock.
When we step out instead onto the top level, my breath catches in my throat. The stairs are thronged. The crowd f
ills every step as far down as I can see… hundreds of people, some of whom I recognize, and some I don’t. Young and old, all holding shades of blue in their hands. Handkerchiefs, bits of ribbon, a scrap of fabric. They make a rainbow of blues up and down the grand stairway.
I see Daggers, with their tattooed faces, and some Gears from Mechanical, standing side by side. Rose, Mercedes, and all my oldest cell members smiling at me, but sadly. My family. Abe, Ben, even Ruth. Athena, Dylan, Erica and her family. Rick, at the top of the stairs.
There are no cheers, no applause. There are nods and smiles and tears.
As I turn back to follow Celeste, I hear the words of the resistance song ringing through the Silo from my people, all the way up and down the spiral stairs at the center.
Once upon a time
In a country far away
We lived a different life
So the storytellers say
I’m not sure that it’s true
Unlikely as it seems
But part of me believes
And sometimes in my dreams
I see meadows deeply green
And golden autumn days
The white of winter snow
And flowery spring at play
I have seen the sun in books
Amidst a blue and cloudless sky
And I hope my children’s children
May yet see with their own eyes
So we link ourselves by love
Though we spend our years below
And we speak of life above
To remember what we know
For the world is not yet lost
When it lives on in our hearts
Though we bear the hardest cost
Still we carry out our parts
And we share what we once knew
As we struggle on each day
So the sky that once was blue
Will be blue again… someday.
36
Celeste has me sit down while she slides the bottom of the suit onto my legs. I can tell that she’s holding on to her emotions.
Karma of the Silo: The Collection Page 23