Dust

Page 10

“Hello?” he said.
“Lukas.” The machine removed all intonation from the voice, all emotion. Except for disappointment. That it was not Juliette who answered elicited a letdown that could be felt if not quite heard. Or perhaps it was all in Lukas’s head.
“Just me,” he said.
“Very well. Just so you know, I have pressing matters here. Our time is short.”
“Okay.” Lukas found his place in the book. He skipped down to where they’d previously left off. These talks reminded him of his studies with Bernard, except now he had graduated from the Order to the Legacy. And Donald was swifter than Bernard, more open with his answers. “So … I wanted to ask you something about this Rousseau guy—”
“Before we do,” Donald said, “I need to implore you again to stop with the digging.”
Lukas closed the book on his finger, marking his place. He was glad Juliette had agreed to attend the Town Hall. She got animated whenever this topic came up. Because of an old threat she’d made, Donald seemed to think they were digging toward him, and she made Lukas vow to leave the lie alone. She didn’t want them finding out about her friends in 17 or her plans to rescue them. Lukas found the ruse uncomfortable. Where Juliette distrusted this man – who had warned them both that their home could be shut down at any time through mysterious means – Lukas saw someone trying to help them at some cost to himself. Jules thought Donald was scared for his own life. Lukas thought Donald was frightened for them.
“I’m afraid that the digging will have to continue,” Lukas said. He nearly blurted out: She won’t stop, but best for there to be some sense of solidarity.
“Well, my people can pick up the vibrations. They know something is happening.”
“Can you tell them we’re having trouble with our generator? That it’s misaligned again?”
There was a disappointed sigh that the computers couldn’t touch. “They’re smarter than that. What I’ve done is ordered them not to waste their time looking into it, which is all I can do. I’m telling you, nothing good can come of this.”
“Then why are you helping us? Why stick your neck out? Because that’s what it seems like you’re doing.”
“My job is to see that you don’t die.”
Lukas studied the inside of the server tower, the winking lights, the wires, the boards. “Yeah, but these conversations, going through these books with me, calling every single day like clockwork, why do you do it? I mean … what is it that you get out of these conversations?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, a rare lack of surety from the steady voice of their supposed benefactor.
“It’s because … I get to help you remember.”
“And that’s important?”
“Yes. It’s important. It is to me. I know what it feels like to forget.”
“Is that why these books are here?”
Another pause. Lukas felt that he was stumbling accidentally toward some truth. He would have to remember what was being said and tell Juliette later.
“They are there so that whoever inherits the world – whoever is chosen – will know …”
“Know what?” Lukas asked desperately. He feared he was going to lose him. Donald had trod near to this in prior conversations, but had always pulled away.
“To know how to set things right,” Donald said. “Look, our time is up. I need to go.”
“What did you mean about inheriting the world?”
“Next time. I need to go. Stay safe.”
“Yeah,” Lukas said. “You too—”
But his headphone had already clicked. The man who somehow knew so much about the old world had signed off.
15
Juliette had never attended a Town Hall before. Like sows giving birth, she knew such things took place, but had never felt the urge to witness the spectacle. Her first time would be while as mayor, and she hoped it would be her last.
She joined Judge Picken and Sheriff Billings on the raised platform while residents spilled from the hallway and found their seats. The platform they’d put her on reminded her of the stage in the bazaar, and Juliette remembered her father comparing these meetings to plays. She never took him to mean that as a compliment.
“I don’t know any of my lines,” she whispered cryptically to Peter Billings.
The two of them sat close enough that their shoulders touched. “You’ll do fine,” Peter said. He smiled at a young woman in the front row, who wiggled her fingers back at him, and Juliette saw that the young sheriff had met someone. Life was continuing apace.
She tried to relax. She studied the crowd. A lot of unfamiliar faces out there. A few she recognized. Three doors led in from the hallway. Two of the doors opened on aisles that sliced through the rows of ancient benches. The third aisle was pressed against the wall. They divided the room into thirds, much as less-well-defined boundaries partitioned the silo. Juliette didn’t have to be told these things. The people making their way inside made it obvious.
The Up Top benches in the center of the room were already packed, and more people stood behind the benches at the back of the hall, people she recognized from IT and from the cafeteria. The Mids benches off to one side were half full. Juliette noticed most of these residents sat close to the aisle, as near to the center as possible. Farmers in green. Hydroponic plumbers. People with dreams. The other side of the room was nearly bare. This was for the Down Deep. An elderly couple sat together in the front row of this section, holding hands. Juliette recognized the man, a bootmaker. They had come a long way. Juliette kept waiting for more residents of the Deep to show, but it was too much of a hike. And now she recalled how distant these meetings seemed while working in the depths of the silo. Often, she and her friends only heard what was being discussed and what rules were being passed after it had already happened. Not only was it a far climb, but most of them were too busy surviving the day-to-day to trudge anywhere for a discussion on tomorrows.
When the flow of residents became a trickle, Judge Picken rose to begin the meeting. Juliette prepared to be bored half to death by the proceedings. A quick talk, an introduction, and then they would listen to what ailed the people. Promise to make it better. Get right back to doing the same things.
What she needed to do was get back to work. There was so much that needed accomplishing up at the airlock and down in the Suit Lab. The last thing she wanted to do was listen to minor grievances, a call for a revote, or anyone bitching about her digging. She suspected what was serious to others would feel minor to her. There was something about being sent to one’s death and surviving a baptism of fire upon one’s return that pushed most squabblings into the deepest recesses of one’s mind.
Picken banged his gavel and called the meeting to order. He welcomed everyone and ran down the prepared docket. Juliette squirmed on her bench. She gazed out into the crowd and saw that the vast majority were gazing right back at her rather than watching the judge. She only caught the end of Picken’s last sentence because of her name: “—hear from your mayor, Juliette Nichols.”
He turned and waved her up to the podium. Peter patted her on the knee for encouragement. As she walked to the podium, the metal decking creaked beneath her boots where it wasn’t screwed down tight. That was the only sound. And then someone in the audience coughed. And there was a rustling among the benches as bodies lurched back into motion. Juliette gripped the podium and marveled at the mix of colors facing her, the blues and whites and reds and browns and greens. Scowls above them, she saw. Angry people from all walks of life. She cleared her throat and realized how unprepared she was. She had hoped to say a few words, to thank the people for their concerns, to assure them that she was working tirelessly to forge a new and better life for them. Just give her a chance, she wanted to say.
“Thank you—” she began, and Judge Picken tugged on her arm and pointed to the microphone attached to the podium. Someone in the back shouted that they couldn’t hear. Juliette swiveled the microphone closer and saw that the faces in the crowd were the same as those along the stairwell. They were wary of her. Awe, or something like it, had eroded into suspicion.
“I’m here today to listen to your questions. Your concerns,” she said, the loudness of her voice startling her. “Before I do, I’d like to say a few things about what we hope to accomplish this year—”
“Did you let poison in here?” someone yelled from the back.
“Excuse me?” Juliette asked. She cleared her throat.
A lady stood up, a baby in her arms. “My child’s had a fever ever since you returned!”
“Are the other silos real?” someone shouted.
“What was it like out there?”
A man bolted up from the Mids benches, his face ruddy with rage. “What’re you doin’ down there that’s causing so much noise—?”
A dozen others stood and began shouting as well. Their questions and complaints forged a single noise, an engine of anger. The packed center section spilled outward into the aisles as people needed room to point and wave for attention. Juliette saw her father, standing in the very back, noticeable for his placid demeanor, his worried frown.
“One at a time—” Juliette said. She held her palms out. The crowd lurched forward, and then a shot rang out.
Juliette flinched.
There was another loud bang right beside her, and the gavel was no longer limp in Judge Picken’s hand. The wooden disc on the podium leapt and spun as he pounded it back into place, over and over. Deputy Hoyle lurched out of a trance by the door and swam through the crowds in the aisle, urging everyone back into their seats and to hold their tongues. Peter Billings was up from the bench yelling for everyone to be calm as well. Eventually, a tense silence fell over the crowd. But something was whirring in these people. It was like a motor not yet running but one that wanted to, an electrical buzz just beneath the surface, humming and holding back. Juliette chose her words carefully.
“I can’t tell you what it’s like out there—”
“Can’t or won’t?” someone asked. This person was silenced by a glare from Deputy Hoyle, who ranged the aisle. Juliette took a deep breath.
“I can’t tell you because we don’t know.” She raised her hands to hold the crowd still a moment. “Everything we’ve been told about the world beyond our walls has been a lie, a fabrication—”
“How do we know you’re not the one lying?”
She sought the voice among the crowd. “Because I’m the one admitting that we don’t know a damned thing. I’m the one who came here today to tell you that we should go out and see for ourselves. With fresh eyes. With real curiosity. I’m proposing that we do what has never been done, and that’s to go and take a sample, to bring back a taste of the air out there and see what’s wrong with the world—”
Outbursts from the back drowned out the rest of her sentence. People were up out of their seats again, even as others reached to restrain them. Some were curious now. Some were even more outraged. The gavel barked, and Hoyle loosed his baton and waved it at the front row. But the crowd was beyond calming. Peter stepped forward, a hand on the butt of his gun.
Juliette backed away from the podium. There was a squeal from the speakers as Judge Picken knocked the microphone with his arm. The wooden puck was lost, leaving him to bang on the podium itself, which Juliette saw was marked with half-moon frowns and smiles from past attempts at restoring calm.
Deputy Hoyle had to back up against the stage as the crowd lurched forward, many of them with questions still, most with unbridled fury. Spittle foamed on quivering lips. Juliette heard more accusations, saw the lady with her baby who blamed Juliette for some sickness. Marsha ran to the back of the stage and threw open a metal door painted to look like real wood – and Peter waved Juliette inside, back to the Judge’s chambers. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to calm these people down, to tell them she meant well, that she could fix this if they would just let her try. But she was being dragged back, past a cloakroom of dark robes that hung like shadows, steered down a hall where pictures of past judges hung askew, to an old metal desk painted to resemble the door.
The shouts were sealed off behind them. The door banging with fists for a moment, Peter cursing. Juliette collapsed into an old leather chair repaired with tape and held her face in her hands. Their anger was her anger. She could feel herself directing it toward Peter and Lukas, who had made her mayor. She could feel herself directing it toward Lukas for begging her to leave the digging and come up top, for making her come to this meeting. As if this rabble could be appeased.
A burst of noise filtered down the hall as the door opened for a moment. Juliette expected Judge Picken to join them. She was surprised to see her father instead.
“Dad.”
She rose from the old chair and crossed the room to greet him. Her father wrapped his arms around her, and Juliette found that place in the center of his chest where she could remember finding comfort as a child.
“I heard you might be here,” her father whispered.
Juliette didn’t say anything. As old as she felt, the years melted away to have him there, to have his arms around her.
“I also heard what you’re planning, and I don’t want you to go.”
Juliette stepped back to study her father. Peter excused himself. The noise from outside wasn’t as loud this time when the door cracked, and Juliette realized Judge Picken had allowed her father passage, was out there calming the crowd. Her dad had seen those people react to her, had heard what people had said. She fought back a sudden welling of tears.