by Hugh Howey
He shook his head and these black thoughts loose and looked for his boots.
He found them; it was an accomplishment. Lukas had done something by getting himself dressed.
He left his room and ambled toward the landing, weaving around kids squealing from another day off school, parents trying to corral them and get their boots and coveralls on. The commotion was little more than background noise for Lukas. It was a hum, like the aches in his legs from gathering signatures the days before. He stepped out onto the apartment’s landing and felt a habitual tug upwards toward the cafeteria. All he could think about was all he had thought of for the past week: making it through another day so he could go up-top for the chance to see her.
It suddenly occurred to Lukas that he still could. He wasn’t one for sunrises—he much preferred the twilight and the stars—but if he wanted to see her, all he had to do was climb to the cafeteria and scan the landscape. There would be a new body there, a new suit with the shine still on it glimmering in whatever weak rays the sun dribbled through those blasted clouds.
He could see the image clearly in his head: her uncomfortable sprawl—legs twisted, arm pinned, helmet turned to the side, gazing back at the silo. Sadder still, he saw himself decades later, a lonely old man sitting in front of that gray wallscreen and drawing not star charts but landscapes. The same landscapes over and over, looking up at a wasting might-have-been, sketching that same still pose while weeping old-man tears that dripped and turned charcoal to mud.
He would be like Marnes, that poor man. And thinking of the Deputy, who died with no one to bury him, it reminded Lukas of the last thing Juliette had told him. She had begged him to find someone, to not be like her, to never be alone.
He gripped landing fifty’s cool steel railing and leaned over. Looking down, he could watch the stairwell drill its way deep into the earth. The landing for fifty-six was visible below, the several landings between jutting off in unseen angles. It was hard to gauge the distance—Lukas was used to the much larger scale of stars—but he figured it was more than enough. No need to walk down to eighty-two, which most jumpers preferred for its long clear path down to ninety-nine.
Suddenly, he saw himself in flight, tumbling down, arms and legs splayed. He reckoned he would just miss the landing. One of the railings would catch him and saw him near in half. Or maybe if he jumped out a little further, maybe if he aimed his head, he could make it quick.
He straightened, feeling a twinge of fear and a rush of adrenaline from picturing the fall, the end, so vividly. He glanced around and checked the morning traffic to see if anyone was watching him. He had seen other adults peer over railings after things they’d lost. He’d always assumed bad thoughts were going through their heads. Because he knew, growing up in the silo, that only children dropped physical things from the landings. By the time you got older, you knew to keep a grip on all that you could. Eventually, it was something else that slipped away, something else you lost that tumbled down through the heart of the silo, that made you ponder leaping after—
The landing shivered with the beat of a hurrying porter; the sound of bare feet slapping against steel treads came next and spiraled closer. Lukas slid away from the railing and tried to focus on what he was doing that day. Maybe he should just crawl back in bed and sleep, kill some hours with unconsciousness.
As he attempted to summon some sliver of motivation, the speeding porter flew past, and Lukas caught a glimpse of the boy’s face twisted in consternation. Even as he sped out of sight—his pace swift and reckless—the image of his worry remained vividly lodged in Lukas’s mind.
And Lukas knew. As the rapid patter of the boy’s feet wound deeper into the earth, he knew something had happened that morning, something up-top, something newsworthy about the cleaning.
A seed of hope caught a taste of moisture. Some wishful kernel buried deep, where he was loathe to acknowledge it lest it poison or choke him, began to sprout. Maybe the cleaning never happened. Was it possible his petition had been reconsidered? Had the weight of all those signatures gathered over a spread of a hundred levels finally worn the judges down? What if Bernard had actually come through for him, had swayed the presiding judge to lower Juliette’s offense?
Lukas recalled his appeals to Bernard, begging him as a friend, as his boss, to intervene on her behalf. He had asked him to add his own signature to the petition, which he finally had. But Bernard had warned him that her fate was out of his hands, that the judges would decide, that his authority as interim mayor made him practically powerless.
And yet, if a porter had dire news on a day of cleaning, could it be that his friend had kept at it all night and had finally come through?
That tiny seed of hope sprang roots. It grew vine-like through Lukas’s chest, filling him with an urgency to run up and see for himself. He left the railing, and the dream of leaping after his worries, and pushed his way through the morning crowd. Whispers, he noticed, were already foaming in the porter’s wake. He wasn’t the only one who had noticed.
As he joined the upbound traffic, he realized the aches in his legs from the days before had vanished. He prepared to pass the slow-moving family in front of him—when he heard the loud squawk of a radio behind.
Lukas turned to find Deputy Marsh a few treads back fumbling for the radio on his hip, a small cardboard box clutched to his chest, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Lukas stopped and held the railing, waiting for the mids deputy to reach him.
“Marsh!”
The deputy finally got the volume down on his radio and glanced up. He nodded to Lukas. The both of them squeezed against the railing as a worker and his shadow passed heading upbound.
“What’s the news?” Lukas asked. He knew the deputy well, and he knew he might spill it for free.
Marsh swiped his forehead and moved the box into the crook of his other arm. “That Bernard is whoopin’ my ass this mornin’,” he complained. “Done climbed enough this week!”
“No, what of the cleaning?” Lukas asked. “A porter just hurried by like he’d seen a ghost—”
Deputy Marsh glanced up the steps. “I was told to bring her things to thirty-four as quick as grease. Hank nearly killed himself bringing ‘em partway up to me—” He started up the stairs around Lukas as if he couldn’t afford to stay. “Look, I’ve gotta keep movin’ if I wanna keep my job—”
Lukas held his arm, and traffic swelled below them as annoyed climbers squeezed past and against the occasional traveler heading down. “Did the cleaning go through or not?” Lukas demanded to know.
Marsh sagged against the railing. Quiet chatter popped through his radio.
“No,” he whispered, and Lukas felt as though he could fly. He could fly straight up the space between the stairs and the concrete heart of the silo, could soar around the landings, could go fifty levels at a leap—
“She went out, but she didn’t clean,” Marsh said, his voice low but laced with words sharp enough to pierce Lukas’s dreams. “She wandered over them hills—”
“Wait. What?”
Marsh nodded, and sweat dripped from the Deputy’s nose. “Plum out of sight,” he hissed, like a radio turned down low. “Now I’ve got to get her things up to Bernar—”
“I’ll do it,” Lukas said, reaching out his hands. “I’m going to thirty-four anyway.”
Marsh shifted the box. The poor Deputy seemed liable to collapse at any moment. Lukas begged him, just as he had two days earlier in order to see Juliette in her cell. “Let me take them up for you,” he said. “You know Bernard won’t mind. He and I are good friends, just like you and me have always been—”
Deputy Marsh wiped his lip and nodded ever so slightly, thinking on this.
“Look, I’m going up anyway,” Lukas said. He found himself slowly taking the box from an exhausted Marsh, even though the waves of emotion surging through his own body made it difficult to focus. The traffic on the stairs had become background noise. The idea
that Juliette may still be in the silo had slipped away, but the news that she hadn’t cleaned, that she had made it over the hills—this filled him with something else. It touched the part of him that yearned to map the stars. It meant no one would ever have to watch her waste away—
“You’ll be careful with that,” Marsh said. His eyes were on the box, now tucked into Lukas’s arms.
“I’ll guard it with my life,” Lukas told him. “Trust me.”
Marsh nodded to let him know he did. And Lukas hurried up the stairs, ahead of those rising to celebrate the cleaning, the weight of Juliette’s belongings rattling softly in a box tucked tightly against his chest.
2
“Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears.”
Walker the electrician bent over a cluttered workbench and adjusted his magnifier. The great bulbous lens was attached to his head with a hoop that might’ve been uncomfortable had he not been wearing it for most of his sixty two years. As he pushed the glass into position, the small black chip on the green electronics board came into crystal focus. He could see each of the silver metal legs bent out from its body like knees on a spider, the tiny feet seemingly trapped in silver puddles of frozen steel.
With the tip of his finest soldering iron, Walker prodded a spot of silver while he worked the suction bulb with his foot. The metal around the chip’s tiny foot melted and was pulled through a straw, one little leg of sixteen free.
He was about to move to the other—he had stayed up all night pulling fried chips to occupy his mind from other things—when he heard the recognizable patter of that new porter skittering down his hall.
Walker dropped the board and hot iron to the workbench and hurried to his door. He held the jamb and leaned out as the kid ran past.
“Porter!” he yelled, and the boy reluctantly stopped. “What news, boy?”
The kid smiled, revealing the whites of youth. “I’ve got big news,” he said. “Cost you a chit, though.”
Walker grunted with disgust, but dug into his coveralls. He waved the kid over. “You’re that Sampson boy, right?”
He bobbed his head, his hair dancing around his youthful face.
“Shadowed under Gloria, didn’t you?”
The kid nodded again as his eyes followed the silver chit drawn from Walker’s rattling pockets.
“You know, Gloria used to take pity on an old man with no family and no life. Trusted me with news, she did.”
“Gloria’s dead,” the boy said, lifting his palm.
“That she is,” Walker said with a sigh. He dropped the chit into the child’s outstretched and youthful palm, then waved his aged and spotted own for the news. He was dying to know everything and would have gladly payed ten chits. “The details, child. Don’t skip a one.”
“No cleaning, Mr. Walker!”
Walker’s heart missed a beat. The boy turned his shoulder to run on.
“Stay, boy! What do you mean, no cleaning? She’s been set free?”
The porter shook his head. His hair was long, wild, and seemingly built for flying up and down the staircase. “Nossir. She refused!”
The child’s eyes were electric, his grin huge with the possession of such knowledge. No one had ever refused to clean in his lifetime. In Walker’s, neither. Maybe not ever. Walker felt a surge of pride in his Juliette.
The boy waited a moment. He seemed eager to run off.
“Anything else?” Walker asked.
Samson nodded and glanced at Walker’s pockets.
Walker let out a long sigh of disgust for what had become of this generation. He dug into his pocket with one hand and waved impatiently with the other.
“She’s gone, Mr. Walker!”
He snatched the chit from Walker’s palm.
“Gone? As in dead? Speak up, son!”
Samson’s teeth flashed as the chit disappeared into his coveralls. “Nossir. Gone as in over the hill. No cleaning, Mr. Walker, just strode right over and out of view. Gone to the city, and Mr. Bernard witnessed the whole thing!”
The young porter slapped Walker on the arm, needing, obviously, to strike something with his enthusiasm. He swiped his hair off his face, smiled large, and turned to run along his route, his feet lighter and pockets heavier from the tale.
Walker was left, stunned, in the doorway. He gripped the jamb with an iron claw lest he tumble out into the world. He stood there, swaying, looking down at the pile of dishes he’d slipped outside the night before. He glanced over his shoulder at the disheveled cot that had been calling his name all night. Smoke still rose from the soldering iron. He turned away from the hall, which would soon be pattering and clinking with the sounds of first shift, and unplugged the iron before he started another fire.
He remained there a moment, thinking on Jules, thinking on this news. He wondered if she’d gotten his note in time, if it had lessened the awful fear he’d felt in his gut for her.
Walker returned to the doorway. The down deep was stirring. He felt a powerful tug to go out there, to cross that threshold, to be a part of the unprecedented.
Shirly would probably be by soon with his breakfast and to take away his dishes. He could wait for her, maybe talk a bit. Perhaps this spell of insanity would pass.
But the thought of waiting, of the minutes stacking up like work orders, of not knowing how far Juliette had gotten or what reaction the others might be having to her not cleaning—
Walker lifted his foot and leaned it out past his doorway, his boot hovering over untrammeled ground.
He took a deep breath, fell forward, and caught himself on it. And suddenly, he felt like some intrepid explorer himself. There he was, forty something years later, teetering down a familiar hallway, one hand brushing the steel walls, a corner coming up around which his eyes could remember nothing.
And Walker became one more old soul pushing into the great unknown—his brain dizzy with what he might find out there.
3
"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds
that sees into the bottom of my grief?
O sweet my mother, cast me not away!”
The heavy steel doors of the silo parted, and a great cloud of argon billowed out with an angry hiss. The cloud seemed to materialize from nowhere, the compressed gas blossoming into a whipped froth as it met the warmer, less dense air beyond.
Juliette Nichols stuck one boot through that narrow gap. The doors only opened partway to hold back the deadly toxins, to force the argon through with pent-up pressure, so she had to turn sideways to squeeze through, her bulky suit rubbing against the thick doors. All she could think of was the raging fire that would soon fill the airlock. Its flames seemed to lick at her back, forcing her to flee.
She pulled her other boot through—and Juliette was suddenly outside.
Outside.
There was nothing above her helmeted head but clouds, sky, and the unseen stars.
She lumbered forward, emerging through the fog of hissing argon to find herself on a sloping ramp, the corners by the walls caked high with wind-trapped dirt. It was easy to forget that the top floor of the silo was belowground. The view from her old office and the cafeteria created an illusion of standing on the surface of the earth, head up in the wild air, but that was because the sensors were located there.
Juliette looked down at the numbers on her chest and remembered what she was supposed to be doing. She trudged up the ramp, head down, focusing on her boots. She wasn’t sure how she even moved, if it was the numbness one succumbed to in the face of execution—or if it was just automated self-preservation, simply a move away from the coming inferno in the airlock, her body delaying the inevitable because it couldn’t think or plan beyond the next fistful of seconds.
As Juliette reached the top of the ramp, her head emerged into a lie, a grand and gorgeous untruth. Green grass covered the hills like newly painted carpet. The skies were intoxicatingly blue, the clouds bleached white like fancy linen, the air peppered with soaring things.<
br />
She spun in place and took in the spectacular fabrication. It was as if she’d been dropped into a book from her youth, a book where animals talked and children flew and grays were never found.
Even knowing it wasn’t real, knowing that she was looking through an eight by two inch fib, the temptation was overwhelming to believe. She wanted to. She wanted to forget what she knew of IT’s devious program, to forget everything she and Walker had discussed, and to fall instead to the soft grasses that weren’t there, to roll around in the life that wasn’t, to strip off the ridiculous suit and go screaming happily across the lying landscape.
She looked down at her hands, clenched and unclenched them as much as the thick gloves would allow. This was her coffin. Her thoughts scattered as she fought to remember what was real. Her death was real. The ugly world she had always known was real. And then, for just a moment, she remembered that she was supposed to be doing something. She was supposed to be cleaning.