Hugh Howey - Dust

“Here it is,” Marsha said. She bit her lip and scanned the report, and Juliette saw that it was printed on one side only. The amount of paper her office went through and repulped could afford to feed an apartment level for a year. Lukas had once joked that it was to keep the recyclers in business. The chance he was right had kept her from laughing.

“Can you hand me those gaskets?” Juliette asked, pointing to Marsha’s side of the workbench.

The young girl pointed to a bin of lock washers. And then an assortment of cotter pins. Finally, her hand drifted over the gaskets. Juliette nodded. “Thanks.”

“So, we’re under five thousand residents for the first time in thirty years,” Marsha said, returning to her report. “We’ve had a lot of… passings.” Juliette could feel Marsha glance up at her, even as she concentrated on seating the gasket into the collar. “The lottery committee is calling for an official count, just so we can get a sense of—”

“The lottery committee would perform a census every week if they could.” Juliette rubbed oil onto the gasket with her finger before seating the other side of the collar.

Marsha laughed politely. “Yes, well, they want to hold another lottery soon. They asked for another two hundred numbers.”

“Numbers,” Juliette grumbled. Sometimes she thought that was all Lukas’s computers were good for, a bunch of tall machines to pull numbers from their whirring butts. “Did you tell them my idea about an amnesty? They do know we’re about to double our space, right?”

Marsha shifted uncomfortably. “I told them,” she said. “And I told them about the extra space. I don’t think they took it so well.”

Across the workshop, Nelson looked up from the suit he was working on. It was just the three of them in the old lab where people had once been outfitted to die. Now they were working on something else, a different reason to send people outside.

“Well, what did the committee say?” Juliette asked. “They do know that when we reach this other silo, I’m going to need people to come with me and get it up and running again. The population here is going to dip.”

Nelson bent back to his work. Marsha closed the folder on the population report and looked at her feet.

“What did they say to my idea of suspending the lottery?”

“They didn’t say anything,” Marsha said. She glanced up, and the overhead lights caught the wet film across her eyes. “I don’t think many of them believe in your other silo.”

Juliette laughed and shook her head. Her hand was trembling as she set the last lock screw into the collar. “It doesn’t really matter what the committee believes, does it?” Though she knew this was true of her as well. It was true of anyone. The world out there was the way it was no matter how much doubt or hope or hate a person breathed into it. “The dig is underway. They’re clearing three hundred feet a day. I suppose the lottery committee will just have to make the trip down to see for themselves. You should tell them that. Tell them to go see.”

Marsha frowned and made a note. “The next thing on the agenda…” She grabbed her ledger. “There’s been a rash of complaints about—”

There was a knock at the door. Juliette turned, and Lukas entered the Suit Lab, smiling. He waved at Nelson, who saluted back with a 3/8 spanner. Lukas seemed unsurprised to see Marsha there. He clasped her on the shoulder. “You should just move that big wooden desk of hers down here,” he joked. “You’ve got the porting budget for it.”

Marsha smiled and tugged at one of her dark springs. She looked around the lab. “I really should,” she said.

Juliette watched her young assistant blush in Lukas’s presence and laughed to herself. The helmet locked into the collar with a neat click. Juliette tested the release mechanism.

“Do you mind if I borrow the mayor?” Lukas asked.

“No, I don’t mind,” Marsha said.

“I do.” Juliette studied one of the suit’s sleeves. “We’re way behind schedule.”

Lukas frowned. “There is no schedule. You set the schedule. And besides, have you even gotten permission for this?” He stood beside Marsha and crossed his arms. “Have you even told your assistant what you’re planning?”

Juliette glanced up guiltily. “Not yet.”

“Why? What’re you doing?” Marsha lowered her ledger and studied the suits for what seemed the first time.

Juliette ignored her. She glared at Lukas. “I’m behind schedule because I want to get this done before they complete the dig. They’ve been on a tear. Hit some soft soil. I’d really like to be down there when they punch through.”

“And I’d like for you to be at that meeting today, which you’re going to miss if you don’t get a move on.”

“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.”