They were legends, Juliette insisted. Myths. Like the ghouls parents use to make their children behave. She saw those chapters to mean that tearing a world down was a simple affair; the gravity of human nature tugged willingly. It was the building up afterward that proved complex. It was what to replace injustice with that very few gave thought to. Always with the tearing down, she said, as if the scraps and ashes could be pieced back together.
Lukas disagreed. He thought, and Donald said, that these stories were real. Yes, the revolutions were painful. There would always be a period when things were worse. But eventually, they get better. People learn from their mistakes. This is what he had tried to convince her of one night after a call from Donald had kept them up through the dim time. Jules, of course, had to get in the last word. She had taken him up to the cafeteria and had pointed to the glow over the horizon, to the lifeless hills, to the rare glint of sunlight on decrepit towers. “Here is your world made better,” she had told him. “Here is man well learned from his mistakes.”
Always with the last word, though Lukas had more to say. “Maybe this is the bad time that comes before,” he had whispered into his coffee. And Juliette, for her part, had pretended not to hear.
The pages beneath Lukas’s fingers pulsed red. He glanced up at the lights overhead, now flashing with the incoming call. There was a buzzing from the comm server, a blinking indicator over the very first slot. He gathered the headset and untangled the cord, slotted it into the receiver.
“Hello?” he said.
“Lukas.” The machine removed all intonation from the voice, all emotion. Except for disappointment. That it was not Juliette who answered elicited a letdown that could be felt if not quite heard. Or perhaps it was all in Lukas’s head.
“Just me,” he said.
“Very well. Just so you know, I have pressing matters here. Our time is short.”
“Okay.” Lukas found his place in the book. He skipped down to where they’d previously left off. These talks reminded him of his studies with Bernard, except now he had graduated from the Order to the Legacy. And Donald was swifter than Bernard, more open with his answers. “So… I wanted to ask you something about this Rousseau guy—”
“Before we do,” Donald said, “I need to implore you again to stop with the digging.”
Lukas closed the book on his finger, marking his place. He was glad Juliette had agreed to attend the Town Hall. She got animated whenever this topic came up. Because of an old threat she’d made, Donald seemed to think they were digging toward him, and she made Lukas vow to leave the lie alone. She didn’t want them finding out about her friends in 17 or her plans to rescue them. Lukas found the ruse uncomfortable. Where Juliette distrusted this man — who had warned them both that their home could be shut down at any time through mysterious means — Lukas saw someone trying to help them at some cost to himself. Jules thought Donald was scared for his own life. Lukas thought Donald was frightened for them.
“I’m afraid that the digging will have to continue,” Lukas said. He nearly blurted out: She won’t stop, but best for there to be some sense of solidarity.
“Well, my people can pick up the vibrations. They know something is happening.”
“Can you tell them we’re having trouble with our generator? That it’s misaligned again?”
There was a disappointed sigh that the computers couldn’t touch. “They’re smarter than that. What I’ve done is ordered them not to waste their time looking into it, which is all I can do. I’m telling you, nothing good can come of this.”
“Then why are you helping us? Why stick your neck out? Because that’s what it seems like you’re doing.”
“My job is to see that you don’t die.”
Lukas studied the inside of the server tower, the winking lights, the wires, the boards. “Yeah, but these conversations, going through these books with me, calling every single day like clockwork, why do you do it? I mean… what is it that you get out of these conversations?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, a rare lack of surety from the steady voice of their supposed benefactor.
“It’s because… I get to help you remember.”
“And that’s important?”
“Yes. It’s important. It is to me. I know what it feels like to forget.”
“Is that why these books are here?”
Another pause. Lukas felt that he was stumbling accidentally toward some truth. He would have to remember what was being said and tell Juliette later.
“They are there so that whoever inherits the world — whoever is chosen — will know…”
“Know what?” Lukas asked desperately. He feared he was going to lose him. Donald had trod near to this in prior conversations, but had always pulled away.
“To know how to set things right,” Donald said. “Look, our time is up. I need to go.”
“What did you mean about inheriting the world?”
“Next time. I need to go. Stay safe.”
“Yeah,” Lukas said. “You too—”
But his headphone had already clicked. The man who somehow knew so much about the old world had signed off.
15
Juliette had never attended a Town Hall before. Like sows giving birth, she knew such things took place, but had never felt the urge to witness the spectacle. Her first time would be while as mayor, and she hoped it would be her last.
She joined Judge Picken and Sheriff Billings on the raised platform while residents spilled from the hallway and found their seats. The platform they’d put her on reminded her of the stage in the bazaar, and Juliette remembered her father comparing these meetings to plays. She never took him to mean that as a compliment.
“I don’t know any of my lines,” she whispered cryptically to Peter Billings.
The two of them sat close enough that their shoulders touched. “You’ll do fine,” Peter said. He smiled at a young woman in the front row, who wiggled her fingers back at him, and Juliette saw that the young sheriff had met someone. Life was continuing apace.
She tried to relax. She studied the crowd. A lot of unfamiliar faces out there. A few she recognized. Three doors led in from the hallway. Two of the doors opened on aisles that sliced through the rows of ancient benches. The third aisle was pressed against the wall. They divided the room into thirds, much as less-well-defined boundaries partitioned the silo. Juliette didn’t have to be told these things. The people making their way inside made it obvious.
The Up Top benches in the center of the room were already packed, and more people stood behind the benches at the back of the hall, people she recognized from IT and from the cafeteria. The Mids benches off to one side were half full. Juliette noticed most of these residents sat close to the aisle, as near to the center as possible. Farmers in green. Hydroponic plumbers. People with dreams. The other side of the room was nearly bare. This was for the Down Deep. An elderly couple sat together in the front row of this section, holding hands. Juliette recognized the man, a bootmaker. They had come a long way. Juliette kept waiting for more residents of the Deep to show, but it was too much of a hike. And now she recalled how distant these meetings seemed while working in the depths of the silo. Often, she and her friends only heard what was being discussed and what rules were being passed after it had already happened. Not only was it a far climb, but most of them were too busy surviving the day-to-day to trudge anywhere for a discussion on tomorrows.
When the flow of residents became a trickle, Judge Picken rose to begin the meeting. Juliette prepared to be bored half to death by the proceedings. A quick talk, an introduction, and then they would listen to what ailed the people. Promise to make it better. Get right back to doing the same things.