Hugh Howey - Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)

The shadowy outline of an adult moved among the small cribs, the shiny clamp of a clipboard and the flash of a metal pen winking from the light of the observation room. The dark shape was obviously tall, with the gait and build of a man. He took his time, noting something as he hovered over a crib, the two shimmers of metal uniting to jot a note. When he was done, he crossed the room and passed through a wide door to join Marnes and Jahns in the waiting room.

Peter Nichols was an imposing man, Jahns saw. Tall and lean, but not like Marnes, who seemed to fold and unfold unsure limbs to move about. Peter was lean like a habitual exerciser, like a few porters Jahns knew who could take the stairs two at a time and make it look like they’d been expressly designed for such a gait. It was height that lent confidence. Jahns could feel it as she took Peter’s outstretched hand and let him pump it firmly.

“You came,” Doctor Nichols said simply. It was a cold observation. There was only a hint of surprise. He shook Marnes’ hand, but his eyes returned to Jahns. “I explained to your secretary that I wouldn’t be much help. I’m afraid I haven’t seen Juliette since she became a shadow twenty years ago.”

“Well, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.” Jahns glanced at the cushioned benches where she imagined anxious grandparents, aunts, and uncles waited while parents were united with their newborns. “Could we sit?”

Doctor Nichols nodded and waved them over.

“I take each of my appointments for office very seriously,” Jahns explained, sitting across from the doctor. “At my age, I expect most judges and lawmen I install to outlive me, so I choose carefully.”

“But they don’t always, do they?” Doctor Nichols tilted his head, no expression on his lean and carefully shaven face. “Outlive you, I mean.”

Jahns swallowed. Marnes stirred on the bench beside her.

“You must value family,” Jahns said, changing the subject, realizing this was just another observation, no harm meant. “To have shadowed so long and to choose such a demanding line of work.”

Nichols nodded.

“Why do you and Juliette never visit? I mean, not once in almost twenty years. She’s your only child.”

Nichols turned his head slightly, his eyes drifting to the wall. Jahns was momentarily distracted by the sight of another form moving behind the glass, a nurse making the rounds. Another set of doors led off to what she assumed were the delivery rooms, where a convalescing new mother right now was probably waiting to be handed her most precious possession.

“I had a son as well,” Doctor Nichols said.

Jahns felt herself reaching for her bag to procure the folders within, but it wasn’t by her side. This was a detail she had missed, a brother.

“You couldn’t have known,” Nichols said, correctly reading the shock on Mayor Jahns’ face. “He didn’t survive. Technically, he wasn’t born. The lottery moved on.”

“I’m sorry—”

She fought the urge to reach over and hold Marnes’ hand. It had been decades since the two of them had purposefully touched, even innocently, but the sudden sadness in the room punctured that intervening time.

“His name was going to be Nicholas, my father’s father’s name. He was born prematurely. One pound eight ounces.”

The clinical precision in his voice was somehow sadder than his processing any feelings might have been.

“They intubated, moved him into an incubator, but there were… complications.” Doctor Nichols looked down at the backs of his hands. “Juliette was twelve at the time. She was as excited as we were, if you can imagine, to have a baby brother on the way. She was one year out from shadowing her mother, who was a delivery nurse.” Nichols glanced up. “Not here in this nursery, mind you, but in the old mid-level nursery. Where we both worked. I was still an intern then.”

“And Juliette?” Mayor Jahns still didn’t understand the connection.

“There was a failure with the incubator. When Nicholas—” the doctor turned his head to the side and reached halfway to his eyes, but was able to compose himself. “I’m sorry. I still call him that.”

“It’s okay.”

Mayor Jahns was holding Deputy Marnes’ hand. She wasn’t sure when or how that had happened. The doctor didn’t seem to notice, or more likely, care.

“Poor Juliette.” He shook his head. “She was distraught. She blamed Rhoda at first, this experienced delivery nurse who had done nothing but work a miracle to give our boy the slim chance he had. I explained this. I think Juliette knew. She just needed someone to hate.” He nodded to Jahns. “Girls that age, you know?”

“Believe it or not, I remember.” Jahns forced a smile and Doctor Nichols returned it. She felt Marnes squeeze her hand.

“It wasn’t until her mother died that she took to blaming the incubator that had failed. Well, not the incubator, but the poor condition it was in. The general state of rot all things become.”

“Your wife died from the complications?” It was another detail Jahns felt she must have missed from the file.

“My wife killed herself a week later.”

Again, the clinical detachment. Jahns wondered if this was a survival mechanism that had kicked in after these events, or a personality trait already in place.

“Seems like I would remember that,” Deputy Marnes said, the first words he’d uttered since introducing himself to the doctor.

“Well, I wrote the certificate myself. So I could put whatever cause I wanted—”

“And you admit to this?” Marnes seemed ready to leap off the bench. To do what, Jahns could hardly guess. She held his arm to keep him in place.

“Beyond the statute of limitations? Of course. I admit it. It was a worthless lie, anyway. Juliette was smart, even at that age. She knew. And this is what drove her—”

He stopped himself.

“Drove her what?” Mayor Jahns asked. “Crazy?”

“No.” Doctor Nichols shook his head. “I wasn’t going to say that. It’s what drove her away. She applied for a change in casters. Demanded to move down to Mechanical, to enter the Shop as a shadow. She was a year young for that sort of placement, but I agreed. I signed off on it. I thought she’d go, get some deep air, come back. I was naive. I thought the freedom would be good for her.”

“And you haven’t seen her since?”

“Once. For her mother’s funeral, just a few days later. She marched up on her own, attended the burial, gave me a hug, then marched back down. All without rest, from what I’ve heard. I try to keep up with her. I have a colleague in the deep nursery who will wire now and then with a bit of news. It’s all focus, focus, focus with her.”

Nichols paused and laughed.

“You know, when she was young, all I saw was her mother in her. But she grew up to be more like me.”

“Is there anything you know that would preclude her from or make her ill suited for the job of silo sheriff? You do understand what’s involved with the job, right?”

“I understand.” Nichols looked over at Marnes, his eye drifting to the copper badge visible through the open, shoddily tied robe, down to the bulge of a pistol at his side. “All the little lawmen throughout the silo have to have someone up top, giving commands, is that it?”

“More or less,” Jahns said.

“Why her?”

Marnes cleared his throat. “She helped us with an investigation once—”

“Jules? She was up here?”

“No. We were down there.”

“She has no training.”

“None of us have,” Marnes said. “It’s more of a… political office. A citizen’s post.”

“She won’t agree to it.”

“Why not?” Jahns asked.