Wool (46 page)

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting like that, dreaming of a different time and place, before he realized the throbbing red lights had returned.

Lukas slid the book back in its tin and struggled to his feet. The computer screen showed Peter Billings at the server-room door, as deep as he was allowed into the room. A tray with Lukas’s dinner sat on top of the work-log filing cabinet inside the door.

He turned away from the computer, hurried down the corridor, and scrambled up the ladder. After removing the grate, he carefully dropped it back into place and picked a circuitous path through the tall humming servers.

“Ah, here’s our little protégé.” Peter smiled, but his eyes narrowed at the sight of Lukas.

Lukas dipped his chin. “Sheriff,” he said. He always had this sense that Peter was silently mocking him, looking down on him, even though they were about the same age. Whenever Peter showed up with Bernard, especially the day Bernard had explained the need to keep Lukas safe, there had seemed some sort of competitive tension between the two more junior men—a tension Lukas was aware of, even if he didn’t share it. In private, Bernard had committed Lukas to secrecy and told him that he was grooming Peter for the eventual job of mayor, that he and Lukas would one day work hand in hand. Lukas tried to remember this as he slid the tray off the cabinet. Peter watched him, his brow lowered in thought.

Lukas turned to go.

“Why don’t you sit and eat here?” Peter asked, not budging from where he leaned against the thick server-room door.

Lukas froze.

“I see you sitting here with Bernard while you eat, but you’re always in a hurry to scurry off when I come by.” Peter leaned out and peered into the stacks of servers. “What is it you do in here all day, anyway?”

Lukas felt trapped. In truth, he wasn’t even all that hungry, had thought about saving it for later, but eating his food to completion was usually the fastest way out of these conversations. He shrugged and sat down on the floor, leaned against the work-log cabinet, and stretched his legs out in front of him. Uncovering the tray revealed a bowl of unidentifiable soup, two slices of tomato, and a piece of corn bread.

“I work on the servers mostly, just like before.” He started with a bite of the bread, something bland. “Only difference is I don’t have to walk home at the end of the day.” He smiled at Peter while he chewed the dry bread.

“That’s right, you live down in the mids, don’t you?” Peter crossed his arms and seemed to get even more comfortable against the thick door. Lukas leaned to the side and gazed past him and down the hallway. Voices could be heard around the corner. He had a sudden impulse to get up and run, just for the sake of running.

“Barely,” he answered. “My apartment’s practically in the up top.”

“All the mids are,” Peter laughed, “to those who live there.”

Lukas worked on the corn bread to keep his mouth occupied. He eyed the soup warily while he chewed.

“Did Bernard tell you about the big assault we’ve got planned? I was thinking of going down to take part.”

Lukas shook his head. He dipped his spoon into the soup.

“You know that wall Mechanical built, how those idiots boxed themselves in? Well, Sims and his boys are gonna blast it to smithereens. They’ve had all the time in the world to work on it from our side, so this little rebellion nonsense should be over in a few days, max.”

While he slurped the hot soup, all Lukas could think about was the men and women of Mechanical trapped behind that wall of steel, and how he knew precisely what they were going through.

“Does that mean I’ll be out of here soon?” He pressed the edge of his spoon into an under-ripe tomato rather than use the knife and fork. “There can’t be any threat out there for me, can there? Nobody even knows who I am.”

“That’s up to Bernard. He’s been acting strange lately. A lot of stress, I suppose.” Peter slid down the door and rested on his heels. It was nice for Lukas not to have to crane his neck to look up at him. “He did say something about bringing your mother up for a visit. I took that to mean you might be in here at least a week longer.”

“Great.” Lukas pushed his food around some more. When the distant server started buzzing, his body practically jerked as if tugged by some string. The overhead lights winked faintly, meaningful to those in the know.

“What’s that?” Peter peered into the server room, rising on his toes a little.

“That means I need to get back to work.” Lukas handed him the tray. “Thanks for bringing this.” He turned to go.

“Hey, the mayor said to make sure you ate everything—”

Lukas waved over his shoulder. He disappeared around the first tall server and began to jog toward the back of the room, wiping his mouth with his hand, knowing Peter couldn’t follow.

“Lukas—!”

But he was gone. He hurried toward the far wall, digging his keys out of his collar as he went.

While he worked on the locks, he saw the overhead lights stop their flashing. Peter had closed the door. He removed the back panel and dug the headphones out of their pouch, plugged them in.

“Hello?” He adjusted his microphone, made sure it wasn’t too close.

“Hey.” Her voice filled him up in a way mere food couldn’t. “Did I make you run?”

Lukas took a deep breath. He was getting out of shape living in such confinement, not walking to and from work every day. “No,” he lied. “But maybe you should go easy with the calling. At least during the day. You-know-who is in here all the time. Yesterday, when you let it ring so long, we were sitting
right
beside
the server while it buzzed and buzzed. It really pissed him off.”

“You think I care if he gets angry?” Juliette laughed. “And I
want
him to answer. I’d love to talk to him some more. Besides, what would you suggest? I want to talk to you, I need to talk to
someone
. And you’re always right there. It’s not like you can call me and expect me to be here waiting. Hell, I’m all over the damn place over here. You know how many times I’ve been from the thirties to Supply in the last week? Guess.”

“I don’t want to guess.” Lukas rubbed his eyelids.

“Probably a half dozen times. And you know, if he’s in there all the time, you could just do me a favor and kill him for me. Save me all this trouble—”

“
Kill
him?” Lukas waved his arm. “What, just
bludgeon
him to death?”

“Do you really want some pointers? Because I’ve dreamed up a number of—”

“No, I don’t want pointers. And I don’t want to
kill
anybody! I never
did
—”

Lukas dug his index finger into his temple and rubbed in tiny forceful circles. These headaches were forever popping up. They had been ever since—

“Forget it,” Juliette said, the disgust in her voice zipping through the wires at the speed of light.

“Look—” Lukas readjusted his mic. He hated these conversations. He preferred it when they just talked about nothing. “I’m sorry, it’s just that … things are crazy over here. I don’t know who’s doing what. I’m in this box with all this information, I’ve got this radio that just blares out people fighting all the time, and yet I seem to know ratshit compared to everyone else.”

“But you know you can trust me, right? That I’m one of the good guys? I didn’t do anything wrong to be sent away, Lukas. I need you to know that.”

He listened as Juliette took in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. He imagined her sitting over there, alone in that silo with a crazy man, the mic pressed close to her lips, her chest heaving with exasperation, her mind full of all these expectations of him.

“Lukas, you do know that I’m on the right side here, don’t you? And that you’re working for an insane man?”

“Everything’s crazy,” he said. “Everyone is. I do know this: we were sitting here in IT, hoping nothing bad would happen, and the worst things we could think of came to
us
.”

Juliette released another deep breath, and Lukas thought about what he had told her of the uprising, the things he had omitted.

“I know what you say my people did, but do you understand why they came? Do you? Something needed to be done, Luke. It
still
needs doing.”

Lukas shrugged, forgetting she couldn’t see him. As often as they chatted, he still wasn’t used to conversing with someone like this.

“You’re in a position to help,” she told him.

“I didn’t
ask
to be here.” He felt himself growing frustrated. Why did their conversations have to drift off to bad places? Why couldn’t they go back to talking about the best meals they’d ever had, their favorite books as kids, the likes and annoyances they had in common?

“None of us asked to be where we are,” she reminded him coolly.

This gave Lukas pause, thinking of where she was, what she’d been through to get there.

“What we control,” Juliette said, “is our actions once fate puts us there.”

“I probably need to get off.” Lukas took a shallow breath. He didn’t want to think of actions and fate. He didn’t want to have this conversation. “Pete’ll be bringing me my dinner soon,” he lied.

There was silence. He could hear her breathing. It was almost like listening to someone think.

“Okay,” she said. “I understand. I need to go test this suit anyway. And hey, I might be gone awhile if this thing works. So if you don’t hear from me for a day or so …”

“Just be careful,” Lukas said.

“I will. And remember what I said, Luke. What we do going forward defines who we are. You aren’t one of them. You don’t belong there. Please don’t forget this.”

Lukas mumbled his agreement, and Juliette said good-bye, her voice still in his ears as he reached in and unplugged the jack.

Rather than slot the headphones into their pouch, he slumped back against the server behind him, wringing the ear pads in his hands, thinking about what he had done, about who he was.

He felt like curling up into a ball and crying, just closing his eyes and making the world go away. But he knew if he closed them, if he allowed himself to sink into darkness, all he would see there was
her
. That small woman with the white hair, her body jumping from the impacts of the bullets,
Lukas’s
bullets. He would feel his finger on the trigger, his cheeks wet with salt, the stench of spent powder, the table ringing with the clink of empty brass, and the jubilant and victorious cries of the men and women he had aligned himself with.

“—said Thursday that I’d get it to you in two days.”

“Well, damn it, it’s been two days, Carl. You do realize the cleaning’s tomorrow morning, right?”

“And you realize that today is still today, don’t you?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass. Get me that file and get it up here, pronto. I swear, if this shit falls through because you were—”

“I’ll bring it. C’mon, man. I’m busting your balls. Relax.”

“Relax. Screw you, I’ll relax tomorrow. I’m getting off the line. Now don’t dick around.”

“I’m coming right now …”

Shirly held the sides of her head, her fingers tangled in her hair, elbows digging into Walker’s workbench. “What in the depths is going on?” she asked him. “Walk, what is this? Who
are
these people?”

Walker peered through his magnifiers. He dipped the single bristle plucked from the cleaning brush into the white paint on the wet lid of primer. With utmost care, his other hand steadying his wrist, he dragged the bristle across the outside of the potentiometer directly opposite the fixed mark he’d painted on the knob itself. Satisfied, he counted the ticks he’d made so far, each one marking the position of another strong signal.

“Eleven,” he said. He turned to Shirly, who had been saying something, he wasn’t sure what. “And I don’t think we’ve found ours yet.”

“
Ours?
Walk, this is freaking me out. Where are these voices
coming
from?”

He shrugged. “The city? Over the hills? How should I know?” He started spinning the knob slowly, listening for more chatter. “Eleven besides us. What if there’s more? There has to be more, right? What’re the chances we’ve found them all already?”

“That last one was talking about a cleaning. Do you think they meant … ? Like … ?”

Walker nodded, sending his magnifiers out of whack. He readjusted them, then went back to tuning the dial.

“So they’re in silos. Like us.”

He pointed to the tiny green board she’d helped him wire the potentiometer to. “It must be what this circuit does, modulates the wave frequency, maybe.” Shirly was freaking out over the voices; he was more fascinated by these other mysteries. There was a crackle of static; he paused in turning the knob, scrubbed back and forth across it, but found nothing. He moved on.

“You mean the little board with the number
eighteen
on it?”

Walker looked at her dumbly. His fingers stopped their searching. He nodded.

“So there’s at least
that
many,” she said, putting it together quicker than he had. “I’ve got to find Jenkins. We’ve got to tell him about this.” Shirly left her stool and headed for the door. Walker bobbed his head. The implications made him dizzy, the bench and walls seeming to slide sideways. The idea of
people
beyond these walls—

A violent roar rattled his teeth and shook the thought loose. His feet slipped out from underneath him as the ground trembled, decades of dust raining down from the tangle of pipes and wires crisscrossing overhead.

Walker rolled to his side, coughing, breathing the musky mildew drifting in the air. His ears were ringing from the blast. He patted his head, groped for his magnifiers, when he saw the frame lying on the steel decking before him, the lenses broken into gravel-sized shards.

“Oh, no. I need …” He tried to get his hands underneath him, felt a twinge in his hip, a powerful ache where bone had smacked steel. He couldn’t think. He waved his hand, begging Scottie to come out of the shadows and help him.

A heavy boot crunched on what remained of his magnifiers. Strong, young hands gripped his overalls, pulling him to his feet. There was shouting everywhere. The pop and rattle of gunfire.