Wool

by Hugh Howey

Page 17

 

  With her juice and bowl in hand, she returned to the cafeteria, knocking the lights off with her elbow and pushing the door shut with her foot. She sat down in the darkness at the end of one of the long tables and slurped on her late meal, keeping an eye on this strange man who seemed to peer into the darkness as if something could be seen out there.

  Her spoon eventually scraped the bottom of her empty bowl, she finished the last of her juice, and not once had the man turned away from the wallscreen. She pushed the dishes away from herself, insanely curious. The figure reacted to this, unless it was mere coincidence. He leaned forward and held his outstretched hand out at the screen. Juliette thought she could make out a rod or stick in his grasp—but it was too dark to tell. After a moment, he leaned over his lap, and Juliette heard the squeak of charcoal on expensive-sounding paper. She got up, taking this movement as an opening, and strolled closer to where he was sitting.

  “Raiding the larder, are we?” he asked.

  His voice startled her.

  “Worked through dinner,” she stammered, as if she needed to explain herself.

  “Must be nice to have the keys. ”

  He still didn’t turn away from the screen, and Juliette reminded herself to lock the kitchen door before she left.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked.

  The man reached behind himself and grabbed a nearby chair, slid it around to face the screen. “You wanna see?”

  Juliette approached warily, grabbed the backrest, and deliberately slid the chair a few inches further from the man. It was too dark in the room to make out his features, but his voice sounded young. She chastised herself for not committing him to memory the night before when there’d been more light. She would need to become more observant if she was going to be any good at her job.

  “What’re we looking at, exactly?” she asked. She stole a glance at his lap, where a large piece of white paper faintly glowed in the wan light leaking from the stairwell. It was spread flat across his thighs as if a board or something hard rested beneath it.

  “I think those two are going to part. Look there. ”

  The man pointed at the wallscreen and into a mix of blacks so rich and so deep as to appear as one. The contours and shadowy hues Juliette could make out almost seemed to be a trick played by her eyes—as real as ghosts. But she followed his finger, wondering if he were mad or drunk, and tolerated the exhausting silence that followed.

  “There,” he whispered, excitement on his breath.

  Juliette saw a flash. A spot of light. Like someone flicking on a torch far across a dark generator room. And then it was gone.

  She bolted out of her chair and stood near to the wallscreen, wondering what was out there.

  The man’s charcoal squeaked on his paper.

  “What the hell was that?” Juliette asked.

  The man laughed. “A star,” he said. “If you wait, you might see it again. We’ve got thin clouds tonight and high winds. That one there is getting ready to pass. ”

  Juliette turned to find her chair and saw that he was holding his charcoal at arm’s length, staring up at the spot where the light had flashed, one eye winked shut.

  “How can you see anything out there?” she asked, settling back into her plastic chair.

  “The longer you do this, the better you see at night. ” He leaned over his paper and scribbled some more. “And I’ve been doing this a long time. ”

  “Doing what, exactly? Just staring at the clouds?”

  He laughed. “Mostly, yeah. Unfortunately. But what I’m trying to do is see past them. Watch, we might get another glance. ”

  She peered up in the general area of the last flash. Suddenly, it popped back into view, a pinprick of light like a signal from high over the hill.

  “How many did you see?” he asked.

  “One,” she told him. She was almost breathless from the newness of the sight. She knew what stars were—they were a part of her vocabulary—but she’d never seen one before.

  “There was a faint one just to the side of it as well. Let me show you. ”

  There was a soft click, and a red glow spilled over the man’s lap. Juliette saw that he had a flashlight hanging around his neck, a film of red plastic wrapped around the end. It made the lens look like it was on fire, but it emanated a gentle glow that didn’t barrage her eyes the way the kitchen lights had.

  Spread across his lap, she saw a large piece of paper covered with dots. They were arranged haphazardly, a few perfectly straight lines running in a grid around them. Tiny notes were scattered everywhere.

  “The problem is that they move,” he told her. “If I see that one here tonight—” He tapped one of the dots with his finger. There was a smaller dot beside it. “—at the same exact time tomorrow, it’ll be a little over here. ” Turning to Juliette, she saw that the man was young, probably in his late twenties. He smiled, was quite handsome, and added: “It took me a long time to figure that out. ”

  Juliette wanted to tell him that he hadn’t been alive a long time, but remembered what it had felt like as a shadow when people dismissed her the same way.

  “What’s the point?” she asked, and saw his smile fade.

  “What’s the point of anything?” He returned his gaze to the wall and doused the flashlight. Juliette realized she’d asked the wrong question, had upset him. And then she wondered if there was anything illicit in this activity of his, anything that defied the taboos. Was collecting data on the outside any different than the people who sat and stared at the hills? She made a mental note to ask Marnes about this, when the man turned to her again in the darkness.

  “My name’s Lukas,” he said. Her eyes had adjusted well enough to see his hand stretched out toward her.

  “Juliette,” she replied, grabbing and squeezing his palm.

  “The new sheriff. ”

  It wasn’t a question, and of course he knew who she was. Everyone up top seemed to.

  “What do you do when you’re not up here?” she asked. She was pretty sure this wasn’t his job. Nobody should get chits for staring up at the clouds.

  “I live in the upper mids,” Lukas said. “I work on computers during the day. I only come up when the viewing’s good. ” He switched the light back on and turned toward her in a way that suggested the stars weren’t the most important thing on his mind anymore. “There’s a guy on my hall who works up here on dinner shift. When he gets home, he lets me know what the clouds were like during the day. If he gives me the thumbs up, I come take my chances. ”

  “And so you’re making a schematic of them?” Juliette gestured toward the large sheet of paper.

  “Trying to. It’ll probably take a few lifetimes. ” He tucked his charcoal behind his ear, pulled a rag from his coveralls, and wiped his fingers clean of black residue.

  “And then what?” Juliette asked.

  “Well, hopefully I’ll infect some shadow with my sickness and they’ll pick up wherever I leave off. ”

  “So literally, like, several lifetimes. ”

  He laughed, and Juliette realized it was a pleasant one. “At least,” he said.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” she said, suddenly feeling guilty for talking to him. She stood and reached out her hand, and he took it warmly. He pressed his other palm to the back of her hand and held it a moment longer than she would have expected.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Sheriff. ”

  He smiled up at her. And Juliette didn’t understand a word of what she muttered in return.

  4

  The next morning, Juliette arrived early at her desk having stolen little more than four hours of sleep. Beside her computer, she saw a package waiting on her—a small bundle wrapped in recycled pulp paper and encircled with white electrical ties. She smiled at this last touch and reached into her coveralls for her multi-tool. Pulling out the smallest pick
from the tool, she stuck it into the clasp of one of the electrical ties and slowly pulled the ratcheting device apart, keeping it intact for future use. She remembered the trouble she’d gotten into as a mechanic’s shadow the day she’d been caught cutting a plastic tie from an electrical board. Walker, already an old crank those decades ago, had yelled at her for the waste and then had shown her how to tease the little clasp loose to preserve the tie for later use.

  Years had passed, and when she was much older, she had found herself passing this lesson on to another shadow named Scottie. He had been a young lad at the time, but she had lit into him when he had made the same careless mistake she once had. She remembered frightening the poor boy white as a cinder block, and he had remained nervous around her for months after. Maybe because of that outburst, she had paid him more attention as he continued his training, and eventually, the two had grown close. He quickly grew up to become a capable young man, a whiz with electronics, able to program a pump’s timing chip in less time than it took her to break one down and put it back together.

  She loosened the other tie crossing the package, and knew the bundle was from him. Several years ago, Scottie had been recruited by IT and had moved up to the thirties. He had become “too smart for Mechanical,” as Knox had put it. Juliette set the two electrical straps aside and pictured the young man preparing this package for her. The request she’d wired down to Mechanical the night before must’ve bounced back up to him, and he had spent the night dutifully doing this favor for her.

  She pried the paper apart carefully. Both it and the plastic ties would need to be returned; they were both too dear for her to keep and light enough to porter on the cheap. As the package came apart, she noticed that Scottie had crimped the edges and had folded these tabs under each other, a trick children learned so they could wrap notes without the expense of glue or tape. She disassembled his meticulous work with care, and the paper finally came loose. Inside, she found a plastic box like the kind used to sort nuts and bolts for small projects down in Mechanical.

  She opened the lid and saw that the package wasn’t just from Scottie—it must’ve been hurried up to him along with a copy of her request. Tears came to her eyes as the smell of Mama Jean’s oatmeal and cornflour cookies drifted out. She plucked one, held it to her nose, and breathed deeply. Maybe she imagined it, but she swore she noted a hint of oil or grease emanating from the old box—the smells of home.

  Juliette folded the wrapping paper carefully and placed the cookies on top. She thought of the people she would have to share them with. Marnes, of course, but also Pam in the cafeteria, who had been so nice in helping her settle into her new apartment. And Alice, Jahns’ young secretary, whose eyes had been red with grief for over a week. She pulled the last cookie out and finally spotted the small data drive rattling around in the bottom of the container, a little morsel baked special by Scottie and hidden among the crumbs.

  Juliette grabbed it and set the plastic case aside. She blew into the little metal end of the drive, getting any debris out, before slotting it into the front of her computer. She wasn’t great with computers, but she could get around them. You couldn’t do anything in Mechanical without submitting a claim, a report, a request, or some other piece of nonsense. And they were handy for logging into pumps and relays remotely to shut them on or off, see their diagnostics, all of that.

  Once the light on the drive winked on, she navigated to it on her screen. Inside, she found a host of folders and files; the little drive must’ve been stuffed to the brim with them. She wondered if Scottie had gotten any sleep at all the night before.

  At the top of a list of primary folders was a file named “Jules. ” She clicked this one, and up popped a short text file obviously from Scottie, but noticeably unsigned:

  J--

  Don’t get caught with this, okay? This is everything from Mr. Lawman’s computers, work and home, the last five years. A ton of stuff, but wasn’t sure what you needed and this was easier to automate.

  Keep the ties -- I got plenty.

  (And I took a cookie. Hope you don’t mind)

  Juliette smiled. She felt like reaching out and brushing her fingers across the words, but it wasn’t paper and wouldn’t be the same. She closed the note and deleted it, then cleared out her trash. Even the first letter of her name up there felt like too much information.

  She leaned away from her desk and peered into the cafeteria, which appeared dark and empty. It was not yet five in the morning, and she would have the upper floor to herself for a while. She first took a moment to browse through the directory structure to see what kind of data she was dealing with. Each folder was neatly labeled. It appeared she had an operating history of Holston’s two computers, every keystroke, every day, going back a little more than five years, all organized by date and time. Juliette felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information—it was far more than she could hope to weed through in a lifetime.

  But at least she had it. The answers she needed were in there, somewhere, among all those files. And somehow it felt better, she felt better, just knowing that the solution to this riddle, to Holston’s decision to go to cleaning, could now fit in the palm of her hand.

  • • • •

  She was several hours into sifting through the data when the cafeteria crew staggered in to clean up last night’s mess and prepare for breakfast. One of the most difficult things to get used to about the up-top was the exacting schedule everyone kept. There was no third shift. There was barely a second shift, except for the dinner staff. In the down deep, the machines didn’t sleep, and so the workers barely did either. Work crews often stayed on into extra shifts, and so Juliette had gotten used to surviving on a handful of hours of rest a night. The trick was to pass out now and then from sheer exhaustion, to just rest against a wall with one’s eyes closed for fifteen minutes, long enough to hold the tiredness at bay.