“No, not like Shadow,” he mumbled to himself. Shadow had stayed underfoot most days. He had always been tripping over Shadow. Elise was something else.
Another level went past, alone and empty, and Jimmy remembered that this wasn’t new. This wasn’t sudden. Elise was forever coming and going however she liked. He had just never worried about her when the silo was empty. It made him reconsider what made a place dangerous. Maybe it wasn’t the place at all.
“You!”
Jimmy rose to another landing, one-twenty-two. A man waved from the doorway. He had gold coveralls on, which meant something back when things had meaning. It was the first face Jimmy had seen in a dozen levels.
“Have you seen a girl?” Jimmy asked, ignoring the fact that this man seemed to have a question of his own. Jimmy held his hand at his hip. “This high. Seven years old. Missing a tooth.” He pointed past his beard at his own teeth.
The man shook his head. “No, but you’re the man who used to live here, right? The survivor?” The man had a knife in his hand, which flashed silver like a fish in water. The man in gold then laughed and peered beyond the landing’s rail. “I guess we’re all survivors, aren’t we?” Reaching out, he took hold of one of the rubber hoses Jimmy and Juliette had affixed to the wall to carry off the floods. With a deft swipe of the knife, the hose parted. He began hauling up the lower part, which dangled free far below.
“That was for the floods—” Jimmy began.
“You must know a lot about this place,” the man said. “I’m sorry. My name’s Terry. Terry Harlson. I’m on the Planning Commi—” He squinted at Jimmy. “Hell, you don’t know or care, do you? We’re all from the same place to you.”
“Jimmy,” he said. “My name’s Jimmy, but most people call me Solo. And that hose—”
“You have any idea where this power is coming from?” Terry jerked his head at the green lights that dotted the underside of the stairs. “We’re up another forty levels from here. Radio there’s got power. Some of these wires strung up all over the place got juice too. You do that?”
“Some of it,” Jimmy said. “Some was already like that. A little girl named Elise came this way. Did you—?”
“I reckon the power’s coming from above, but Tom told me to check down here. He says the power always came from below in our silo, should be the same in this one. Everything else is. But I saw the high-water mark down there where this place was full of water. I don’t think power’s been coming from there in a while. But you should know, right? This place got any secrets you can tell us about? Love to know about that power.”
The hose lay in a coil at the man’s feet. The knife was back out, glimmering in his hand. “You ever thought of being on a committee?”
“I need to find my friend,” Jimmy said.
Another swipe, but the electrical cord put up more resistance. It was the copper at the center. The man held a loop of the black wire in his hand and sawed back and forth, great muscles bulging beneath an undershirt stained with sweat. After some exertion, the knife burst free, the cord severed in two.
“If your friend ain’t with the men in the farms, she’s probably up with the chanters. I passed them on my way down. They found a chapel.” Terry jabbed the knife skyward before stuffing it away and looping wire around his arm.
“A chapel,” Jimmy said. He knew the one. “Thank you, Terry.”
“Only fair,” the man said, shrugging. “Thanks for telling me where all this power comes from.”
“The power—?”
“Yeah, you said it came from above. From level …”
“Thirty-four? I said that?”
The man smiled. “I believe you did.”
50
Elise had watched the people in the bottom where the floods used to be – the ones who were working to dig their way out and get the power going, get the lights on. She had also seen people at the farms harvesting a bunch of food and figuring out how to get people fed. And now there was this third group of people arranging furniture and sweeping the floors and making things tidy. She had no clue what they were trying to do.