“I’m not going,” Juliette said.
Lukas shot a look at Nelson, who set down his spanner, gathered Marsha, and slid out the door. Juliette watched them leave and realized her young Lukas had more authority than she gave him credit for.
“It’s the monthly town hall,” Lukas said. “The first since your election. I told Judge Picken you’d be there. Jules, you’ve gotta play mayor or you won’t be one for much longer—”
“Fine.” She raised her hands. “I’m not mayor. I so decree it.” She scrawled the air with a driver. “Signed and stamped.”
“Not fine. What do you think the next person will make of all this?” He waved his hand at the workbenches. “You think you’ll be able to play these games? This room will go right back to what it was built for in the first place.”
Juliette bit down the urge to snap at him, to tell him these weren’t games she was playing, that it was something far worse.
Lukas looked away from whatever face she was making. His eyes settled on the stack of books piled up by the cot she had brought in. She slept there sometimes when the two of them were disagreeing or when she just needed a place to be alone. Not that she’d slept much recently. She rubbed her eyes and tried to remember the last time she’d gotten four hours in a row. Her nights were spent welding in the airlock. Her days were spent in the Suit Lab or down behind the comm hub. She didn’t really sleep anymore – she just passed out here and there.
“We should keep those locked up,” Lukas said, indicating the books. “Shouldn’t keep them out.”
“No one would believe them if they opened them,” Juliette said.
“For the paper.”
She nodded. He was right. She saw information; others would see money. “I’ll take them back down,” she promised, and the anger drained away like oil from a cracked casing. She thought of Elise, who had told her over the radio of a book she was making, a single book from all her favorite pages. Juliette needed a book like that. Except where Elise’s was probably full of pretty fish and bright birds, Juliette’s would catalog darker things. Things in the hearts of men.
Lukas took a step closer. He rested a hand on her arm. “This meeting—”
“I hear they’re thinking about a revote,” Juliette said, cutting him off. She wiped a loose strand of hair off her face, tucked it behind her ear. “I’m not going to be mayor for long anyway. Which is why I need to get this done. By the time everyone votes again, it shouldn’t matter.”
“Why? Because you’ll be the mayor of a different silo by then? Is that your plan?”
Juliette rested a hand on the domed helmet. “No. Because I’ll have my answers by then. Because people will see by then. They’ll believe me.”
Lukas crossed his arms. He took a deep breath. “I’ve got to get down to the servers,” he said. “If no one’s there to answer the call, the lights eventually start flashing in the offices and everyone asks what the hell they’re for.”
Juliette nodded. She’d seen it for herself. She also knew that Lukas liked the long talks behind the server as much as she did. Except that he was better at it. All her talks led to arguments. He was good at smoothing things over, figuring things out.
“Please tell me you’ll go to the meeting, Jules. Promise me you’ll go.”
She scanned the suit on the other table to see how far along Nelson was. They’d need one more suit for the extra person in the second airlock. If she worked through the night and all day tomorrow—
“For me,” he pleaded.
“I’ll go.”
“Thank you.” Lukas glanced at the old clock on the wall, its red arms visible behind hazed plastic. “I’ll see you for dinner?”
“Sure.”
He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. When he turned to go, Juliette began arranging her tools on the leather pad, setting them aside for later. She picked up a clean cloth and wiped her hands. “Oh, and Luke?”
“Yeah?” He paused at the door.
“Tell that fucker I said hello.”
14
Lukas left the Suit Lab and headed toward the server room on the other side of thirty-four. He passed a tech room that sat empty. The men and women who used to work in there now took up slack in the Down Deep and in Supply where mechanics and workers had lost their lives. People from IT sent to replace those they’d killed.
Juliette’s friend Shirly had been left in charge of the aftermath down in Mechanical. She was forever complaining to his office about skeleton shifts, and then complaining again when Lukas reassigned anyone to help. What did she want from him? People, he supposed. Just not his people.