ust (Silo, #3)(11)
“Sure thing. Shame you aren’t leaving in a day or two. I’m almost done with the portable.” He showed her a plastic box a little larger than the old radios she and the deputies used to wear on their hips. It still had wires hanging loose and a large external battery attached. “Once I get done with it, you’ll be able to switch channels with a dial. It piggybacks the repeaters up and down both silos.”
She picked the unit up gingerly, no clue what he was talking about. Walker pointed to a dial with thirty-two numbered positions around it. This she understood.
“Just got to get the old rechargeables to play nice in there. Working on the voltage regulation next.”
“You are amazing,” Juliette whispered.
Walker beamed. “Amazing are the people who made this the first time. I can’t get over what they were able to do hundreds of years ago. People weren’t as dumb back then as you’d like to believe.”
Juliette wanted to tell him about the books she’d seen, how the people back then seemed as if they were from the future, not the past.
Walker wiped his hands on an old rag. “I warned Bobby and the others, and I think you should know too. The radios won’t work so well the deeper they dig, not until they get to the other side.”
Juliette nodded. “So I heard. Courtnee said they’ll use runners just like in the mines. I put her in charge of the dig. She’s thought of just about everything.”
Walker frowned. “I heard she wanted to rig this side to blow as well, in case they hit a pocket of bad air.”
“That was Shirly’s idea. She’s just trying to come up with reasons not to dig. But you know Courtnee, once she sets her mind to something, it gets done.”
Walker scratched his beard. “As long as she don’t forget to feed me, we’ll be fine.”
Juliette laughed. “I’m sure she won’t.”
“Well, I wish you luck on your rounds.”
“Thanks,” she said. She pointed to the large radio set on his workbench. “Can you patch me through to Solo?”
“Sure, sure. Seventeen. Forgot you didn’t come down here to chat with me. Let’s call your friend.” He shook his head. “Have to tell you, from talking to him, he’s one odd fellow.”
Juliette smiled and studied her old friend. She waited to see if he was joking – decided he was being perfectly serious – and laughed.
“What?” Walker asked. He powered the radio on and handed her the receiver. “What did I say?”
????
Solo’s update was a mixed bag. Mechanical was dry, which was good, but it hadn’t taken as long as she’d thought for the flood to pump out. It might be weeks or months to get over there and see what they could salvage, and the rust would set in immediately. Juliette pushed these distant problems out of her mind and concentrated on the things she could lay a wrench on.
Everything she needed for her trip up fit in a small shoulder bag: her good silver coveralls, which she’d barely worn; socks and underwear, both still wet from washing them in the sink; her work canteen, dented and grease-stained; and a ratchet and driver set. In her pockets she carried her multi-tool and twenty chits, even though hardly anyone took payment from her since she turned mayor. The only thing she felt she was missing was a decent radio, but Walker had scrapped two of the functioning units to try and build a new one, and it wasn’t ready yet.
With her meager belongings and a feeling like she was abandoning her friends, she left Mechanical behind. The distant clatter from the digging followed her through the hallways and out into the stairwell. Passing through security was like crossing some mental threshold. It reminded her of leaving that airlock all those weeks ago. Like a stopper valve, some things seemed to allow passage in only one direction. She feared how long it might be before she returned. The thought made it difficult to breathe.
She slowly gained height and began passing others on the stairwell, and Juliette could feel them watching her. The glares of people she had once known reminded her of the wind that had buffeted her on the hillside. Their distrustful glances came in gusts – just as quickly, they looked away.
Before long, she saw what Lukas had spoken of. Whatever goodwill her return had wrought – whatever wonder people held for her as someone who had refused to clean and managed to survive the great outside – was crumbling as sure as the concrete being hammered below. Where her return from the outside had brought hope, her plans to tunnel beyond the silo had engendered something else. She could see it in the averted gaze of a shopkeep, in the protective arm a mother wrapped around her child, in the whispers that came and just as suddenly went. Juliette was causing the opposite of hope. She was spreading fear.
A handful of people did acknowledge her with a nod and a “Mayor” as she passed them on the stairwell. A young porter she knew stopped and shook her hand, seemed genuinely thrilled to see her. But when she paused at the lower farms on one-twenty-six for food, and when she sought a bathroom three levels further up, she felt as welcomed as a greaser in the Up Top. And yet she was still among her own. She was their mayor, however unloved.
These interactions gave her second thoughts about seeing Hank, the deputy of the Down Deep. Hank had fought in the uprising and had seen good men and women on both sides give up their lives. As Juliette entered the deputy station on one-twenty, she wondered if stopping was a mistake, if she should just press on. But that was her young self afraid of seeing her father, her young self who buried her head in projects in order to avoid the world. She could no longer be that person. She had a responsibility to the silo and its people. Seeing Hank was the right thing to do. She scratched a scar on the back of her hand and bravely strode into his deputy station. She reminded herself that she was the mayor, not a prisoner being sent to clean.