by Ann Christy
She wondered if her hands would retain their dexterity afterwards and if she would be able to work amongst her tiny wires and tools with the smell of hot solder in her nostrils ever again. She had heard about the shaking of some and the dull clumsiness of others afterward. She wondered if the image and the letter would ever be found in the place where she had hidden them.
By the time Greta had risen and stooped to pick up the paper, tears stood in Marina's eyes and she thought of everything she would miss. She watched, eyes blurred, as the tall and angular woman opened the fold and read the paper. It took her but a glance and then she folded the paper again.
She met Marina's eyes and said, "Come with me."
The tears that were standing in her eyes slipped over the edges of her lids and fell like sad jumpers off the rails. She felt the two fat drops hit her legs and wondered if she would be able to do this without succumbing to the urge to struggle. Everyone had seen something like that at least once in their life, some wriggling form wrapped tightly with the arms of their coveralls crossed and strapped down so that they could be carried along the stairs. Porters grunting and sweating under a bucking and heaving form, crowds being drawn by the strangled squeaks of a person trying to scream behind a gag were a rare but terrible sight.
Marina didn't want to be that. Even more she didn't want to be the person who was ported like a dead body, limp and seemingly lifeless, after being chemically subdued for the trip. That would be worse. Most tried to go with dignity, slipping past the landings with no one the wiser as to their destination. She would try that too.
She bolstered herself, remembered the state of her legs and feet, and then stood carefully. She reached for a cup of water left on the table and slipped two of the round balls of compressed powder from the vials, one from each, and tossed them back. They were chalky but the water washed the taste away almost immediately. She wanted to do this on her own two feet if she had to do it.
"I'm ready," she said, her tone quiet and calm, her posture resolute.
Greta looked confused for a moment and then she laughed a sad little laugh and touched Marina's arm. "You're not going there! What must you think of me to assume that? You're going to get your answers and then you can tell me what you're holding back. We are going to exchange truths, or whatever we can call truth at this point."
Marina remained suspicious. Wouldn't that be an effective way to get someone to go willingly? Simply lie about the destination until it was too late to lie any further? Would they stoop to lying and use a Historian to do it? The thoughts must have been written across her face because the other woman's mouth set in a thin line.
"I'm not misleading you. Come."
She held out her hand for Marina to take and she did. The first few steps made her left foot and thighs feel like something brittle and tight were being strained to breaking, but it wasn't actual pain. That was driven back for the moment and would be further if these tablets worked. It was merely enough to remind her to be cautious.
They left the room and found that almost all of those who had been in the room were now lined up in the hallway. Marina wondered where they had been watching from to have returned. She nodded at each, confused by their solemn looks. Their expressions were complex and not easily decipherable. The head of IT, now missing his assistant, seemed sadder than ever where he stood at the end of the line of people. As she passed he fell into step next to her.
They didn't walk far, only to the server room, and he pushed open the door for them to enter without a word. Inside, the faint hum that traveled throughout the hallways grew much louder and the air moved with currents from the large fans that kept the heat at bay. He took the lead and they wove their way through the servers, some quiet and still, others covered with frantically blinking lights and stopped them at one of the servers. Looking behind her, Marina realized this small area wasn't visible from the window set into the big doors. The alignment of the servers along the path effectively blocked that view.
As the trio rounded the server and came to the rear of it, Marina saw that it was hollow and barely a server at all. She peered inside and saw boards and lights that probably once lit with dummy lights pressed against the front of the case, safe from discovery behind the securely locked doors of the cabinet. At the bottom of the server a black gap filled the space at the bottom.
The head of IT flicked a switch and the black square blazed with light. A set of steep metal stairs, treads ridged for a better grip, led downward.
She looked up at the two other people and asked, "What’s going on? What is this place?"
Greta answered for the pair, "It's hard to explain and we were close by so we decided it would be just easier to show you." She paused a moment and then asked, "Do you think you can get down that? With your legs, I mean."
"Oh," Marina peered down the hole again and her eyes took in the many treads she would need to climb, for it was a climb that was needed and not simple steps. "There's only one way to find out."
With that, she turned around, grabbed some sloppily welded handles set into the server cabinet and lowered herself into the bright light below IT.
Chapter Eight
Hours had passed and Marina felt a deep weariness in her body and mind. The porters, once she had remembered they were waiting, had been sent away long ago. She had made her laborious way up the ladder just once in the time she had been here. Her husband and daughter had asked to see her as they made their way back down to the hotel.
He had taken the news that she would need to spend additional time working out details of the reclamation with a confused good grace. Marina had tried to work up some excitement when Sela showed her all that they had purchased as gifts to take back, but they could sense her unease.
When Joseph asked her quietly what was wrong, his face growing grim, she had been able to convince him it was just the discomfort of her legs and foot that gnawed at her good humor. It wasn't a lie, only a lesser truth. She had been so absorbed that she had completely forgotten to take the next dose. It wasn't until the throbbing pain in her legs began to distract her that she remembered. Now it was taking a long time for the pain to recede again.
Once their minds were eased and they took their leave, Marina returned to the bright rooms below IT. She had needed assistance getting down the steep treads this time, Greta bracing her as she approached from above while Taylor paid out line on a harness and accepted some of her weight.
A meal was brought almost as soon as she came back and Piotr apologized for forgetting about it. Marina was surprised to find out that they had missed two meals already and that knowledge woke her stomach up. They said little as they ate stew and rounds of flat bread. They had even remembered her liking for tea over water and a steaming flask of strong tea was passed down with their tray of food.
Marina looked about her as she ate, still absorbing all she had been told. She had not revealed the presence of her hidden treasure but there was no hurry now. Piotr and Greta had made it clear that they were disclosing. It was their turn to reveal things to her. And reveal they had.
The rooms here were deep and private and were a closely guarded secret in the time before history, they surmised. They showed her the last charred remains of what had once been books. There must have been hundreds of them given the number of tins that were stacked in the back of a less burned room. Small portions of a few books had been salvaged, sometimes only a spine. For some there were wedges of partial pages, melded together into one chunk by either the fire, or the water used to try to put out the fire, in a time long past.
In another room, they had shown her bunks, now stripped, where they strongly suspected the holders of these secrets hid away. In yet another room she saw supplies, now mostly emptied with only the strange containers remaining stacked on the shelves.
There were the makings of a small portable kitchen created in a design she had never seen before. The stove and basin were smoother, somehow more attuned to pleasing the eye with t
heir shape and form, than the boxes of metal with rough welds that were made now. The word 'Coleman' was written on the side and she wondered who Coleman was. Had he hidden down here once?
In yet another space in this warren of rooms, they had shown her hangers on a wall scarred by scorch marks. It was exactly the sort of arrangement they used in Fabrication when a diagram needed to be hung so it could be referred to by the worker. She had one in her workroom. In each clip was still secured the corner of a sheaf of thick papers, yellow with smoke and age.
She had asked permission with her eyes, received a nod in return and then touched the sheaf. Her hand was gently drawn back only when she tried to fold back the top sheet to see what lay underneath. Her quick glance showed her a thick clear border with notes scribbled in tiny handwriting above the tear. There was also what looked like a part of a circle bisected raggedly at the place where the sheets were ripped away.
Where they sat now eating their simple meal, Marina saw many other interesting things. Something like a small office or perhaps a schoolroom meant only for a few was in the next area in a room shaped like an L. Just above her head was a long row of jacks, exactly the kind she rebuilt for mechanical, hanging askew and destroyed. The important parts of it behind the jacks were ripped and burned into a forest of bristling wires and melted conduit.
A pair of headphones, broken and covered with residue ages old, had been flung into the corner at some point and now had a small barrier, made up of plastic rods tied into a lattice, around it to protect it. Nearby, just a few arms lengths away, another barrier protected a messy pile of blackened ashes molded by water into a haphazard solid lump at tall as her knees.
Protruding from one side of the lump was a stick of wood. A round metal disk stuck firmly to the end of the stick shone dully in the light. The piece had been finely worked, its grain clearly visible even now and a curve in the wood that made her think of a chair leg. Another shape showed in the pile, a book this time, but bigger than any other she had ever seen. That huge book was a single mass of once soaked ash not salvageable according to the Historian.
Marina tore a small piece of the bread, dunked it into her stew and chewed thoughtfully, trying to draw out the meal as long as she could. She needed time to integrate what she had been told and what she had seen.
Piotr and Greta seemed to understand this and also ate slowly, not speaking but not closed off. Should she ask them anything, she knew they would be ready to answer. Piotr's sadness was a bit more understandable now, given what he had already told her. He was living with this half-knowledge and a burden of guilt passed from one IT head to another that he couldn't fully comprehend but took on as his own. It must be terrible.
When there were no more bits of bread to dunk and the last drops of the stew were gone and she had no more reasons to delay she asked, "And all this happened at the time of the Memoriam? During the start of history?"
Greta pushed her bowl away and wiped her hands on a dampened napkin as she spoke, "We can't be entirely sure if it didn't precede it by some period of time. The early records of that time write of this place as if it were some part of the events leading up to the Memoriam and the battle between the Others and ourselves." She shrugged then, as if it was a puzzle she had spent too much energy on and was ready to move on from.
Marina nodded and sipped her tea. "And the burning itself?"
Piotr answered her this time. He said, "The Memoriam credits Graham with warning our people of the attack and actually physically stopping it. Some part of that battle was here," he waved an arm at their surroundings, “hence the fire. Or, at least, that is what we think.”
Greta made a small sound at his last word and Piotr responded with a wry smile, but when she didn’t interrupt, he went on. "Well, nothing is known specifically so I doubt you could get our friend here," he jerked a thumb toward Greta, "to include this in any telling, but it is unlikely that this suite of rooms could be hidden from the head of IT. It is a reasonable assumption that these rooms were his for some secret purpose. Those jacks, for example. Who do they communicate with?"
"Can't you just trace the lines?" Marina asked, again looking up at the mess that remained.
"Hah! We tried that, of course. That was long before my time but the conduits run through feet of concrete and there is no way to know for certain where they go. We only know that there does not appear to be any communication jack that matches them anywhere else in the silo. Every other circuit is accounted for. Every one."
"That means..."
Piotr nodded, the lines on his sad face easing as he spoke. "That's right. It goes outside or somewhere other than the silo. But where? That is the question."
Greta cleared her throat and looked uncomfortable with all the speculation going on. Piotr gave Marina a look that might have been amusement, though it was hard to tell.
"Those are certainly possibilities but they are not certainties and so must be left aside for study," she said, her tone that of a teacher who has repeated a lesson many times.
Marina veered the topic a little and asked, "But why burn the books? You said those books were not like the children's books but were thick and full of all kinds of information. And those diagrams from the wall. Why those?"
The historian held up a hand to stop Piotr as he began to speak and said, "We don't know. What we can surmise, but not prove, is that this knowledge was somehow part of the conflict of that time. It is just as likely that someone else burned this afterward or that it happened by accident. We can't know. The writings never mention this fire at all."
The answer was unsatisfactory and Piotr must have seen that in her face because he quickly added, "Whatever happened, we do know that Graham risked everything in order to save the silo, that he found some pervasive dishonesty that almost destroyed us and that Grace and someone named Wallis had to fight again to start history. We just don't know what each of those events precisely consisted of."
Greta inclined her head, obviously unwilling to give tacit approval to such speculation but finding nothing specific to disagree with.
Marina felt the time to reveal her own secret was looming closer. There was much more she would like to know, including why such information, however tentative, was being kept from the people. No matter the reason, it seemed to Marina that it was against the very tenets of the silo to keep such knowledge a secret.
But that would be a process over time and her truth was knocking at the door. As with all things, a truth held back can become a lie and regardless of the possible untruths these others must deal with, she would not harbor hers. The others seemed to sense her gathering her courage for something and remained quiet.
Marina took a deep breath and said, "That watch had a whole lot more than silver inside it."
Chapter Nine
Unfortunately for Taylor, he was the youngest and strongest of the people who could be permitted to know about the secret contents of the watch at that moment. He had come down into the room when summoned so that he could also hear her story. Of the three watching her, she sensed from him an almost shivery excitement. He may work in IT, but he clearly had a streak of Historian inside him, just a more passionate version.
When the little group realized that the papers were more than sixty levels down and hidden beneath a floor tile and that they couldn't simply ask anyone to get it because of the contents, they had all looked at Taylor. His groan was loud enough to make even Piotr smile.
There was no question of getting someone else to fetch it, since the plastic she had folded over the papers was transparent. It was equally clear that the others had no intention of waiting until Marina was well enough to go back to her home and return. While she was resigned to the loss of her vacation at this point, she was not about to spend the rest of it being ported up and down the stairs.
Going down sixty levels was do-able for someone like Taylor, but coming back would need to be broken up and they decided that he would leave early the next day and then sta
y overnight in a room at the bazaar. That brightened him a little. Marina thought that Taylor was probably considering a very late night of entertainment, sampling the delights of the bazaar once the lights went from white to red in the dim time.
He was young and unwed so such enticements were probably something he dreamed of on a regular basis but had little chance to enjoy at such a distance. Those delights were legendary and she stifled a grin at the look in his eyes. The day after he would start back and drop the items off at the Memoriam on Level 72.
Taylor excused himself so he could get his things together and find someone to feed his cat while he was gone and the three were left alone again in that old scene of destruction. Despite the evidence of burning and smashed things, it was not an unpleasant place. It had the air of a place whose time had come and gone. A place truly empty and waiting for the next time it was needed was what it felt like to her. Marina rather liked it, moldering heaps of ash and all.
Greta, of course, absolutely refused to speculate on what the contents of the letter and picture might mean and was rather firm with Piotr when he started to do so. Once she reached the point of actually tsking him, he stopped although Marina could see he was almost itching to talk more on the subject.
The historian did admit that they had almost nothing that paralleled what Marina reported, though they did have a few partial entries from the corners of the pages in those volumes that weren’t completely consumed by fire.
As for her, Piotr and Greta assured her that remediation was not in her future. Remediation was to prevent damage to self and others, not for thinking about things. Marina remained a bit leery of simply accepting that. There was nothing she could do about it if they were misleading her so she decided she would gain nothing by worrying about it. Given that she had at least two days until they would reconvene, three if she allowed them a day to examine the articles for any initial findings, they recommended she continue her vacation.
