6
Marnes and Jahns finished their meals, which consisted of large bowls of soup and hunks of dry, almost stale bread, and exited a mess hall nearly as noisy as the generator room. During the entire meal, Jahns had regretted not bringing those plastic and foam ear protection muffs to dinner. The men and women of Mechanical were as loud and boisterous as they were filthy. She wondered if perhaps they all yelled because they were going deaf in the constant hammering of the place.
Outside, they followed Knox’s directions to the bunkroom, where they found a cot made up for Marnes, and one of the attached private rooms reserved for Jahns. They bided their time in the small room, rubbing aches in their legs, talking about how different the down deep was, until there was a knock on their door and Juliette pushed it open and stepped inside.
“They got you both in one room?” she asked, surprised.
Jahns laughed. “No, they’ve got a bunk set aside as well. And I would’ve been happy staying out there with the others.”
“Forget it,” Juliette said. “They put up recruits and visiting families in here all the time.”
Jahns watched as Juliette placed a length of string in her mouth, then gathered her hair, still wet from a shower, and tied it up in a tail. She had changed into another pair of coveralls, and Jahns guessed the stains in them were permanent, that the fabric was actually laundered and ready for another shift.
“So how soon could we announce this power holiday?” Juliette asked. She finished her knot and crossed her arms, leaning back against the wall beside the door. “I would think you’d wanna take advantage of the post-cleaning mood, right?”
“How soon can you start?” Jahns asked. She realized, suddenly, that part of the reason she wanted this woman as her sheriff was that she felt unattainable. Jahns glanced over at Marnes and wondered how much of his attraction to her, all those many years ago when she was young and with Donald, had been as simply motivated.
“I can start tomorrow,” Juliette said. “We could have the backup generator online by morning. I could work another shift tonight to make sure the gaskets and seals—”
“No,” Jahns said, raising her hand. “How soon can you start as sheriff?” She dug through her open bag, sorting folders across the bed, looking for the contract.
“I’m—I thought we discussed this. I have no interest in being—”
“They make the best ones,” Marnes said. “The ones who have no interest in it.” He stood across from Juliette, this thumbs tucked into his coveralls, leaning against one of the small apartment’s walls.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no one down here who can just slip into my boots,” Juliette said, shaking her head. “I don’t think you two understand all that we do—”
“I don’t think you understand what we do up top,” Jahns said. “Or why we need you.”
Juliette tossed her head and laughed. “Look, I’ve got machines down here that you can’t possibly—”
“And what good are they?” Jahns asked. “What do these machines do?”
“They keep this whole goddamned place running!” Juliette declared. “The oxygen you breathe? We recycled that down here. The toxins you exhale? We pump them back into the earth. You want me to write up a list of everything oil makes? Every piece of plastic, every ounce of rubber, all the solvents and cleaners, and I’m not talking about the power it generates, but everything else!”
“And yet it was all here before you were born,” Jahns pointed out.
“Well it wouldn’t have lasted my lifetime, I’ll tell you that. Not in the state it was in.” She crossed her arms again and leaned back against the wall. “I don’t think you get what mess we’d be in without these machines.”
“And I don’t think you get how pointless these machines are going to become without all these people.”
Juliette looked away. It was the first time Jahns had seen her flinch.
“Why don’t you ever visit your father?”
Juliette snapped her head around and looked at the other wall. She wiped loose hair back on her forehead. “Go look at my work log,” she said. “Tell me when I’d fit it in.”
Before Jahns could reply, could say that it was family, that there’s always time, Juliette turned to face her. “Do you think I don’t care about people? Is that it? Because you’d be wrong. I care about every person in this silo. And the men and women down here, the forgotten eight floors of Mechanical, this is my family. I visit with them every day. I break bread with them several times a day. We work, live, and die alongside one another.” She looked to Marnes. “Isn’t that right? You’ve seen it.”
Marnes didn’t say anything. Jahns wondered if she was referring specifically to the “dying” part.
“Did you ask him why he never comes to see me? Because he has all the time in the world. He has nothing up there.”
“Yes, we met with him. Your father seemed like a very busy man. As determined as you.”
Juliette looked away.
“And as stubborn.” Jahns left the paperwork on the bed and went to stand by the door, just a pace away from Juliette. She could smell the soap in the younger woman’s hair. Could see her nostrils flare with her rapid, heavy breathing.
“The days pile up and weigh small decisions down, don’t they? That decision to not visit. The first few days slide by easy enough, anger and youth powers them along. But then they pile up like unrecycled trash. Isn’t that right?”
Juliette waved her hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about days becoming weeks becoming months becoming years—” She almost said that she’d been through the same exact thing, was still piling them up, but Marnes was in the room, listening. “After a while, you’re staying mad just to justify an old mistake. Then it’s just a game. Two people staring away, refusing to look back over their shoulders, afraid to be the first one to take that chance—”
“It wasn’t like that,” Juliette said. “I don’t want your job. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of others who do.”
“If it’s not you, it’s someone I’m not sure I can trust. Not anymore.”
“Then give it to the next girl.” She smiled.
“It’s you or him. And I think he’ll be getting more guidance from the thirties than he will from me, or from the Pact.”
Juliette seemed to react to this. Her arms loosened across her chest. She turned and met Jahns’ gaze. Marnes was studying all of this from across the room.
“The last sheriff, Holston, what happened to him?”
“He went to cleaning,” Jahns said.
“He volunteered,” Marnes added gruffly.
“I know, but why?” She frowned. “I heard it was his wife.”
“There’s all kinds of speculation—”
“I remember him talking about her, when you two came down to look into Rick’s death. I thought, at first, that he was flirting with me, but all he could talk about was this wife of his.”
“They were in the lottery while we were down here,” Marnes reminded her.
“Yeah. That’s right.” She studied the bed for a while. Paperwork was spread across it.
“I wouldn’t know how to do this job. I only know how to fix things.”
“It’s the same thing,” Marnes told her. “You were a big help with our case down here. You see how things work. How they fit together. Little clues that other people miss.”
“You’re talking about machines,” she said.
“People aren’t much different,” Marnes told her.
“I think you already know this,” Jahns said. “I think you have the right attitude, actually. The right disposition. This is only slightly a political office. Distance is good.”
Juliette shook her head and looked back to Marnes. “So you nominated me for this, is that it? I wondered how this came up. Seemed like something right out of the ground.”
“You’d be good at it,” Marnes told her. “I think you’d be damned good at anything you set your mind to. And this is more important work than you think.”
“And I’d live up top?”
“Your office is on level one. Near the airlock.”
Juliette seemed to mull this over. Jahns was excited to have her even asking questions.
“The pay is more than you’re making now, even with the extra shifts.”
“You checked?”
Jahns nodded. “I took some liberties before we came down.”
“Like talking to my father.”
“That’s right. He would love to see you, you know. If you come with us.”
Juliette looked down at her boots. “Not sure about that.”
“There’s one other thing,” Marnes said, catching Jahns’ eye. He glanced at the paperwork on the bed. The crisply folded contract for Peter Billings was on top. “IT,” he reminded her.
Jahns caught his drift.
“There’s one matter to clear up, before you accept.”
“I’m not sure I’m accepting. I’d want to hear more about this power holiday, organize the work shifts down here—”
“According to tradition, IT signs off on all nominated positions—”
Juliette rolled her eyes and blew out her breath. “IT.”
“Yes, and we checked in with them on the way down as well, just to smooth things over.”
“I’m sure,” Juliette said.
“It’s about these requisitions,” Marnes interjected.
Juliette turned to him.
“We know it probably ain’t nothing, but it’s gonna come up—”
“Wait, is this about the heat tape?”
“Heat tape?”
“Yeah.” Juliette frowned and shook her head. “Those bastards.”
Jahns pinched two inches of air. “They had a folder on you this thick. Said you were skimming supplies meant for them.”
“No they didn’t. Are you kidding?” She pointed toward the door. “We can’t get any of the supplies we need because of them. When I needed heat tape—we had a leak in a heat exchanger a few months back—we couldn’t get any because Supply tells us the backing material for the tape is all spoken for. Now, we had that order in a while back, and then I find out from one of our porters that the tape is going to IT, that they’ve got miles of the stuff for the skins of all their test suits.”
Juliette took a deep breath.
“So I had some intercepted.” She looked to Marnes as she admitted this. “Look, I’m keeping the power on so they can do whatever it is they do up there, and I can’t get basic supplies. And even when I do, the quality is complete crap, probably because of unrealistic quotas, rushing the manufacturing chain—”
“If these are items you really needed,” Jahns interrupted, “then I understand.”
She looked to Marnes, who smiled and dipped his chin as if to say he told her this was the right woman for the job.
Jahns ignored him. “I’m actually glad to hear your side of this,” she told Juliette. “And I wish I had made this trip more often, as sore as my legs are. There are things we take for granted up top, mostly because they aren’t well understood. I can see now that our offices need to be in better communication, have more of the constant contact I have with IT.”
“I’ve been saying that for just about twenty years,” Juliette said. “Down here, we joke that this place was laid out to keep us well out of the way. And that’s how it feels, sometimes.”
“Well, if you come up top, if you take this job, people will hear you. You could be the first link in that chain of command.”
“Where would IT fall?”
“There will be resistance, but that’s normal with them. I’ve handled it before. I’ll wire my office for some emergency waivers. We’ll make them retroactive, get these acquisitions above board.” Jahns studied the younger woman. “As long as I have your assurance that every one of these diverted supplies were absolutely necessary.”
Juliette did not flinch away from the challenge. “They were,” she said. “Not that it mattered. The stuff we got from them was crap. Couldn’t have fallen apart better if it’d been designed to. I’ll tell you what, we finally got our shipment from Supply and have extra tape. I’d love to drop off a peace offering on our way up. Our design is so much better—”
“Our way up?” Jahns asked, making sure she understood what she was saying, what she was agreeing to.
Juliette looked them both over. She nodded. “You’ll have to give me a week to sort out the generator. I’m holding you to that power holiday. And just so you understand, I’ll always consider myself Mechanical, and I’ll be doing this partly because I see what happens when problems are ignored. My big push down here has been preventive maintenance. No more waiting for things to break before we fix them, but to go around and make them hum while they’re still working. Too many issues have been ignored, let degrade. And I think, if the silo can be thought of as one big engine, we are like the dirty oil pan down here that needs some people’s attention.” She reached her hand out to Jahns. “Get me that power holiday, and I’m your man.”
Jahns smiled and took her hand, admired the warmth and power in her confident handshake.
“I’ll get on it first thing in the morning,” she said. “And thank you. Welcome aboard.”
Marnes crossed the room to shake Juliette’s hand as well. “Nice to have you on, Boss.”
Juliette smirked as she took his hand. “Well, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I think I’ll have a lot to learn before you go calling me that.”