Silo 49: Deep Dark

by Ann Christy

  Inside his blankets, Taylor was thrashing and she could hear the mumbled sounds that were probably screams from his point of view. For a brief second she wondered how he could breathe in there and then she thought of how it felt not to be able to breathe and pursed her lips. Greta must have been thinking the same thing because she told the maintainer, "Harvey. We've got to pull that back enough for him to breathe."

  Without delay, Greta threw a leg over the wriggling figure and dropped hard, sitting right on top of him. Both ends of the blanket lifted when she did and a small sound escaped. Harvey took that moment to yank the edges of the blankets down and Marina saw first Taylor's hair and then his face appear from the mass of pink and green and yellow blankets. His breathing was a parody of her own mere moments before and Marina fought the urge to come down on that head with her wrench.

  Harvey must have seen that in her eyes because he said, "He can't hurt anyone now." He looked around for the other maintainer, the one he had told to stay put.

  Marina waved a hand in front of his face to regain his attention and then pointed to the metal bar in the shadow's hand and held up the wrench. She handed him the note she had written for the others. He pursed his lips but gave her a curt nod of acceptance.

  Greta watched it all from her seat on top of Taylor with utter calm. She looked so different from any other time Marina had seen her that she really wished she could say something instead of stand there and wheeze. Her hair had always been tightly braided and coiled at the back of her head but now it seemed to flow without end. Tight waves from the braids cascaded down her back and puddled on the blanket wrapped form below her. Her coveralls were pulled on halfway and the arms were tied around her waist. In her undershirt, Marina saw that she looked just like everyone else without the patchwork of color to hide behind. And she was pretty.

  Taylor began to get agitated again now that he had sufficient air. He was combining yelling, whining, pleads and demands in a most unpleasant way. At the moment, he was claiming that it was all a misunderstanding. He jerked his head in Marina's direction, the rest of him tightly bound in blankets. He said, "Look. See, she's fine! It was an accident."

  Greta looked away from him to the angry red marks on Marina's neck, the finger marks clear against the white skin. Marina couldn't see it, but she could feel it. The historian could see what Marina couldn't apparently because when she looked away from Marina, she landed a sharp and loud slap across Taylor's exposed cheek. He froze and went silent.

  The other historians and shadows began to file out, wakened by the commotion or through some other means. As they came out they all looked at the blanket wrapped man and then at the tableau of people and edged around, giving them all a wide berth.

  The shadow girl finally handed her metal rod to the big maintainer, him having returned without his hammer, and joined the little cluster of her fellows. Marina saw her gesticulating and speaking and saw the eyes of the listeners widen and narrow and look from person to person as the story unfolded. Marina hated that this would now travel all over.

  Greta must have thought the same because she called to the group, "This is not for discussion. To anyone. For any reason. We don't talk about people when they get sick like this."

  With those few words she had changed the situation from a sudden attempt at murder that would inspire gossip to a man who had suffered a break that needed remediation or some other treatment. In the silo, there were few topics off limits but this was one of them. Her authoritative glare drove the point home and Marina would have sighed in relief if it didn't hurt so bad just to breathe at all.

  Greta turned to Marina and leveled that same glare in her direction. Marina stiffened but didn't flinch from it. Greta said, "I've secured the space. That's no problem."

  Marina closed her eyes tightly and felt a combination of shame and relief wash over her. When she opened her eyes, Greta was still looking at her. She nodded her acceptance of the information and all that would come after and Greta finally released her from her gaze.

  Taylor started in again, clearly not at all happy at this turn of events and Greta raised her hand again. She lifted her eyebrows and the message was clear. Do you want this again? Taylor apparently didn't and shut his mouth.

  The deputy showed up first, panting and sweating from running down from the station. He saw Marina and stopped short, looked at her neck and then turned a mottled red himself. It was someone she knew, of course. He charged over toward Greta, Taylor and Harvey and took in the scene. "Anyone want to tell me what the silo is going on here?" he demanded.

  Greta's eyes flicked once toward Marina and then back to the deputy. She licked her lips and said, "Deputy, we have the situation under a measure of control right now but we need your assistance."

  The deputy snorted and said, "I can see that."

  Greta cleared her throat and said with a dignity Marina didn't think could be accomplished while sitting on a man wrapped in blankets, "This is a special situation." She emphasized the special and the deputy straightened. She went on, "We're going to need the medic representative to the council for this. We need you to make sure everything stays controlled until we get him here. Okay?"

  The way she said it, the emphasis on certain words, let everyone know that this was going to be one of those things. Those stories dealt with a person badly in need of remediation whose words and actions weren't to be thought of, let alone repeated. The deputy cleared his throat and nodded. He stepped away and tuned his radio, speaking quietly and rapidly to whoever was on the other side of the line. He kept his eyes on Taylor and his free hand near his stick.

  The medic from Level 70 came while he spoke and both Greta and the deputy pointed directly at her when he arrived. Finally, Marina could put down the wrench.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Marina woke in a different room in the guest wing at the Memoriam. When her eyes opened the first thing she saw was Joseph, awkwardly asleep in the chair next to her bed. She forgot her throat and said, "Joe." It came out a hoarse and frightening creak. It also renewed the sharp pain that had faded while she slept under the gentle influence of a little poppy extract. It did the trick though and Joseph started awake.

  He leaned in close and wrapped the hand she held up in both of his. He smiled and tried not to keep looking at her neck when he said, "Honey. Honey. How are you feeling?"

  When she opened her mouth to try to whisper that she was fine, he stopped her with, "No. You're not supposed to even try to talk. You think you can write?"

  She tried to lift her head and sit up but the pain that shot up the sides of her neck was excruciating and she dropped back to the pillow. She motioned for him to help and he lifted her gently and braced her while he piled the pillows behind her. Once she was sitting she felt much better, the pain retreating back once more. She smiled wanly and made the writing motion with her hands.

  He plucked a small chalkboard off the table and gave it to her with a piece of chalk. She wrote, 'I feel better. Neck hurts. Why can't talk?'

  He read the words even as she wrote and said, "Medic says that there is a little bone in the neck that he thinks is damaged." At her alarmed look he put his fingers to a spot right above his Adam’s apple and said, "Not that kind of bone. It's a little one that just sort of floats around in there. But it will hurt and make it hard to talk."

  She wrote quickly, 'How long? Forever?'

  He shook his head and soothed her, "No, honey. I'm making a mess of this. It will heal and he thinks you'll be able to talk pretty soon. It's very hard to break. He said it is connected to everything else by a lot of connections so if it gets swollen or jarred or anything, it can be very painful."

  Marina tried to nod understanding but even that hurt. She wrote, 'Taylor?'

  Joseph wrinkled his brow in a way that let Marina know from long experience that he was unsatisfied with the answer to a puzzle. She wished she wouldn't have asked. At least she couldn't talk and he wouldn't expect a long explanation. He d
id answer though. "You were there. He had a break. He's at remediation but no one is talking to him. Only the council medic."

  The last was said with a distinct air of suppressed suspicion. He said it like he really wanted to talk to Taylor and not just because Taylor had throttled his wife. Marina motioned for a wiper and cleared her board, creating a little shower of white dust on her blanket. She scribbled, 'Not his fault. Piotr died. Very upset. Thinks too much.'

  She would have held her breath or chewed her lip if moving her jaw didn't hurt so much. She hoped he would accept that and let it go. He sighed and squeezed the hand still holding the chalk. "You're so kind. Yes, I hadn't thought about his caster being the one that died like that. Very hard. Very hard for anyone." He patted her hand and Marina silently thanked Greta for her fast thinking.

  She extracted her hand to free the chalk and write. She wanted to ask for Greta, to get moving, to get back to the find she had made and not been able to fully explore. She wanted to get out of bed. When she made to put the chalk to the board, Joseph kindly, but firmly, plucked it away and said, "No more. If you woke up I was supposed to let you know what happened and give you five minutes. After that, I'm supposed to give you another dose. You have to sleep so you don't move your throat and neck too much."

  She made a moue and earned a laugh from Joseph. He said, "Pouting does not work on me." He poured a small spoonful of medicine from a bottle and spooned it into her mouth a few drops at a time. It was harder to swallow than she thought. The instinct to swallow was so basic that she hadn't realized the mechanics of it before. By the time the drops were gone she was already sleepy again. He helped to lower her back down and tucked her in like she hadn't been since early childhood. She felt him press a kiss to her forehead and felt so very safe and loved. It was easy to fall asleep.

  *****

  Days passed slowly and Marina grew increasingly impatient. Greta had only popped her head in for visits when Joseph was there and she was unable to speak in detail. Her indirect references toward their project had earned only cold glances. She was healing but using her voice was still taboo. That made it even harder to be subtle since everything was chalked onto a board.

  When she finally got a look at her neck she had been appalled at what she looked like. An angry set of handprints encircled her swollen neck in shades of purple and blue and bright red. There were even bruises on the point of her chin and the back edges of her jaw. It was horrible looking.

  While Joseph was out of the room she gave her voice a tentative try and found that almost nothing came out like it should. It was a weak and reedy thing that was also strangely deep. It sounded a bit like a boy's does when in the process of changing. And it hurt.

  Everything having to do with eating, talking, swallowing or moving her neck hurt. While she was drugged and asleep the medic had inserted a tube that ran from her nose to her stomach. She had to suffer the unique experience of feeling the change in temperature as liquid food was forced through the tube and down into her stomach. Without having to go through her mouth, she found herself nauseous after she was fed. The mind worked in mysterious ways.

  Sela visited every single day, though Marina was careful to hide her neck from her daughter with a handy piece of sheet or by draping a towel across it. She looked at it often and Marina knew she wanted to see what had happened, but Marina nudged the topic away and Sela complied. As a deputy's shadow, there was no lying to her about what had happened, at least not lying any further than the official story, so Sela knew that a person had hurt her mother. She handled it relatively well, Marina thought, and was proud of her.

  During one of the other lulls where Joseph was gone for a break, she had searched the room and the things that had followed her from her former room. There was nothing from her finds in any of the drawers. Even the small book she had found first and her pack were gone. She had crept down the hall to her old room but it was as bare as if she had never been there at all.

  After six days had passed in bed, the medic pronounced her fit to resume light duties but only on the condition she kept the tube in and refrained from trying to speak. She had readily agreed, bobbing her head in agreement to all his terms despite the dull pain that resulted. Joseph and she had gotten into what might be termed an argument if any exchange in which one party was limited to abbreviated words on a chalkboard could be called such.

  He was adamant that she come home. He argued that she couldn't possibly deny that whatever she was doing - emphasis on whatever - had already caused her pain and brought her near to losing her life. He loved her and she could see that. She knew he would rather stay right where he was and watch over her if she didn't come home.

  She used his own excuses after coming home with a black eye or split lip after subduing an angry drunk or breaking up a fight. He looked at her with such disappointment that she nearly crumbled. Then she thought of the blue orb against the black of a space so big she couldn't truly imagine it and regained her resolve.

  Marina was up and around and ready to confront Greta if that was what was needed. Her antsy behavior let Joseph know the time for bedside care was over. He took his leave and returned to duty after following her around for a day and fussing every time she did something he thought too ambitious. He barely got a foot onto the stairs when Marina stopped waving and marched toward the archives where she hoped to find Greta.

  Greta was there and at her accustomed place at the table. Instead of the maintenance records of before, she was surrounded by all the treasures that Marina had uncovered. She looked up from her reading, the giant Legacy book open in front of her. They said nothing for a moment and just stood those feet apart, looking at each other. The last two standing, the look seemed to say.

  The historian broke eye contact first, her eyes returning to the page. She asked, "How much of this did you look at before the Taylor thing happened?"

  The question was a loaded one and the tone let Marina know it was meant that way. She wasn't just asking what she had been able to read, but how long she had hid it all so she could read it alone. She was asking how long she had been scurrying around while the rest of them followed the rules.

  Marina couldn't answer her with her voice so she approached the table and knocked on the surface sharply with her knuckles. While Greta looked on, Marina scribbled her answer on the chalkboard she now carried around with her. Finished, she thrust the board at Greta like she was daring her to do something. She had written, 'Returned late. Had to see if there. Then T came to kill me.'

  Greta flinched a little at the final words. She faced Marina with a searching gaze, her eyes flicking once to the lurid blue, green and yellow of her bruises. She inclined her head, a bare suggestion of an accepting nod that also let her know she had reservations about giving it. She asked, "How did you even know where to search? Where did you search?"

  Marina scrubbed the board while Greta spoke and quickly sketched her response. Before she turned the board around she pointed to the small book, the In Memoriam book that lay at the edge of the table. Then she turned the board. 'That book. Found in archives. Curious to read. Found the code. Went right away.'

  Greta reached for the book and handed it to Marina. She said, "Show me."

  She skipped the revelations about the numbers being years so as to not confuse the issue and went straight to the letter from Wallis. Greta only looked on, brows drawn together as she tried to follow along without words of explanation to help. Marina pointed to the numbers and then held up a finger for her to wait and went to retrieve one of the logs. She showed her the codes for the electrical boxes and willed her to understand.

  Greta took the book from Marina's hands and then spent a long moment comparing the two notations. She looked back up at Marina with something like surprise in her face, "You figured this out by yourself?"

  Marina screwed up her mouth to the side in an expression that conveyed very clearly, 'Is that so surprising?'

  Greta shook her head, a wondering loo
k on her face and said, "I wouldn't have figured this out in a year. I wouldn't have even thought to look at it like that."

  Marina pointed to her badge, the sign of Fabbers with its bolt of electricity and crossed tools, and shrugged.

  Greta nodded again and said, "Of course." She set the little book down with care and crossed her arms. Marina knew that this was not a completed subject. At some point, she would need to explain it all and she would have to tell Greta how possessive she had felt about the find and how the curiosity seemed to burn in her and grow with each new discovery. She would have to confess how much she wanted to know.

  But that was for another day. Greta merely pointed with one finger extending from her crossed arms towards the big book in front of her. "Did you get to read any of that?" she asked.

  She gave a half nod and held her fingers very close together, indicating the smallest possible amount.

  "I've been reading it almost non-stop," Greta said and then stopped short. She started to blink her eyes very quickly and Marina saw a wet gleam there. She waited.

  Greta finally uncrossed her arms and said, "I had no idea. How could anyone have guessed?"

  Marina nodded at that too. It was such an insufficient response and she wanted so badly to simply tell Greta that she had been just as overwhelmed. She opened her mouth and croaked, "Can't believe."

  "Don't talk. I mean it."

  Marina made to zip up her lips and toss away a key. Greta narrowed her eyes and repeated, "I mean it. Now sit. And take this board back!"

  There was a final thing she wanted to get out before they fell into this bounty of information again. She wrote, 'Taylor? Where? Need to talk!'