Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5) (wool)

by Hugh C. Howey

  Courtnee bit her lip and didn’t say anything, just stared at the blueprint.

  “We need to get going,” Knox said. “Walker, get that wire out. Let’s load up. And think of something pleasant to chat about while we’re on the move. No grumbling about this where some porter can hear and make a chit or two ratting us out.”

  They nodded. Knox slapped Jenkins on the back and dipped his chin at the younger man. “I’ll send word when we need everyone. Keep the bare bones you think you’ve gotta have down here and send the rest. Timing is everything, okay?”

  “I know what to do,” Jenkins said. He wasn’t trying to be uppity, just reassuring his elder.

  “Alright,” Knox said. “Then let’s get to it.”

  ••••

  They made it up ten flights with little complaint, but Knox could begin to feel the burn in his legs from the heavy load. He had a canvas sack stuffed full of welding smocks on his wide shoulders, plus a bundle of helmets. A rope had been strung through their chin straps, and they clattered down his wide back. Marck struggled with his load of pipe stock as they kept trying to slide against one another and slip out of his arms. The shadows brought up the rear, behind the women, with heavy sacks of blasting powder tied together so they hung around their necks. Professional porters with similarly full loads breezed past them in both directions, their glances signaling a mix of curiosity and competitive anger. When one porter—a woman Knox recognized from deliveries to the down deep—stopped and offered to help, he gruffly sent her on her way. She hurried up the steps, looking back over her shoulder before spiraling out of view, and Knox regretted taking his exhaustion out on her.

  “Keep it up,” he told the others. Even with the small group, they were making a spectacle. And it was growing ever more tiresome to hold their tongues as news of Juliette’s amazing disappearance gyred all around them. At almost every landing, a group of people, often younger people, stood around and gossiped about what it all meant. The taboo had moved from thought to whisper. Forbidden notions were birthed on tongues and swam through the air. Knox ignored the pain in his back and lumbered up and up, each step driving them closer to Supply, feeling more and more like they needed to get there in a hurry.

  As they left the one-thirties, the grumblings were fully in the air. They were nearing the upper half of the down deep, where people who worked, shopped, and ate in the mids mingled with those who would rather they didn’t. Deputy Hank was on the stairwell of one-twenty-eight, trying to mediate between two arguing crowds. Knox squeezed past, hoping the officer wouldn’t turn and see his heavily loaded train and ask them what they were doing up this far. As he ascended past the ruckus, Knox glanced back to watch the shadows slink past, hugging the inner rail. Deputy Hank was still asking a woman to please calm down as the landing sunk out of sight.

  They passed the dirt farm on one-twenty-six, and Knox figured this to be a key asset. The thirties of IT were a long hike up, but if they had to fall back, they would need to hold at Supply. Between their manufacturing, the food on this level, and the machinery of Mechanical, they might be self-sufficient. He could think of a few weak links, but many more for IT. They could always shut off their power or stop treating their water—but he really hoped, as they approached Supply on weary legs, that it wouldn’t come to any of that.

  They were greeted on the landing of one-ten by frowns. McLain, the elder woman and head of Supply, stood with her arms crossed over her yellow coveralls, her affect screaming unwelcome.

  “Hello, Jove.” Knox fixed her with a wide smile.

  “Don’t Jove me,” McLain said. “What’s this nonsense you’re after?”

  Knox glanced up and down the stairwell, shrugged his heavy load higher up his shoulder. “Mind if we step in and talk about it?”

  “I don’t want any trouble here,” she said, her eyes blazing beneath her lowered brow.

  “Let’s go inside,” Knox said. “We haven’t stopped once on the way up. Unless you want us collapsing out here.”

  McLain seemed to consider this. Her arms loosened across her chest. She turned to three of her workers, who formed an imposing wall behind her, and nodded. While they pulled open the gleaming doors of Supply, she turned and grabbed Knox’s arm. “Don’t get comfortable,” she told him.

  Inside the front room of Supply, Knox found a small army of men and women in their yellow coveralls, waiting. Most of them stood behind the low, long counter where the people of the silo normally waited for whatever parts they needed, whether newly fabricated or recently repaired. The parallel and deep aisles of shelves beyond ran into the gloomy distance, boxes and bins bulging off of them. The room was noticeably quiet. Usually, the mechanical thrumming and clanking sounds of fabrication could be heard worming their way through the space. Or one might hear workers chatting unseen back in the stacks while they sorted newly fashioned bolts and nuts into hungry bins.

  Now it was just silence and distrustful glares. Knox stood with his people, their sacks and loads slumping exhaustedly to the floor, sweat on their brows, while the men and women of Supply watched, unmoving.

  He had expected a more amicable welcome. Mechanical and Supply had a long history together. They jointly ran the small mine beneath the lowest levels of Mechanical that supplemented the silo’s stockpile of ores.

  But now, as McLain followed her boys back inside, she graced Knox with a look of scorn he hadn’t seen since his mother passed away.

  “What in the hell is the meaning of this?” she hissed at Knox.

  He was taken aback by the language, especially in front of his people. He thought of himself and McLain as equals, but now he was being snapped at as if by one of Supply’s dogs.

  McLain ranged down the exhausted line of mechanics and their shadows before turning back to him.

  “Before we discuss how we’re cleaning this problem up, I want to hear how you’re handling your employees, whoever was responsible.” Her eyes bore through him. “I am correct in assuming you had nothing to do with this, right? That you’ve come to apologize and shower me with bribes?”

  Shirly started to say something, but Knox waved her off. There were a lot of people in the room just waiting for this to go undiplomatically.

  “Yes, I do apologize,” Knox said, grinding his teeth together and bowing his head. “And no, I just learned of this earlier today. After I found out about the cleaning, in fact.”

  “So it was all your electrician,” McLain said, her thin arms crossed tightly over her chest. “One man.”

  “That’s right. But—”

  “I’ve meted out punishment to those involved here, let me tell you. And I suppose you’ll have to do more than banish that old fart to his room—”

  There was laughter behind the counter. Knox put a hand on Shirly’s shoulder to keep her in place. He looked past McLain to the men and women arranged behind McLain.

  “They came and took one of our workers,” he said. His chest may have been heavy, but his voice still boomed. “You know how it happens. When they want a body for cleaning, they take it.” He thumped his chest. “And I let them. I stood there because I trust this system. I fear it, just as any of you.”

  “Well—” McLain began, but Knox continued in that voice that routinely gave calm commands over the racket of machines run amok.

  “One of my people was taken, and it was the oldest of us, the wisest of us, who intervened on her behalf. It was the weakest and most scared of us who braved their neck. And whoever of you he turned to for help, and who gave it, I owe you my life.” Knox blinked away the blur and continued. “You gave her more than a chance to walk over that hill, to die in peace and out of sight. You gave me the courage to open my eyes. To see this veil of lies we live behind—”

  “That’s quite enough,” McLain barked. “Someone could be sent to cleaning for even listening to such nonsense, to such drivel—”

  “It’s not nonsense,” Marck cried down the line. “Juliette is dead because of—”<
br />
  “She’s dead because she broke these very laws!” McLain snapped, her voice high and shrill. “And now you march up here to break even more? On my level?”

  “We aim to break heads!” Shirly said.

  “Leave it!” Knox told them both. He saw the anger in McLain’s eyes, but he also saw something else: The sporadic nods and raised brows among the rank and file behind her.

  A porter entered the room with empty sacks in each hand and looked around at the tense silence. One of the large Supply workers by the door ushered him back onto the landing with apologies, telling him to return later. Knox composed his words carefully during the interruption.

  “No person has ever been sent to cleaning for listening, however great the taboo.” He allowed that to sink in. He glared at McLain as she moved to interrupt, but she seemed to decide against it. “So let me be sent to cleaning by any of you for what I’m about to say. I will welcome it if these facts do not move you to instead push forward with me and my men. For this is what Walker and a few of you brave souls have shown us this morning. We have cause for more hope than they’ll dare give us. There’s more at our disposal to broaden our horizons than they’ll allow. We have been raised on a pack of lies, made to fear by the sight of our kinsmen rotting on the hills, but now one of us has crossed over that! They have seen new horizons! We have been given seals and washers and told that they should suffice, but what are they?”

  He stared down the men and women behind the counter. McLain’s arms seemed to loosen across her chest.

  “Designed to fail, that’s what! Fake. And who knows what other lies there are. What if we’d taken any cleaner back and done our best by them? Cleaned and disinfected them? Tried whatever we could? Would they survive? We can no longer trust IT to tell us they wouldn’t!”

  Knox saw chins rise and fall. He knew his own people were ready to storm the room if need be; they were as amped up and driven mad by all this as he was.

  “We are not here to cause trouble,” he said, “we are here to bring order! The uprising has already happened.” He turned to McLain. “Don’t you see? We’ve been living the uprising. Our parents were the children of it, and now we feed our own children to the same machine. This will not be the start of something new, but the end of something old. And if Supply is with us, we stand a chance. If not, then may our bodies haunt your view of the outside, which I now see as far less rotten than this blasted silo!”

  Knox bellowed this last in open defiance of all taboo. He threw it out and savored the taste of it, the admission that anything beyond those curved walls might be better than what’s inside them. The whisper that had killed so many became a throaty roar shouted from his broad chest.

  And it felt good.

  McLain cringed. She took a step away, something like fear in her eyes. She turned her back on Knox and made to return to her people, and he knew he had failed. That there had been a chance, however slim, in this silent and still crowd to inspire action, but the moment had slipped him by or he had scared it off.

  And then McLain did something. Knox could see the tendons in her slender neck bulge. She lifted her chin to her people, her white hair in its tight knot high on her head, and she said, quietly, “What say you, Supply?”

  It was a question, not a command. Knox would later wonder if it had been asked in sadness; he would wonder if she had taken poor stock of her people, who had listened patiently during his madness. He would also wonder if she were just curious, or if she were challenging them to cast him and his mechanics out.

  He would finally wonder, tears streaming down his face, thoughts of Juliette swelling inside his heart, if he could even hear his handful of compatriots shouting, so drowned out were they by the angry war cries of the good men and women of Supply.

  10

  “And too soon marr’d are those so early made.

  The earth hath swallow’d all my hopes but she.”

  Lukas followed Bernard through the halls of IT, nervous techs scattering before them like night bugs startled by the light. Bernard didn’t seem to notice the techs ducking into offices and peering through windows. Lukas hurried to keep up, his eyes darting side to side, feeling conspicuous with all these hidden others watching.

  “Aren’t I a little old to be shadowing for another job?” he asked. He was pretty sure he hadn’t accepted the offer, not verbally anyway, but Bernard spoke as if the deal was done.

  “Nonsense,” he said. “And this won’t be shadowing in the traditional sense.” He waved his hand in the air. “You’ll continue your duties as before. I just need someone who can step in, who knows what to do in case something happens to me. My will—”

  He stopped at the heavy door to the server room and turned to face Lukas. “If it came to it, in an emergency, my will would explain everything to the next Head, but—” He gazed over Lukas’s shoulder and down the hall. “Sims is my executor, which we’ll have to change. I just don’t see that ever going smoothly—”

  Bernard rubbed his chin and lost himself in his thoughts. Lukas waited a moment, then stepped beside him and entered his code on the panel by the door, fished his ID out of his pocket—made sure it was his ID and not Juliette’s—and swiped it through the reader. The door clicked open, snapping Bernard out of his thoughts.

  “Yes, well, this will be much better. Not that I expect to go anywhere, mind you.” He adjusted his glasses and stepped through the heavy steel doorway. Lukas followed, pushing the monstrous enclosure shut behind them and waiting for the locks to engage.

  “But if something did happen to you, I would oversee the cleanings?” Lukas couldn’t imagine. He suspected there was more to learn about those suits than the servers. Sammi would be better at this, would actually want this job. Also—would he have to abandon his star charts?

  “That’s a small part of the job, but yes.” Bernard guided Lukas through the servers, past number thirteen with its blank face and still fans, all the way to the back of the room.

  “These are the keys to the true heart of the silo,” Bernard said, fishing a jangling set out of his coveralls. They were strung on a cord of leather that hung around his neck. Lukas had never noticed them before.

  “There are other features to this cabinet that you’ll learn about in time. For now, you simply need to know how to get downstairs.” He inserted the key into several locks on the back of the server, locks designed to look like recessed screws. What server was this? Twenty-eight? Lukas glanced around the room and tried to count its position, and realized he’d never been assigned to maintain this tower.

  There was a gentle clang as the back came off. Bernard set it aside, and Lukas saw why he’d never worked on the machine. It was practically empty, just a shell, like it had been scrapped for parts over the long years.

  “It’s crucial that you lock this after coming back up—”

  Lukas watched Bernard grab a handle in the bottom of the empty chassis. He pulled up, and there was a soft grinding noise nearby. “When the grate’s back in place, you simply press this down to secure it.”

  He was about to ask “what grate” when Bernard stepped aside and dug his fingers into the metal slats of the floor. With a grunt, he pulled the heavy surface of the flooring up and began sliding it over. Lukas jumped around to the other side and bent down to help.

  “Wouldn’t the stairs—?” he started to ask.

  “They don’t access this part of thirty-five.” Bernard waved at a ladder leading down through the floor. “You go first.”

  Lukas’s head spun from the day’s sudden turn. As he bent to grab the ladder, he felt the contents of his breast pocket shift and shot a hand up to hold the watch, ring, and ID steady. What had he been thinking? What was he thinking now? He lowered himself down the long ladder feeling like someone had initiated an automated routine in his brain, a rote program that had taken over his actions. From the bottom of the ladder, he watched as Bernard lowered himself down the first rungs before sliding the grate into p
lace, sealing them both inside the dark dungeon beneath the already fortressed server room.

  “You are about to receive a great gift,” Bernard said in the darkness. “Just as I was once granted the same.”

  He flicked on a light, and Lukas saw that his boss was grinning maniacally, the anger from before gone. Here was a new man before him, a confident and eager man.

  “All the silo and everyone in it hinges on what I’m about to show you,” Bernard said. He waved Lukas down the brightly lit but tight corridor and toward a wider room beyond. The servers felt very far above. They felt closed off from every other soul in the silo. Lukas was curious, but also afraid. He wasn’t sure he wanted such responsibility and cursed himself for going along with this.

  And yet, his feet moved. They carried him down that hidden passageway and into a room full of the strange and curious, a place that made the charting of stars seem insignificant, a den where the sense of the world’s scale, of size, took on wholly new proportions.

  11

  “I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave; A grave?

  O no! a lantern, slaughter’d youth, For here lies Juliet,

  and her beauty makes this vault a feasting presence full of light.”

  Juliette left her soup-slathered helmet on the floor and moved toward the pale green glow of light. It seemed brighter than before. She wondered how much of the darkness had been her helmet. As her senses returned, she remembered that it wasn’t a piece of glass she’d been looking through, but some infernal screen that took the world as she saw it and overlaid it with half a lie. Maybe it had dimmed her view in the process.

  She noticed the stench from her drenched suit followed her, the smell of rotten vegetables and mold—or possibly the toxic fumes from the outside world. Her throat burned a little as she crossed the cafeteria toward the stairwell. Her skin began to itch, and she couldn’t tell if it was from fear, from her imagination, or truly something in the air. She didn’t dare risk finding out, so she held her breath and hurried as fast as her weary legs would take her, around the corner to where she knew the stairs would be.