The old sheriff nodded, softly adding, “I need to go get my stuff.”
The dinner service was starting, with the odd shift worker coming in for an out-of-sync breakfast. People milled around the cafeteria, eating, drinking, talking and laughing. Susan sighed. She wasn't hungry, but she was thirsty, bordering on dehydrated. She grabbed a drink of water and sat down alone at the table closest to the sheriff's office. No one sat with her. When the tables filled up, patrons stood, leaning against the support pillars or against the wall, but no one sat at the table with her. Was it out of some misplaced fear of being seen associating with her? Perhaps. Was it pity or some vague notion of compassion, giving her some privacy? Maybe for some. Or was it to shun her as an outcast? She suspected that was the case for those that spoke in hushed whispers around her.
Susan hadn't seen the old sheriff leave, but he must have, probably while she was in the bathroom. She was so engrossed in the wall-screen that he could have walked past without her noticing. There was something strangely hypnotic about the plume of smoke rising endlessly from the devastated mound of rocks and boulders, particularly as night fell and a full moon rose, shining in all its golden splendor.
Susan was numb. Time was immaterial. Before she knew it, one of the kitchen staff was wiping down the tables and turning off the lights. He left her to herself, working around her with a mop, quietly swishing the matted knot of rope fibers across the floor with a steady rhythm.
“How are you doing?” came a gentle voice from behind her.
“Hey, Mom,” Susan replied, acknowledging her but unconsciously ignoring the question, not taking her eyes off the massive screen before her.
“Don't think about what's out there, Sue. It'll drive you mad.”
Susan nodded. She wanted to agree with her mother, but the words that came out sounded strange, as though they'd been spoken by Charlie, not by her.
“Don't you ever wonder?” she asked. “I do. I wonder what the world was like before all this.”
Her mother was silent, sitting down quietly beside her at the table. Such talk was forbidden, but Susan didn’t care.
“I wonder how many sunrises and sunsets this planet has seen. I wonder how long the Moon has sat up there, staring down at us, watching us. I wonder how long there have been people down here staring back at its cratered surface.”
She sighed, not sure how much her mother understood. Charlie had opened her eyes. Although Susan only had a brief glimpse at the books beneath the server room, for her that had been a watershed moment, allowing all that Charlie had shared with her to crystalize in her mind. For Susan, the tragedy of lost knowledge was as heartbreaking as Charlie’s death.
The staggering diversity she had witnessed that night flicking through those pages had been etched in her mind. Images of half-naked savages in leafy, green jungles, or thousands of different species of birds, all of them looking as though they’d been dipped in the brightest of paints. There had been rockets soaring above the blue expanse of Earth; she’d heard the sky above had once been blue, but she never dreamed you could fly above the blue and stare down upon it as one would lean over the Great Fall.
Men had stood on the Moon! It’s dusty grey surface looked even more inhospitable than the world beyond the silo, and the suits those men wore were far more robust than those of a cleaner. Oh, there was so much she wanted to tell her mother, so much she wanted to explain. Specks of light in the night sky were far-flung suns, while others were entire planets larger than Earth. One of them even had a ring floating around its waist. Oh, the beauty was something she longed to behold again.
“I wonder if we'll ever get out there,” she said absentmindedly. “Not in a suit. I mean, will we ever walk in green meadows under a blue sky? Perhaps not us, but someone, anyone?”
She turned to her mother, adding, “I used to wonder how the world could get so bad, how an entire planet could be decimated, forcing us to live in a hole in the ground, but I don't wonder any more. Now, I know. Today, I saw how evil thrives. All it takes is for someone in a position of authority to defend themselves, to decide that reality is subordinate to their iron will. Oh, I'm sure there are reasons. There are always reasons. Every act needs to be justified, regardless of whether it is good or evil. Evil, though, justifies its acts with the sacrifice of the innocent.”
Her mother rested her hand on Susan's fingers.
“He's innocent, Mom. I know he is.”
Susan sighed. Her mother's fingers were warm. She felt comfort in the strength of her mother's grip. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I've never heard you talk this way before,” her mother said.
“I've never felt this way before,” Susan replied. “It's strange. On one level, I feel gutted, as though my innards have been wrenched from my body. On another, I see this for what it is, the cruel dominance of our lives by those that care more for the concrete walls that surround us than any life we may bring to them.
“Charlie knew. Charlie understood. Charlie dared. That was his crime, to want more. And not for himself, for all of us. And that's why he has to die.”
She sobbed quietly, covering her eyes with her hands. Her mother rubbed her back, comforting her, just as she had so many times before when Susan was a child.
“Come home,” her mother said gently.
“I can't,” Susan spluttered. “I can't leave him.”
“I told you,” said a male voice from behind her, and her father sat down on the other side of her, leaning his crutch on the bench seat. He dropped a pillow on the table, draping a blanket over her shoulders.
Susan looked at him and forced a smile through her tears.
“Thanks.”
With that, her mother and father kissed her and left. Susan wasn't sure how, but somehow she fell asleep sitting at the table with her head resting on the pillow. She was exhausted mentally, emotionally and physically.
Chapter 11: Cleaning
“Hey ... Are you awake?”
The first thought that drifted across her mind was, what a stupid question.
“Hey,” the voice said again, as a firm hand shook her shoulder gently.
Susan opened her eyes. Dark clouds rolled across the wall-screen. Dawn had begun to break in the distance, catching clouds high in the stratosphere, giving the sky the illusion of life. For a moment, she could almost imagine a beautiful day dawning. But the dust blowing across the barren ground spoke of desolation and ruin. The shattered remains of a distant city still loomed over the hills like skeletons. Smoke still billowed ferociously from the shattered remains of the hillside closest to the kitchen.
“You've got five minutes with the prisoner,” Deputy Michelson said. He'd only ever be a deputy in her eyes. He might wear the badge of a sheriff, but he'd proven himself unworthy of the title as far as she was concerned. Had she not been so groggy, she might have told him so, regardless of how petty that would have seemed.
Quietly, she got to her feet, rubbing her eyes and then stretching her arms to shake off the lethargy of night.
Deputy Michelson walked away from her, back toward the office, saying, “Normally, they don't go crazy till after you put them in the airlock. Your boy, though, he's a wacko.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, hurrying to catch up with Michelson.
“I mean, Phillips made the mistake of leaving the boy's cleaning suit too close to the bars. Instead of lying there quietly, contemplating the view on the screen in his cell, your boy goes nuts, trying to destroy his suit.”
“What?” she replied as he opened the door to the office.
“No time to get another one. Hammond wants us to go ahead and use it as is.”
Hammond, she thought, well, that figures.
Susan walked through the narrow office, past the various desks and the holding cells toward the back of the station. Deputy Michelson unlocked a steel door with a small porthole built into it and ushered her into a narrow corridor next to the main cell. He shut the door b
ehind her, leaving her alone with Charlie.
“Five minutes,” he called out as the door slammed.
“Sue,” Charlie cried, rushing to the bars of his cell and reaching between them.
As awkward as it felt, Susan hugged him through the bars, kissing him on the lips, the cheek, the chin, wherever she could reach.
“Oh, Susan,” he said. “I'm so sorry.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Why didn't you fight the charge?” she asked. “Why didn't you mount a defense?”
“Hammond spoke to me before the trial. He said Barney told him everything. He knew about us and the books. He promised, Sue ... He promised he'd spare you if I went willingly.”
The two of them sunk to their knees, still reaching through the bars to touch each other.
“Oh, Susan. I'm so sorry. I should have never got you involved.”
“No,” she said, wiping her tears and pulling her hair back from her face. “No, don't you say that. You shouldn't be sorry. He should be. He's lied to us. He's lied to everyone. We need to expose him. I need to—”
“Susan,” Charlie said softly. “I love you, but don't do this, OK? Promise me you won't throw away your life. Don't follow me out there.”
Susan sobbed. Her chest heaved. Charlie reached through the bars and wiped her tears.
“You've got to be strong, Susan. Please, be strong for me. I need to know you'll be OK. That's the only way I can go through with this. Please.”
Susan nodded, unable to answer, sniffing as she wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve.
“I love you,” Charlie said, gently squeezing her hand.
She tried to be brave, wiping the tears from her eyes as she blurted out, “I love you too, Charlie Pritchard. Oh, God, look at me. I must look a wreck.”
Charlie laughed. “You've never looked more beautiful.”
Susan reached out and batted him playfully through the bars, saying, “Smooth talker.”
They both managed a restrained laugh.
Susan looked around at the cell. She'd been so focused on him she initially hadn't noticed the torn mattress and loose stuffing littering the floor. The inside of the cell was a mess, covered in white cotton frantically pulled out of the mattress. Bits of thermal tape, plastic and pieces torn from the blue pinstriped mattress cover lay strewn everywhere. A thin strip of black rubber hung down from the side of the wall-screen, dangling in front of the gloomy view.
“What happened?” she asked, seeing Charlie had dragged the cleaning suit through the bars. The suit lay spread it out on what remained of the mattress.
“I got bored.”
The look on her face must have convinced him she wasn't accepting that as an explanation.
“OK,” he continued. “I've got a theory about the cleanings. I don't think the atmosphere is as bad as they make out. I think the suits are designed to fail.”
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
“Have you ever heard of the camera that drives the wall-screen failing? Or the seal on the airlock perishing? How come these components have survived in such a harsh environment for hundreds of years and yet we can't walk outside in a suit for more than five minutes? Something doesn't add up.”
“You don't think it's poisonous out there?” she asked, her eyebrows raise in genuine surprise.
“Oh, it's poisonous, all right. But these suits are designed to fail. It's an execution, right? Why would they build a suit you could survive in if they're trying to kill you?”
Susan smiled, shaking her head. Charlie had a way of seeing the obvious, only the obvious never seemed obvious until he pointed it out.
“So what have you done?” she asked.
“Ah,” he said, turning and gesturing toward the wall-screen at the back of his cell. “Some sadistic bastard figured a condemned man had nothing better to do with his time than to look outside and think about dying, but that guy never met me. I look out there, and I learn.”
Charlie jumped up on the bed, being careful not to stand on the silver suit. He pointed at the screen, moving quickly between several bodies lying on the shattered hillside, his finger hit each one as he tapped at the screen.
“What do you notice about these cleaners?” he asked.
“Ah,” Susan said, not knowing where to begin. “They're dead?”
Charlie smiled. “Look at their suits.”
Susan looked and raised one eyebrow in a gesture she hoped implied defeat. She had no idea what Charlie was getting at.
“They're intact. The suits are intact. Don't you get it. Some of these guys and gals are hundreds of years old. The cleaners lower down are starting to deteriorate, but most of their suits are still intact as well. What does that tell you?”
Susan shrugged her shoulders.
“Think about it. They don't die simply because they run out of air. We know that because we saw how Xavier died. He was shaking uncontrollably, some of that poisonous gas had seeped in. If the suit material is robust after decades of weathering then it has to be the seals that fail. I think the seals are only designed to last a few minutes.”
“So you've replaced them?” she asked. “But with what?”
Charlie held up a strip of black rubber, saying, “With the edging from around the wall-screen.”
“And the mattress?” she asked.
“The mattress is for show,” he said, grinning. “To make them think I've gone crazy. To stop them looking too closely at the suit.”
“How long will the rubber last?” she asked, feeling a rush of excitement.
“I don't know,” Charlie replied. “But I'll make it to the top of that damn hill. I won't clean, Sue. I swear to you, I will not clean. I will not give those bastards that satisfaction. And I won't let them watch me die. I'll head over the hill and out of sight. Let's see how they spin that to the crowd.”
Susan forced a smile. Her lips didn't want to respond, they felt perpetually downturned, but she smiled nonetheless.
“Look carefully at the helmet, Sue. Try it on.”
The air tank, helmet and boots were the only items Charlie hadn't managed to drag inside his cell, but he had them hard up against the bars and had been clearly examining them.
“How long will you have?” she asked, her eyes settling on the small black metal oxygen tank sitting beside the bars.
“Michelson says, once the airlock opens, I've got five minutes max, but there's nothing I can do about that.”
For a moment, Charlie looked forlorn but then he perked up, repeating his initial admonition, “Look at the helmet!”
Five minutes. Her heart sank and she struggled to breathe. Five minutes seemed so short, too absurdly short to be a measurement of life. Five minutes was all she had with him, and was all he'd get on the outside of the silo. Her heart ached.
Susan picked up the helmet trying to distract herself from the macabre thought of only having five minutes to live. She was immediately surprised by its weight. She'd expected the helmet to be quite light, but it was bulky and heavy. A silver collar ran around the base of the white, nondescript sphere, while the black visor was barely a few inches high running in a strip in front of the eyes. Visibility would be poor, she imagined, as the visor was narrow. Once the helmet was on, you'd only be able to see directly in front, which explained why the suit had numbered pockets. The suit technicians were trying to make cleaning as easy as possible with such a restricted view, but why not make the visor bigger?
“Go on,” he said. “Try it on for size.”
Ordinarily, she would have relished the chance to try on something exotic like this, but this was Charlie's death mask. She couldn't help but feel claustrophobic slipping the helmet over her head. With the helmet resting on her shoulders, the only light seeped in from around the collar.
“Why's it so dark?” she asked, wondering if she had the helmet facing the right way. For a second, she felt stupid, as though she'd put the helmet on backwards, but as she lifted
the clunky sphere from her head and the light flooded in she caught a glimpse of the black visor from within. She pulled the helmet off and turned it around, examining the visor in more detail.
“What do you think?” Charlie asked.
“I don't understand,” she said. “How do you open the visor so you can see?”
Charlie was silent.
“Is it like a welding mask, or something?” she asked.
“Or something,” he replied with a knowing smile. “Remember Xavier? Why did he need his reading glasses?”
“I don't know,” Susan confessed.
Charlie got up and jumped back on the bed. He put his face up close to the wall-screen.
“Do you know what amazes me about these wall-screens?” he asked.
Susan shrugged her shoulders.
“Think about the computer monitors you've seen in the porting stations. If you get up close to those green screens all the letters are clunky. The image is made up of tiny dots, and if you look closely you can see each one individually.”
“So?” Susan said, not seeing the connection.
“But these wall-screens,” Charlie continued. “They're different. They're much more advanced. Get up close and you can see an astonishing amount of detail you missed from a distance, and you still can't see any tiny dots building the bigger picture. Ah, but when it comes to someone like Xavier who's long-sighted and needs glasses to read, get up close and the screen's a blur.”
Susan was quiet.
“I think I know why everyone cleans,” Charlie said. He paused, whether it was for dramatic effect or not, she didn't know, but he certainly had her attention. “I don't think that black strip is a visor at all. I think it's a tiny wall-screen.”
“But why?” Susan asked. “That doesn't make any sense.”
“It does when you think about it,” Charlie continued. “What do we want to see more than anything else in the world.”
That was easy, thought Susan. “Blue skies and green meadows.”
“Perhaps,” Charlie said. “Just maybe, that's what we see when we clean.”
Shadows Page 12
