Hugh Howey: Dust

Bobby reluctantly grumbled his agreement. “It’ll be slow going, but that might work.” He unfolded a sheet of fine paper, a schematic of all the silos, and studied the path Juliette had drawn. She had stolen the layout from Lukas’s hidden office, and her proposed dig traced an arc from Silo 18 to Silo 17, generator room to generator room. “We’ll have to wedge it downward as well,” Bobby told her. “She’s on an incline like she’s itchin’ to go up.”

“That’s fine. What’s the word on the bracing?”

Hyla studied the two adults and twisted a charcoal in one hand, held her slate in the other. Bobby glanced up at the ceiling and frowned.

“Erik’s not so keen on lending what he’s got. He says he can spare girders enough for a thousand yards. I told him you’d be wanting five or ten times that.”

“We’ll have to pull some out of the mines, then.” Juliette nodded to Hyla and her slate, suggesting she write that down.

“You mean to start wars down here, do you?” Bobby tugged on his beard, clearly agitated. Hyla stopped scratching on the slate and looked from one of her superiors to the other, not sure what to do.

“I’ll talk to Erik,” she told Bobby. “When I promise him the pile of steel girders we’ll find in the other silo, he’ll cave.”

Bobby lifted an eyebrow. “Bad choice of words.”

He laughed nervously while Juliette gestured to his daughter. “We’ll need thirty-six beams and seventy-two risers,” she said.

Hyla glanced guiltily at Bobby before jotting this down.

“If this thing moves, it’s gonna make a lot of dirt,” Bobby said. “Hauling the tailings from here to the crusher down in the mines is gonna make a mess and take as many men as the digging.”

The thought of the crushing room where tailings were ground to powder and vented to the exhaust manifold stirred painful memories. Juliette aimed her flashlight at Bobby’s feet, trying not to think of the past. “We won’t be expelling the tailings,” she told him. “Shaft six is almost directly below us. If we dig straight down, we hit it.”

“You mean to fill number six?” Bobby asked, incredulous.

“Six is nearly tapped out anyway. And we double our ore the moment we reach this other silo.”

“Erik’s gonna blow a gasket. You aren’t forgettin’ anybody, are you?”

Juliette studied her old friend. “Forgetting anybody?”

“Anyone you’re neglecting to piss off.”

Juliette ignored the jab and turned to Hyla. “Make a note to Courtnee. I want the backup generator fully serviced before it’s brought in. There won’t be room to pull the heads and check the seals once it’s fitted in here. The ceiling will be too low.”

Bobby followed as Juliette continued her inspection of the digger. “You’ll be here to look after that, won’t you?” he asked. “You’ll be here to couple the genset to this monster, right?”

She shook her head. “Afraid not. Dawson will be in charge of that. Lukas is right, I need to go up and make the rounds—”

“Bullshit,” Bobby said. “What’s this about, Jules? I’ve never seen you leave a project in half like this, not even if it meant working three shifts.”

Juliette turned and gave Hyla that look that all children and shadows know to mean their ears aren’t welcome. Hyla stayed back while the two old friends continued on.

“My being down here is causing unrest,” Juliette told Bobby, her voice quiet and swallowed by the vastness of the machine around them. “Lukas did the right thing to come get me.” She shot the old miner a cold look. “And I’ll beat you senseless if that gets back to him.”

He laughed and showed his palms. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m married.”

Juliette nodded. “It’s best you all dig while I’m elsewhere. If I’m to be a distraction, then let me be a distraction.” They reached the end of a void that the backup generator would soon fill. It was so clever, this arrangement, keeping the delicate engine out where it would be used and serviced. The rest of the digger was just steel and grinding teeth, gears packed tight with grease.

“These friends of yours,” Bobby said. “They’re worth all this?”

“They are.” Juliette studied her old friend. “But this isn’t just for them. This is for us too.”

Bobby chewed on his beard. “I don’t follow,” he said after a pause.

“We need to prove this works,” she said. “This is only the beginning.”

Bobby narrowed his eyes at her. “Well, if it ain’t the beginning of one thing,” he said, “I would hazard to say it spells the end of another.”

Juliette paused outside Walker’s workshop and knocked before entering. She had heard tell of him being out and about during the uprising, but this was a cog whose teeth refused to align with anything in her head. As far as she was concerned, it was mere legend, a thing to be disbelieved because it hadn’t been seen with her own eyes — similar, she reckoned, to how her jaunt between silos didn’t compute for most people. A rumor. A myth. Who was this woman mechanic who claimed to have seen another land? Stories such as these were dismissed — unless legend took seed and sprouted religion.

“Jules!” Walker peered up from his desk, one of his eyes the size of a tomato through his magnifiers. He pulled the lens away, and his eye shrank back to normal. “Good, good. So glad you’re here.” He waved her over. There was the smell of burning hair in the room, as if the old man had been leaning over his soldering work while careless of his long gray locks.

“I just came to transmit something to Solo,” she said. “And to let you know I’ll be away for a few days.”

“Oh?” Walker frowned. He slotted a few small tools into his leather apron and pressed his soldering iron into a wet sponge. The hiss reminded Juliette of a ill-tempered cat who used to live in the pump room, fussing at her from the darkness. “That Lukas fellow pulling you away?” Walker asked.

Juliette was reminded that Walker was no friend to open spaces, but he was a friend to porters. And they were friendly with his coin.

“That’s part of it,” she admitted. She pulled out a stool and sank against it, studied her hands, which were scraped and stained with grease. “The other part is that this digging business is going to take a while, and you know how I get when I sit still. I’ve got another project I’ve been thinking on. It’s going to be even less popular than this one here.”

Walker studied her for a moment, glanced up at the ceiling, and then his eyes widened. Somehow, he knew precisely what she was planning. “You’re like a bowl of Courtnee’s chili,” he whispered. “Making trouble at both ends.”

Juliette laughed, but also felt a twinge of disappointment that she was so transparent. So predictable.

“I haven’t told Lukas yet,” she warned him. “Or Peter.”

Walker scrunched up his face at the second name.

“Billings,” she said. “The new sheriff.”

“That’s right.” He unplugged his soldering iron and dabbed it against the sponge again. “I forget that ain’t your job no more.”

It hardly ever was , she wanted to say.

“I just want to tell Solo that we’re nearly underway with the digging. I need to make sure the floods are under control over there.” She gestured to his radio, which could do far more than broadcast up and down a single silo. Like the radio in the room beneath IT’s servers, this unit he had built was capable of broadcasting to other silos.

“Sure thing. Shame you aren’t leaving in a day or two. I’m almost done with the portable.” He showed her a plastic box a little larger than the old radios she and the deputies used to wear on their hips. It still had wires hanging loose and a large external battery attached. “Once I get done with it, you’ll be able to switch channels with a dial. It piggybacks the repeaters up and down both silos.”