Third Shift - Pact s-3

by Hugh Howey

  A stalk of corn rebounded and swung at Solo’s face with its leafy fingers. He batted it away and said nothing. He was in no mood to curse the corn. On happier days, maybe.

  Leaving the heat of the lights, he entered a dark place. He liked it back here. It reminded him of the room beneath the servers, a private and safe place where one could hide and not be disturbed. And there, scattered among other abandoned and forgotten tools, a shovel. A thing he needed right when he needed it. This was the other way of finding things. It was when the silo was in a gifting mood. It wasn’t a mood the silo got in often.

  Solo knelt and placed his burden by the edge of the three-railing fence. The body in the bag had gone into that stiff phase. Soon, it would soften. After that …

  Solo didn’t want to think after that. He was an expert in some things he’d rather not know.

  He collected the shovel and scampered over the top rail, too dark to hunt for the gate. The shovel growled and crunched through the dirt. He lifted each scoop into the air. Soft sighs and little piles slid out. Some things, you found just when you needed them, and Solo thought of the years that had passed so swiftly with his friend. He already missed the way Shadow rubbed on his shin while he worked, always in the way but clever enough not to be stepped on, coming in a flash whenever Solo broke out in a whistle, there at just the right time. A thing, found, before he even knew he needed it.

  Silo 1

  •43•

  Donald’s boots echoed in the lower level shift storage, where thousands of pods lay packed together like gleaming stones. He stooped to check another nameplate. He had lost count of his position down the aisle and was worried he’d have to start over again. Bringing a rag to his mouth, he coughed. He wiped his lip and carried on. Something heavy and cold weighed down one pocket and pressed against his thigh. Something heavy and cold lay within his chest.

  He finally found the pod marked “Troy,” a jarring discovery, a self-discovery. Donald rubbed the glass and peered inside. There was a man in there, older than he seemed. Older than Donald remembered him. A blue cast overwhelmed pale flesh. White hair and white brows possessed an azure tint.

  Donald studied the man, hesitated, reconsidered. He had come there with no wheelchair, no medical kit. Just a cold heaviness. A slice of truth and a desire to know more. Sometimes a thing needed opening before closure was found.

  He bent by the control pad and repeated the procedure that had freed his sister, that had killed another. He thought of Charlotte up in the barracks as he entered his code. She couldn’t know what he was doing down there. She couldn’t know. Thurman had been like a second father to them both.

  The dial was turned to the right. Numbers blinked, then ticked up a degree. Donald stood and paced. He circled that pod with a name on it, the name of a man they’d turned him into, this sarcophagus that now held his creator. The cold in Donald’s heart spread into his limbs while Thurman warmed. Donald coughed into a rag stained pink. He tucked it back into his pocket and drew out the length of cord.

  A report from Victor’s files came to him as he stood there, roles reversed, thawing the Thaw Man. Victor had written of old experiments where guards and prisoners switched places, and the abused soon became the abuser. Donald found the idea detestable, that people could change so swiftly. Unbelievable. But he had seen good men and women arrive on the Hill with noble intentions, had seen them change. He had been given a dose of power on this shift and could feel its allure. His discovery was that evil men were made from evil systems, and that any man had the potential to be perverted. Which was why some systems needed to end.

  A brief forever passed before temperatures rose and the lid was triggered. It opened with a sigh. Donald reached in and lifted it the rest of the way. He half expected a hand to shoot out and snatch his wrist. He half expected someone to clutch him by the neck, a fist to pummel him senseless. But there was just a man lying inside, still and steaming. Just a man pathetic and naked, a tube running into his arm, another between his legs. Muscles sagged. Pale flesh gathered in folds of wrinkles. Hair clung in wisps. Donald took Thurman’s hands and placed them together on his chest. He looped the cord around his wrists, threaded it between Thurman’s hands and around the loops of cord, then cinched a knot to draw the loops tight. Donald stood back and watched wrinkled lids for any sign of life. A sea of wet cobblestones stretched out in all directions, waiting patiently.

  Thurman’s lips moved. They parted and seemed to take a first, experimental gasp. It was like watching the dead become reanimated, and Donald appreciated for the first time the miracle of these machines. He coughed into his fist as Thurman stirred. The old man’s eyes fluttered open, melted frost tracking from their corners, lending him a degree of false humanity. Wrinkled hands came up to wipe away the crust, and Donald knew what that felt like, lids that wouldn’t fully part, that felt as though they’d grown together. A grunt spilled out as Thurman struggled with the cord. He came to more fully and saw that all was not right.

  “Be still,” Donald told him. He placed a hand on the old man’s forehead, could feel the chill still in his flesh. “Easy.”

  “Anna—” Thurman whispered. He licked his lips, and Donald realized he hadn’t even brought water, hadn’t brought the bitter drink. There was no doubting what he was there to do.

  “Can you hear me?” he asked.

  Thurman’s eyelids fluttered open again; his pupils dilated. He seemed to focus on Donald’s face, eyes flicking back and forth in stunted recognition.

  “Son—?” His voice was hoarse.

  “Lie still,” Donald told him, even as Thurman turned to the side and coughed into his bound hands. He peered confusedly at the cord knotted around his wrists. Donald turned and checked the door in the distance. “I need you to listen to me.”

  “What’s going on here?” Thurman gripped the edge of the pod and tried to pull himself upright. Donald fished into his pocket for the pistol. Thurman gaped at the black steel as the barrel was leveled on him. His awareness thawed in an instant. He remained perfectly still, only his eyes moving as he met Donald’s gaze. “What year is it?” he asked.

  “Another two hundred years before you kill us all,” Donald said. The barrel trembled with hate. He wrapped his other hand around the grip and took half a step back. Thurman was weak and bound, but Donald took no chances. The old man was like a coiled snake on a cold morning. He couldn’t help but think of what he would be capable of as the day warmed.

  Thurman licked his lips and studied Donald. Curls of steam rose from the old man’s shoulders. “Anna told you,” he finally said.

  Donald felt a sadistic urge to tell him that Anna was dead. He felt a prideful twinge and wanted to insist that he’d figured it out for himself. He simply nodded, instead.

  “You have to know this is the only way,” Thurman whispered.

  “There are a thousand ways,” Donald said. He moved the gun to his other hand and dried his sweaty palm on his coveralls.

  Thurman glanced at the gun, then searched the room beyond Donald for help. After a pause, he settled back against the pod. Steam rose from within the unit, but Donald could see him begin to shiver against the cold. He felt bad for not bringing a blanket. He held a gun, and felt bad for not bringing a blanket.

  “I used to think you were trying to live forever,” Donald said.

  Thurman laughed. He inspected the knotted cord once more, looked at the needle and tube hanging from his arm. “Just long enough.”

  “Long enough for what? To whittle humanity down to nothing? To let one of these silos go free and kill the rest?”

  Thurman nodded. He pulled his feet closer and hugged his shins. He looked so thin and fragile without his coveralls on, without his proud shoulders thrown back.

  “You saved all these people just to kill most of them. And us as well.”

  Thurman whispered a reply.

  “Louder,” Donald said.

  The old man mimed taking a drink. Donald showed h
im the gun. It was all he had. Thurman tapped his chest and tried to speak again, and Donald took a wary step closer. “Tell me why,” Donald said. “I’m the one in charge here. Me. Tell me or I swear I’ll let everyone out of their silos right now.”

  Thurman’s eyes became slits. “Fool,” he hissed. “They’ll kill each other.”

  His voice was barely audible. Donald could hear all the cryopods around them humming. He stepped closer, more confident with each passing moment that this was the right thing to do.

  “I know what you think they’ll do to one another,” Donald said. “I know about this great cleanse, this reset.” He jabbed the gun at Thurman’s chest. “I know you see these silos as starships taking people to a better world. I’ve read every note and memo and file you have access to. But this is what I want to hear from you before you die—”

  Donald felt his legs wobble. A coughing fit seized him. He fumbled for his cloth, but pink spittle struck the silver pod before he could cover his mouth. Thurman watched. Donald steadied himself, tried to remember what he was saying.

  “I want to know why all the heartache,” Donald said, his voice scratchy, his throat on fire. “All the miserable lives coming and going, the people down here you plan on killing, on never waking. Your own daughter …” He searched Thurman for some reaction. “Why not freeze us for a thousand years and wake us when it’s done? I know now what I helped you build. I want to know why we couldn’t sleep through it all. If you wanted a better place for us, why not take us there? Why the suffering?”

  Thurman remained perfectly still.

  “Tell me why,” Donald said. His voice cracked, but he pretended to be okay. He lifted the barrel, which had drooped.

  “Because no one can know,” Thurman finally said. “It has to die with us.”

  “What has to die?”

  Thurman licked his lips. “Knowledge. The things we left out of the Legacy. The ability to end it all with the flip of a switch.”

  Donald laughed. “You think we won’t discover them again? The means to destroy ourselves?”

  Thurman shrugged his naked shoulders. The steam rising from them had dissipated. “Eventually. Which is a longer time than right now.”

  Donald waved his gun at the pods all around him. “And so all this goes as well. We’re supposed to choose one tribe, one of your starships to land, and everything else is shut down. That’s the pact you made.”

  Thurman nodded.

  “Well someone broke your pact,” Donald said. “Someone put me here in your place. I’m the shepherd, now.”

  Thurman’s eyes widened. His gaze traveled from the gun to the badge clipped on Donald’s collar. Clattering teeth were silenced by the clenching and unclenching of his jaw. “No,” he said.

  “I never asked for this job,” Donald said, more to himself than to Thurman. He steadied the barrel. “For any of these jobs.”

  “Me neither,” Thurman replied, and Donald was again reminded of those prisoners and those guards. This could be him in that pod. It could be anyone standing there with that gun. It was the system.

  There were a hundred other things he wanted to ask or say. He wanted to tell this man how much like a father he’d been to him, but what did that mean when fathers could be as abusive as they were loving? He wanted to scream at Thurman for the damage he’d done to the world, but some part of Donald knew the damage had long ago been done and that it was irreversible. And finally, there was a part of him that wanted to beg for help, to free this man from his pod, a part that wanted to take his place, to curl up inside, and go back to sleep—a part that found being the prisoner was so much easier than remaining on guard. But his sister was up above, recovering. They both had more questions that needed answering. And in a silo not far away, a transformation was taking place, the end of an uprising, and Donald intended to see how that played out.

  All this and more flitted through a brain on fire while another looked on and thawed. It wouldn’t be long before Dr. Wilson returned to his desk and possibly glanced at a screen just as the right camera cycled through. It wouldn’t be long. And even as Thurman’s mouth parted to say something, Donald realized that waking the old man for these excuses had been a mistake. There was little to learn here.

  Thurman leaned forward. He seemed to sense the accumulation of second thoughts. “Donny,” he said. He reached out with bound wrists for the pistol in Donald’s hand. His arms moved slowly and feebly, not with the hope—Donald didn’t think—of snatching the gun away, but possibly with the desire to pull it close, to press it against his chest or his mouth the way Victor had, such was the sadness in the old man’s eyes.

  Thurman reached past the lip of the pod and groped for the gun, and Donald very nearly handed it to him, just to see what he would do with it.

  He pulled the trigger instead. He pulled the trigger before he could regret it.

  The bang was unconscionably loud. There was a bright flash, a horrid noise echoing out across a thousand sleeping souls, and then a man slumping down into a coffin.

  Donald’s hand trembled. He remembered his first days in office, all this man had done for him, that meeting very early on. He had been hired for a job for which he was barely qualified. He had been hired for a job he could not at first discern. That first morning, waking up a congressman, realizing he and only a handful of others stood at the helm of a powerful nation, had filled him with as much fear as accomplishment. And all along, he had been an inmate asked to erect the walls of his own cell. All along.

  This time would be different. This time, he would accept responsibility and lead without fear. He and his sister in secret. They would find out what was wrong with the world and fix it. Restore order to all that had been lost. An experiment had begun in another silo, a changing of the guard, and Donald intended to watch it play out.

  He reached up and closed the lid on the pod. There was pink spittle on its shiny surface. Donald coughed once, not a bad fit, and wiped his mouth. He stuffed the pistol away and left the pod behind, his heart racing from what he’d done, and the pod with a dead man inside—it quietly hummed.

  Silo 17

  Year Thirty-Four

  •44•

  Solo worked the rope through the handles of the empty plastic jugs. They rattled together and made a kind of sonorous music. Holding them up, he thought they looked like the silver fish that hung on a string in the book marked “Me” for Mediterranean. He laughed at this and jiggled the jugs. “Here, fishy,” he said. And then he grew sad. He remembered catching the fish and leaving the last of them all alone. All by himself.

  Solo collected his canvas bag and stood there a moment, scratching his beard, forgetting something. What had he forgotten? Patting his chest, he made sure he had the key. It was an old habit from years ago that he couldn’t shake. The key, of course, was no longer there. He had tucked it in a drawer when things no longer needed locking, when there was no one left to be afraid of.

  He took two bags of empty soup and veggie cans with him—hardly a dent in the massive pile of garbage. With his hands full and every step causing a clang and a clatter, he carried his things down the dark passage to the shaft of light at the far end.

  It took two trips up the ladder to unload everything. He passed between the black machines, many of which had gone silent over the years, succumbing to the heat, perhaps. The filing cabinet had to be moved before the door would open. The silo had no locks and no people—but no dummies, either. He pulled the heavy door, could feel his father’s presence as always, and stepped out into the wide world crowded with nothing but ghosts and things so bad he couldn’t remember them.

  The hallways were bright and empty. Solo waved to where he knew the cameras were as he passed. He often thought that he’d see himself on the monitors one day, but the cameras had quit working forever ago. And besides, there’d have to be two of him for that to happen. One to stand there and wave, another down by the monitors. He laughed at how silly he was. He was Solo.
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br />   Stepping out on the landing brought fresh air and a troubling sense of height. Solo thought of the rising water. How long before it reached him? Too long, he thought. He would be gone by then. But it was sad to think of his little home under the servers full of water one day. All the empty cans in the great pile by the shelves would float to the top. The computer and the radio would gurgle little bubbles of air. That made him laugh, thinking of them gurgling and the cans bobbing around on the surface, and he no longer cared if it happened or not. He tossed both bags of empty cans over the railing and listened for them to crunch down on the landing at fifty-two. They dutifully did. He turned to the stairs.

  Up or down? Up meant tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. Down meant berries, corn, and digging for potatoes. Down required more cooking. Solo marched up.

  He counted the steps as he went. “Eight, nine, ten,” he whispered. Each of the stairs was different. There were a lot of stairs. They had all kinds of company, all kinds of fellow stairs like friends to either side. More things just like them. “Hello, step,” he said, forgetting to count. The step said nothing. He didn’t speak whatever they spoke, the ringing singing of lonely boots clanging up and down.

  A noise. Solo heard a noise. He stopped and listened, but usually the noises knew when he was doing that and they got shy. This was another of those noises. He heard things that weren’t there all the time. And there were pumps and lights wired all over the place that turned on and off at their whim and choosing. One of these pumps had sprung a leak years ago, and Solo had fixed it himself. He needed a new Project. He was doing a lot of the same ones over and over, like chopping his beard when it got to his chest, and all of them were boring.