by Hugh Howey
You can be anything, one of them said. It featured a crude drawing of a boy and a girl standing on a huge mound. The mound was green and the sky blue, just like in the picture books. Another one said: Dream to your heart’s delight. It had bands of color in a graceful sweep. The Crow had a name for the shape, but he’d forgotten what it was called. Another familiar one: Go new places. It featured a drawing of a crow perched in an impossibly large tree, it’s wings spread as if it were about to take flight.
“Jeffery is the bald one,” Mrs. Crowe said. She waved a hand over her own white and thinning hair to demonstrate.
“I know the one,” Mission said. It was a strange reminder that so many of the adults and elders throughout the silo had been her students as well. A locker was slammed in the hallway. Mission remembered when he was a kid how the rows and rows of tiny desks had filled the room. There were cubbies full of rolled mats for nap time, reminding him of the daily routine of clearing a space in the middle of the floor, finding his mat, and drifting off to sleep while the Crow sang to them. He missed those days. He missed the Old Time stories about a world full of impossible things. Leaning against that little desk, Mission suddenly felt as ancient as the Crow, just as impossibly distant from his youth.
“Give Jeffery this, and then see that Rodny gets my note. From you personally, okay?”
He grabbed his pack and slid both pieces of correspondence into his courier pouch. There was no mention of payment, just the twinge of guilt Mission felt for even thinking it. Digging into the pack reminded him of the items he had brought her, forgotten due to the previous night’s brawl.
“Oh, I brought you these from the farm.” He pulled out a few small cucumbers, two peppers, and a large tomato. He placed them on her desk. “For your veggie drinks,” he said.
Mrs. Crowe clasped her hands together and smiled with delight.
“Is there anything else you need next time I’m passing by?”
“These visits,” she said, her face a wrinkle of smiles. “All I care about are my little ones. Stop by whenever you can, okay?”
Mission squeezed her arm, which felt like a broomstick tucked into a sleeve. “I will,” he said. “And that reminds me: Jenine, Frankie, and Steven all told me to tell you hello. And I’m probably forgetting someone.”
“Those boys should come more often,” she told him, her voice a quiver.
“Not everyone gets around like I do,” he said. “I’m sure they’d like to see you more often as well.”
“You tell them,” she said. “Tell them I don’t have much time left—”
Mission laughed and waved off the morbid thought. “You probably told my grandfather the same thing when he was young, and his father before him.”
The Crow smiled as if this were true. “Predict the inevitable,” she said, “and you’re bound to be right one day.”
Mission smiled. He liked that. “Still, I wish you wouldn’t talk about dying. Nobody likes to hear it.”
“They may not like it, but a reminder is good.” She held out her arms, the sleeves of her flowered dress falling away and revealing the bandage once more. “Tell me, what do you see when you look at these hands?” She turned them over, back and forth. She studied them as if they belonged to another.
“I see time,” Mission blurted out, not sure where the thought came from. He tore his eyes away, suddenly finding her skin to be grotesque. Like shriveled potatoes found deep in the soil long after harvest time. He hated himself for feeling it.
“Time, sure,” Mrs. Crowe said. “There’s time here aplenty. But there’s remnants, too. I remember things being better, once. You think on the bad to remind yourself of the good.”
She studied her hands a moment longer as if looking for something else. When she lifted her gaze and peered at Mission, her eyes were shining with sadness. Mission could feel his own eyes watering, partly from discomfort, partly due to the somber pall that had been cast like a cold and wet blanket over the conversation. It reminded him that today was his birthday, a thought that tightened his neck and emptied his chest. He was sure the Crow knew what day it was. She just loved him enough not to say.
“I was beautiful, once, you know.” Mrs. Crowe withdrew her hands and folded them in her lap. “Once that’s gone, once it leaves us for good, no one will ever see it again.”
Mission felt a powerful urge to soothe her, to tell Mrs. Crowe that she was still beautiful in plenty of ways. She could still make music. Could paint. Few others remembered how. She could make children feel loved and safe, another bit of magic long forgotten.
“When I was your age,” the Crow said, smiling, “I could have any boy I wanted.”
She laughed, dispelling the tension and casting away the shadows that had fallen over their talk, but Mission believed her. He believed her even though he couldn’t picture it, couldn’t imagine away the wrinkles and the spots and the long strands of hair on her knuckles. Still, he believed her. He always did.
“The world is a lot like me, you know.” She lifted her gaze toward the ceiling and perhaps beyond. “The world was beautiful once, too.”
Mission sensed an Old Time story brewing like a storm of clouds. More lockers were slammed in the hallway, little voices gathering.
“Tell me,” Mission said, remembering the hours that had passed like eyeblinks at her feet, the songs she sang while children slept. “Tell me about the old world.”
The Old Crow’s eyes narrowed and settled on a dark corner of the room. A deep breath rattled in her once-proud chest. Her lips, furrowed with the wrinkles of time, parted, and a story began, a story Mission had heard a thousand times before. But it never got old, visiting this land of the Crow’s imagination. And as the little ones skipped into the room, they too fell silent and gathered around. They slipped into their tiny desks and followed along with the widest of eyes and the most open of unknowing minds these tales of a world, once beautiful, and now fairly forgotten.
•11•
The stories Mrs. Crowe made up were straight from the children’s books. There were blue skies and lands of green, white clouds and rainbows, animals like dogs and cats but bigger than people. Juvenile stuff. And yet, these fantastic tales of a better place somewhere impossibly distant left Mission feeling angry at the world he was stuck with. He thought this as he left the Up Top behind and wound his way past the farms and the levels of his youth. The promise of an elsewhere highlighted the flaws of the familiar. He had gone off to be a porter, to fly away and be all that he wished, and what he wished was to be further away than this world would allow.
These were dangerous thoughts. They reminded him of his mother and where she had been sent seventeen years ago to the day.
Past the farms, Mission noted something burning further down the silo. The air was hazy, and there was the bitter tinge of smoke on the back of his tongue. A trash pile, maybe. Someone who didn’t want to pay the fee to have it ported to recycling. Or someone who didn’t think the silo would be around long enough to need to recycle.
It could be an accident, of course. It could be a legitimate danger. But that’s not where Mission’s mind went. Nobody thought that way anymore. He could see it on the faces of those on the stairwell. He could see by the way belongings were clutched, children sheltered, that the future of everything was in doubt. There hadn’t been nearly as much new graffiti lately. Even the delinquents had begun to wonder: What’s the point?
Mission adjusted his light pack and hurried down to the IT levels. He remembered his father’s talk of restoring the silo after the last outbreak of violence. There were physical things to patch, like the stairwell, but the population, too. Physical explosions led to population explosions. Record numbers of lottery winners followed the fighting. His father spoke of so many bodies to dispose of that the airlock had been employed, the great flames cremating the dead by the score, their ashes set loose to blur the view. It made clear the link between life and death, that each birth was owed to another’s passin
g. The difference with Mission was that he knew who that other person was.
He reached IT and pushed his way through a crowd on landing thirty-four. It was mostly boys his age or a little older, many that he recognized, a lot from the mids. Several who didn’t match this profile stood with computers tucked under their arms, wires dangling, jostling with the rest. Mission picked his way through the throng. A computer was dropped, which led to shouting and shoving. Inside, he found a barrier had been set up just beyond the door. Two men from Security manned the temporary gate and allowed only crumpled IT workers through.
“Delivery,” Mission shouted. He worked his way to the front, carefully extracting the note Mrs. Crowe had written. “Delivery for Officer Jeffery.”
One of the security men took the note. Mission was pressed against the barrier by those behind. A woman who belonged was waved through. She hurried toward the proper security gate leading into the main hall, smoothing her coveralls with obvious relief. There were crowds of young men being given instructions in one corner of the wide hall. They stood at attention in neat rank and file, but their eyes were wide as the stairwell.
“What the hell is going on?” Mission asked, as the barrier was parted for him.
“What the hell isn’t?” one of the security guards rejoined. “Power spike last night took out a load of computers. Every one of our techs is pulling a double. There’s a fire down in Mechanical or something, and some kinda violence up in the farms. Did you get the wire?”
Mechanical. That was a long way away to nose a fire. And word was out about last night’s raid, making him self-conscious of the cut on his nose. “What wire?” he asked.
The security guard pointed to the groups of boys. “We’re hiring. New techs.”
All Mission saw were young men, and the guy talking to them was with Security, not IT. The security guard handed back the note to Mission and pointed toward the main security gate. The woman from earlier was already beeping her way through, a large and familiar bald head swiveling to watch her ass as she headed down the hall.
“Thanks,” Mission said to the guard, hurrying away from the crush of people. “Sir?” he called out as he approached the gate.
Jeffery turned his head, the deep wrinkles and folds of flesh disappearing from his neck.
“Hmm? Oh—” he snapped his fingers, trying to place the name.
“Mission.”
He wagged his finger. “That’s right. You need to leave something with me, porter?” He held out a palm but seemed disinterested.
Mission handed him the note. “Actually, I have orders from Mrs. Crowe to deliver it in person.” He pulled the sealed envelope with the crossed-out names from his courier pouch. “Just a letter, sir.”
The old guard glanced at the envelope, then continued reading the note addressed to him. “Rodny isn’t available.” He shook his head. “I can’t give you a timeframe, either. Could be weeks. You wanna leave it with me?”
Again, an outstretched palm; this time with more interest. Mission pulled the envelope back warily. “I can’t. There’s no way I can just hand it to him? This is the Crow, man. If it were the Mayor asking me, I’d say no problem.”
Jeffery smiled. “You were one of her boys, too?”
Mission nodded. The head of Security looked past him at a man approaching the gate with his ID out. Mission stepped aside as the gentleman scanned his way through, nodding good morning to Jeffery.
“Tell you what. I’m taking Rodny his lunch in a little bit. When I do, you can come with me, hand him the letter with me standing there, and I won’t have to worry about the Crow nipping my hide later. How’s that sound?”
Mission smiled. “Sounds good, man. I appreciate it.”
The officer pointed across the noisy entrance hall. “Why don’t you go grab yourself some water and hang in the conference room. There’s some boys in there filling out paperwork.” Jeffery looked Mission up and down. “In fact, why don’t you fill out an application? We could use you.”
“I… uh, don’t know much about computers,” Mission said.
Jeffery shrugged as if that were irrelevant. “Suit yourself. One of the boys will be relieving me in a little bit. I’ll come get you.”
Mission thanked him again. He crossed the large entrance hall where neat columns and rows of young men listened to barked instructions. Another guard waved him inside the conference room while holding out a sheet of paper and a shard of charcoal. Mission saw that the back of the paper was blank and took it with no plan for filling it out. Half a chit right there in usable paper.
There were a few empty chairs around the wide table. He chose one. A number of boys scribbled with their charcoals on the pages, faces scrunched up in concentration. Mission sat with his back to the only window and placed his sack on the wide table, kept the letter in his hands. The application he slid inside his pack for future use. He studied for the first time the Crow’s letter.
The envelope was old but addressed only a handful of times. One edge was worn tissue thin, a small tear revealing a folded piece of paper inside. Peering closer, Mission saw that it was pulp paper, probably made in the Crow’s Nest by one of her kids, water and handfuls of torn paper blended up and pressed down on screens and left overnight to dry. Bits of thread and various colors could be seen in there, and just the hint of writing.
“Mission,” someone at the table hissed.
He looked up to see Bradley sitting across from him. The fellow porter had his blue ’chief tied around his bicep. Mission had thought he was running a regular route in the Down Deep.
“You applying?” Bradley hissed.
One of the other boys coughed into his fist like he was asking for quiet. It looked like Bradley was already done with his application.
Mission shook his head. There was a knock on the window behind him, and he nearly dropped the letter as he whirled around. Jeffery stuck his head in the door. “Two minutes,” he said to Mission, ignoring the other lads. He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m just waiting on his tray.”
Mission bobbed his head as the door was pulled shut. The other boys looked at him curiously.
“Delivery,” Mission explained to Bradley loud enough for the others to hear. He pulled his pack closer and hid the envelope behind it. The boys went back to their scribbling. Bradley frowned and watched the others.
Mission studied the envelope again. Two minutes. How long would he have with Rodny? He tickled the corner of the sealed flap. The milk paste the Crow had used didn’t stick very well to the months-old—maybe years-old—dried glue from before. He worked one corner loose without glancing down at the envelope. Instead, he watched Bradley as he disobeyed the third cardinal rule of porting, telling himself this was different, that this was two old friends talking and he was just in the room with them. Just friends talking as he peeled the flap away.
Even so, his hands trembled as he pulled the letter out. He glanced down, keeping the note hidden. Purple and red string lay strewn in with the dark gray of cheap paper. Kid paper. The writing was in chalk. It meant the words had to be big. White powder gathered in the folds as it shivered loose from the words like dust falling from old pipes:
Soon, soon, the momma bird sings.
Take flight, take flight!
Part of an old nursery rhyme. Beat your wings, Mission whispered, remembering the rest, a story about a young crow learning to be free. Beat your wings and fly away to brighter things. Fly, fly with all your might! He started to check the back for a real note, something beyond this fragment of a rhyme, when someone banged on the window again. Several of the other boys dropped their charcoals and visibly startled. One boy cursed under his breath. Mission whirled around to see Jeffery on the other side of the glass, a covered meal tray balanced on one palm, his bald head jerking impatiently.
Mission folded the letter up and stuffed it back in the envelope. He raised his hand over his head to let Jeffery know he’d be right there, licked one finger and r
an it across the sticky paste, re-sealing the envelope as best he could. “Good luck,” he told Bradley, even though he had no clue what the kid thought he was doing. He dragged his pack off the table, was careful to wipe away the chalk dust that had spilled, and hurried out of the conference room.
“Let’s go,” Jeffery said, clearly annoyed.
Mission hurried after him. He glanced back once at the window, then over at the noisy crowd jostling against the temporary barriers by the door. An IT tech approached the crowd with a computer, wires coiled neatly on top, and a woman reached out desperate arms from behind the barrier like a mother yearning for her baby.
“Since when did people start bringing their own computers up?” he asked, curious as a seasoned porter about how things got from there to here and back again. It felt as though he were witnessing yet another loop his kind was being sliced out of. Roker would have a fit.
“Yesterday. Mr. Wyck stopped sending our techs out. He says it’s safer this way. People being robbed out there and not enough security to go around.”
Jeffery was waved through the gates, Mission as well. They wound in silence through the hallways, every office full of clacking sounds or people arguing. Mission saw electrical parts and paper strewn everywhere. He wondered which office was Rodny’s and why nobody else was having their food delivered. Maybe his friend was in trouble. That was it. Made sense of everything. Maybe he had pulled one of his stunts. Did they have a holding cell on thirty-four? He didn’t think so. He was about to ask Jeffery if Rodny was in the pen when the old security guard stopped at an imposing steel door.
“Here.” He held the tray out to Mission, who stuck the letter between his lips and accepted it. Jeffery glanced back, blocked Mission’s view of a keypad with his body, and tapped in a code. A series of clunks sounded in the jamb of the heavy door. Fucking right, Rodny was in trouble. What kind of pen was this?
