28
• Silo 18 •
THE LIGHTS OF the great spiral staircase were dimmed at night so man and silo might sleep. It was in those wee hours when children were long hushed with sing-song lullabies and only those with trouble in mind crept about. Mission held very still in that darkness and waited. Somewhere above him, there came the sound of rope wound tight and sliding across metal, the squeaking of fibres as they gripped steel and strained under some great weight.
A gang of porters huddled with him on the stairway. Mission pressed his cheek against the inner post, the steel cooling his skin. He controlled his breathing and listened for the rope. He well knew the sounds they made, could feel the burn on his neck, that raised weal healed over by the years, a mark glanced at by others but rarely mentioned aloud. And again in that thick grey of the dim-time there came a recognisable squeak as the load from above was steadily lowered.
He waited for the signal. He thought on rope, on his own life – and other forbidden things. There was a book in Dispatch down on seventy-four that kept accounts. In the main way station for all the porters, a massive ledger fashioned out of a fortune in paper was kept under lock and key. It contained a careful tally of certain types of deliveries, handwritten so the information couldn’t slip off into wires.
Mission had heard the senior porters kept track of certain kinds of pipe in this ledger, but he didn’t know why. Brass too, and various types of fluids and powders coming out of Chemical. Order these – or too much rope – and you were put on the watching list. Porters were the lords of rumour. They knew where everything went. And their whisperings gathered like condensation in Dispatch Main where they were written down.
Mission listened to the rope creak and sing in the darkness. He knew what it felt like to have a length of it cinched tightly around his neck. It seemed strange to him that if you ordered enough to hang yourself, nobody cared. Enough to span a few levels, and eyebrows were raised.
He adjusted his ’chief and thought on this in the dim-time. A man may take his own life, he supposed, as long as he didn’t take another’s job.
‘Ready yourself,’ came the whisper from above.
Mission tightened the grip on his knife and concentrated on the task at hand. His eyes strained to see in the wan light. He could hear the steady breathing of his fellow porters around him. No doubt they would be squeezing their own knives in anticipation.
The knives came with the job. A porter’s knife for slicing open delivered goods, for cutting fruit to eat on the climb, and for keeping peace as its owner strayed across all the silo’s heights and depths, taking its dangers two at a time. Now, Mission tensed his in his hand, waiting for the order.
Up the stairwell two full turns, on a dim landing, a group of farmers argued in soft voices as they handled the other end of that rope, performing a porter’s job in the dark of night to save a hundred chits or two. Beyond the rail, the rope was invisible in the darkness. He would have to lean out and grope blindly for it. He felt a ring of heat by his collar, and the hilt of his blade was unsure in his sweaty palm.
‘Not yet,’ Morgan whispered, and Mission felt his old caster’s hand on his shoulder, holding him back. Mission cleared his mind. Another soft squeak, the sound of line taking the strain of a heavy generator, and a dense patch of grey drifted through the black. The men above shouted in whispers as they handled the load, as they did in green the work of men in blue.
While the patch of grey inched past, Mission thought of the night’s danger and marvelled at the fear in his heart. He possessed a sudden care for a life he had once laboured to end, a life that never should have been. He thought of his mother and wondered what she had been like, beyond the disobedience that had cost her life. That was all he knew of his mom. He knew the implant in her hip had failed, as one in ten thousand might. And instead of reporting the malfunction – and the pregnancy – she had hidden him in loose clothes until it was past the time the Pact allowed a child to be treated as a cyst.
‘Ready yourself,’ Morgan hissed.
The grey mass of the generator crept down and out of sight. Mission clutched his knife and thought of how he should’ve been cut out of her and discarded. But past a certain date, and one life was traded for another. Such was the Pact. Born behind bars, Mission had been allowed free while his mother had been sent outside to clean.
‘Now,’ Morgan commanded, and Mission started. Soft and well-worn boots squeaked on the stairs above, the sounds of men lurching into action. Mission concentrated on his part. He pressed himself against the curved rail and reached out into the space beyond. His palm found rope as stiff as steel. He pressed his blade to the taut line.
There was a pop like sinew snapping, the first of the braids parting with just a touch of his sharp blade.
Mission had but a moment to think of those on the landing below, the farmers’ accomplices waiting two levels down. Men were storming up the staircase. Mission longed to join them. With the barest of sawing motions, the rope parted the rest of the way, and Mission thought he heard the heavy generator whistle as it picked up speed. There was a ferocious crash a moment later, men screaming in alarm down below. Above, the fighting had broken out.
With one hand on the rail and another gripping his knife, Mission took the stairs three at a time. He rushed to join the melee above, this midnight lesson on breaking the Pact, on doing another’s job. Grunts and groans and slapping thuds spilled from the landing, and Mission threw himself into the scuffle, thinking not of consequences, but only of this one fight.