The woman turned, not startled, and squinted at Jahns and Marnes. She wiped her forehead with the back of one hand, her other hand swinging the wrench around to rest on her shoulder. She patted the young shadow on the head and walked out to meet them. Jahns saw that the woman’s arms were lean and defined with muscle. She wore no undershirt, just blue coveralls cut high up over her chest, exposing a bit of olive skin that gleamed with sweat. She had the same dark complexion as the farmers who worked under grow lights, but it could have been as much from the grease and grime if her denims were any indication.
She stopped short of Jahns and Marnes and nodded at them. She smiled at Marnes with a hint of recognition. She didn’t offer a hand, for which Jahns was grateful. Instead, she pointed toward a door by a glass partition, and then headed that way herself.
Marnes followed on her heels like a puppy, Jahns close behind. She turned to make sure the shadow wasn’t underfoot, only to see him scurrying off the way he had come, his hair glowing in the wan overhead lights of the generator room. His duty, as far as he was concerned, was done.
Inside the small control room, the noise lessened. It dropped almost to nothing as the thick door was shut tight. Juliette pulled off her hardhat and earmuffs and dropped them on a shelf. Jahns took hers away from her head tentatively, heard the noise reduced to a distant hum, and removed them all the way. The room was tight and crowded with metal surfaces and winking lights unlike anything she had ever seen. It was strange to her that she was Mayor of this room as well, a thing she hardly knew existed and certainly couldn’t operate.
While the ringing in Jahns’ ears subsided, Juliette adjusted some spinning knobs, watching little arms waver under glass shields. “I thought we were doing this tomorrow morning,” she said. She concentrated intently on her work.
“We made better time than I’d hoped.”
Jahns looked to Marnes, who was holding his ear protection in both hands, shifting uncomfortably.
“Good to see you again, Jules,” he said.
She nodded and leaned down to peer through the thick glass window at the gargantuan machines outside, her hands darting over the large control board without needing to look, adjusting large black dials with faded white markings.
“Sorry about your partner,” she said, glancing down at a bank of readouts. She turned and studied Marnes, and Jahns saw that this woman, beneath the sweat and grime, was beautiful. Her face was hard and lean, her eyes bright. She had a fierce intelligence you could measure from a distance. And she peered at Marnes with utmost sympathy, visible in the furrow of her brows. “Really,” she said. “I’m terribly sorry. He seemed like a good man.”
“The best,” Marnes sputtered, his voice cracking.
Juliette nodded as if that was all that needed saying. She turned to Jahns.
“That vibration you feel in the floor, Mayor? That’s a coupling when it’s barely two millimeters off. If you think it feels bad in here, you should go put your hands on the casing. It’ll jiggle your fingers numb immediately. Hold it long enough, and your bones will rattle like you’re coming apart.”
She turned and reached between Jahns and Marnes to throw a massive switch, then turned back to the control board. “Now imagine what that generator is going through, shaking itself to pieces like that. Teeth start grinding together in the transmission, small bits of metal shavings cycle through the oil like sandpaper grit. Next thing you know, there’s an explosion of steel and we’ve got no power but whatever the backup can spit out.”
Jahns held her breath.
“You need us to get someone?” Marnes asked.
Juliette laughed. “None of this is news or different from any other shift. If the backup unit wasn’t being torn down for new gaskets, and we could go to half power for a week, I could pull that coupler, adjust the mounts, and have her spinning like a top.” She shot a look at Jahns. “But since we have a mandate for full power, no interruptions, that’s not happening. So I’m going to keep tightening bolts while they keep trying to shake loose, and try and find the right revolutions in here to keep her fairly singing.”
“I had no idea, when I signed that mandate—”
“And here I thought I dumbed down my report enough to make it clear,” Juliette said.
“How long before this failure happens?”
Jahns suddenly realized she wasn’t here interviewing this woman. The demands were heading the opposite direction.
“How long?” Juliette laughed and shook her head. She finished a final adjustment and turned to face them with her arms crossed. “It could happen right now. It could happen a hundred years from now. The point is: it’s going to happen, and it’s entirely preventable. The goal shouldn’t be to keep this place humming along for our lifetimes—” She looked pointedly at Jahns. “—or our current term. If the goal ain’t forever, we should pack our bags right now.”
Jahns saw Marnes stiffen at this. She felt her own body react, a chill coursing across her skin. This last line was dangerously close to treason. The metaphor only half saved it.
“I could declare a power holiday,” Jahns suggested. “We could stage it in memory of those who clean.” She thought more about this. “It could be an excuse to service more than your machine here. We could—”
“Good luck getting IT to power down shit,” Juliette said. She wiped her chin with the back of her wrist, then wiped this on her coveralls. She looked down at the grease transferred to the denim. “Pardon my language, Mayor.”
Jahns wanted to tell her it was quite all right, but the woman’s attitude, her power, reminded her too much of a former self that she could just barely recall. A younger woman who dispensed with niceties and got what she wanted. She found herself glancing over at Marnes. “Why do you single out their department? For the power, I mean.”
Juliette laughed and uncrossed her arms. She tossed her hands toward the ceiling. “Why? Because IT has, what, three floors out of one forty-four? And yet they use up over a quarter of all the power we produce. I can do the math for you—”
“That’s quite alright.”
“And I don’t remember a server ever feeding someone or saving someone’s life or stitching up a hole in their britches.”
Jahns smiled. She suddenly saw what Marnes liked about this woman. She also saw what he had once seen in her younger self, before she married his best friend.
“What if we had IT ratchet down for some maintenance of their own for a week? Would that work?”
“I thought we came down here to recruit her away from all this,” Marnes grumbled.
Juliette shot him a look. “And I thought I told your—or your secretary—not to bother. Not that I’ve got anything against what you do, but I’m needed down here.” She raised her arm and checked something dangling from her wrist. It was a timepiece. But she was studying it as if it still worked.
“Look, I’d love to chat more.” She looked up at Jahns. “Especially if you can guarantee a holiday from the juice, but I’ve got a few more adjustments to make and I’m already into my overtime. Knox gets pissed if I push into too many extra shifts.”
“We’ll get out of your hair,” Jahns said. “We haven’t had dinner yet, so maybe we can see you after? Once you punch out and get cleaned up?”
Juliette looked down at herself, as if to confirm she even needed cleaning. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “They’ve got you in the bunkhouse?”
Marnes nodded.
“Alright. I’ll find you later. And don’t forget your muffs.” She pointed to her ears, looked Marnes in the eye, nodded, then returned to her work, letting them know the conversation, for now, was over.
6
Marnes and Jahns finished their meals, which consisted of large bowls of soup and hunks of dry, almost stale bread, and exited a mess hall nearly as noisy as the generator room. During the entire meal, Jahns had regretted not bringing those plastic and foam ear protection muffs to dinner. The men and women of Mechanical were as loud and boisterous as they were fil
thy. She wondered if perhaps they all yelled because they were going deaf in the constant hammering of the place.
Outside, they followed Knox’s directions to the bunkroom, where they found a cot made up for Marnes, and one of the attached private rooms reserved for Jahns. They bided their time in the small room, rubbing aches in their legs, talking about how different the down deep was, until there was a knock on their door and Juliette pushed it open and stepped inside.
“They got you both in one room?” she asked, surprised.
Jahns laughed. “No, they’ve got a bunk set aside as well. And I would’ve been happy staying out there with the others.”
“Forget it,” Juliette said. “They put up recruits and visiting families in here all the time.”
Jahns watched as Juliette placed a length of string in her mouth, then gathered her hair, still wet from a shower, and tied it up in a tail. She had changed into another pair of coveralls, and Jahns guessed the stains in them were permanent, that the fabric was actually laundered and ready for another shift.
“So how soon could we announce this power holiday?” Juliette asked. She finished her knot and crossed her arms, leaning back against the wall beside the door. “I would think you’d wanna take advantage of the post-cleaning mood, right?”
“How soon can you start?” Jahns asked. She realized, suddenly, that part of the reason she wanted this woman as her sheriff was that she felt unattainable. Jahns glanced over at Marnes and wondered how much of his attraction to her, all those many years ago when she was young and with Donald, had been as simply motivated.
“I can start tomorrow,” Juliette said. “We could have the backup generator online by morning. I could work another shift tonight to make sure the gaskets and seals—”
“No,” Jahns said, raising her hand. “How soon can you start as sheriff?” She dug through her open bag, sorting folders across the bed, looking for the contract.
“I’m—I thought we discussed this. I have no interest in being—”
“They make the best ones,” Marnes said. “The ones who have no interest in it.” He stood across from Juliette, this thumbs tucked into his coveralls, leaning against one of the small apartment’s walls.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no one down here who can just slip into my boots,” Juliette said, shaking her head. “I don’t think you two understand all that we do—”
“I don’t think you understand what we do up top,” Jahns said. “Or why we need you.”
Juliette tossed her head and laughed. “Look, I’ve got machines down here that you can’t possibly—”
“And what good are they?” Jahns asked. “What do these machines do?”
“They keep this whole goddamned place running!” Juliette declared. “The oxygen you breathe? We recycle that down here. The toxins you exhale? We pump them back into the earth. You want me to write up a list of everything oil makes? Every piece of plastic, every ounce of rubber, all the solvents and cleaners, and I’m not talking about the power it generates, but everything else!”
“And yet it was all here before you were born,” Jahns pointed out.
“Well it wouldn’t have lasted my lifetime, I’ll tell you that. Not in the state it was in.” She crossed her arms again and leaned back against the wall. “I don’t think you get what mess we’d be in without these machines.”
“And I don’t think you get how pointless these machines are going to become without all these people.”
Juliette looked away. It was the first time Jahns had seen her flinch.
“Why don’t you ever visit your father?”
Juliette snapped her head around and looked at the other wall. She wiped loose hair back on her forehead. “Go look at my work log,” she said. “Tell me when I’d fit it in.”
Before Jahns could reply, could say that it was family, that there’s always time, Juliette turned to face her. “Do you think I don’t care about people? Is that it? Because you’d be wrong. I care about every person in this silo. And the men and women down here, the forgotten eight floors of Mechanical, this is my family. I visit with them every day. I break bread with them several times a day. We work, live, and die alongside one another.” She looked to Marnes. “Isn’t that right? You’ve seen it.”
Marnes didn’t say anything. Jahns wondered if she was referring specifically to the “dying” part.
“Did you ask him why he never comes to see me? Because he has all the time in the world. He has nothing up there.”
“Yes, we met with him. Your father seemed like a very busy man. As determined as you.”
Juliette looked away.
“And as stubborn.” Jahns left the paperwork on the bed and went to stand by the door, just a pace away from Juliette. She could smell the soap in the younger woman’s hair. Could see her nostrils flare with her rapid, heavy breathing.
“The days pile up and weigh small decisions down, don’t they? That decision to not visit. The first few days slide by easy enough, anger and youth powers them along. But then they pile up like unrecycled trash. Isn’t that right?”
Juliette waved her hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about days becoming weeks becoming months becoming years—” She almost said that she’d been through the same exact thing, was still piling them up, but Marnes was in the room, listening. “After a while, you’re staying mad just to justify an old mistake. Then it’s just a game. Two people staring away, refusing to look back over their shoulders, afraid to be the first one to take that chance—”
“It wasn’t like that,” Juliette said. “I don’t want your job. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of others who do.”
“If it’s not you, it’s someone I’m not sure I can trust. Not anymore.”
“Then give it to the next girl.” She smiled.
“It’s you or him. And I think he’ll be getting more guidance from the thirties than he will from me, or from the Pact.”
Juliette seemed to react to this. Her arms loosened across her chest. She turned and met Jahns’ gaze. Marnes was studying all of this from across the room.
“The last sheriff, Holston, what happened to him?”
“He went to cleaning,” Jahns said.
“He volunteered,” Marnes added gruffly.
“I know, but why?” She frowned. “I heard it was his wife.”
“There’s all kinds of speculation—”
“I remember him talking about her, when you two came down to look into Rick’s death. I thought, at first, that he was flirting with me, but all he could talk about was this wife of his.”
“They were in the lottery while we were down here,” Marnes reminded her.
“Yeah. That’s right.” She studied the bed for a while. Paperwork was spread across it.
“I wouldn’t know how to do this job. I only know how to fix things.”
“It’s the same thing,” Marnes told her. “You were a big help with our case down here. You see how things work. How they fit together. Little clues that other people miss.”
“You’re talking about machines,” she said.
“People aren’t much different,” Marnes told her.
“I think you already know this,” Jahns said. “I think you have the right attitude, actually. The right disposition. This is only slightly a political office. Distance is good.”
Juliette shook her head and looked back to Marnes. “So you nominated me for this, is that it? I wondered how this came up. Seemed like something right out of the ground.”
“You’d be good at it,” Marnes told her. “I think you’d be damned good at anything you set your mind to. And this is more important work than you think.”
“And I’d live up top?”
“Your office is on level one. Near the airlock.”
Juliette seemed to mull this over. Jahns was excited to have her even asking questions.
“The pay is more than you’re making now, even with the extra sh
ifts.”
“You checked?”
Jahns nodded. “I took some liberties before we came down.”
“Like talking to my father.”
“That’s right. He would love to see you, you know. If you come with us.”
Juliette looked down at her boots. “Not sure about that.”
“There’s one other thing,” Marnes said, catching Jahns’ eye. He glanced at the paperwork on the bed. The crisply folded contract for Peter Billings was on top. “IT,” he reminded her.
Jahns caught his drift.
“There’s one matter to clear up, before you accept.”
“I’m not sure I’m accepting. I’d want to hear more about this power holiday, organize the work shifts down here—”
“According to tradition, IT signs off on all nominated positions—”
Juliette rolled her eyes and blew out her breath. “IT.”
“Yes, and we checked in with them on the way down as well, just to smooth things over.”
“I’m sure,” Juliette said.
“It’s about these requisitions,” Marnes interjected.
Juliette turned to him.
“We know it probably ain’t nothing, but it’s gonna come up—”
“Wait, is this about the heat tape?”
“Heat tape?”
“Yeah.” Juliette frowned and shook her head. “Those bastards.”
Jahns pinched two inches of air. “They had a folder on you this thick. Said you were skimming supplies meant for them.”
“No they didn’t. Are you kidding?” She pointed toward the door. “We can’t get any of the supplies we need because of them. When I needed heat tape—we had a leak in a heat exchanger a few months back—we couldn’t get any because Supply tells us the backing material for the tape is all spoken for. Now, we had that order in a while back, and then I find out from one of our porters that the tape is going to IT, that they’ve got miles of the stuff for the skins of all their test suits.”
Juliette took a deep breath.
“So I had some intercepted.” She looked to Marnes as she admitted this. “Look, I’m keeping the power on so they can do whatever it is they do up there, and I can’t get basic supplies. And even when I do, the quality is complete crap, probably because of unrealistic quotas, rushing the manufacturing chain—”
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