She rubbed the key, turned it in her hands, and examined it closely.There were no marks or words or numbers that might indicate what it went to.
11
The tiny print on the handmade sheets of paper bent around the Bukovsky quote, and then continued around in a circle on to the top of the page. The words were miniscule—she could barely read them without a magnifying glass—and the author had written the lines in a single swirl, like a pinwheel or a spiral, starting on the very edge of the top of the page and then continuing clockwise until the words reached the middle of the page. In this way, an entire manuscript had been squeezed onto the front and backs of four sheets of paper. She tried to imagine doing this. She wondered how many words the author could write before he’d have to sharpen his charcoal and rest his hand.
Leah wanted to read the manuscript, but she felt an urgency that compelled her to set the pages aside for the moment. She needed to work on the mystery of the key. She looked at it again, rubbed its face, flipped it over in her hands and examined it again. She could not identify a single element of the key that indicated its use. It was different than the apartment keys she was used to, and it had no name or number stamped into it that might give her an indication of where to start looking for an answer.
As she looked closer, she noted that the tooth pattern on the key did remind her of an apartment key—at least it was the nearest thing she could think of to the one she had in her hand. She fished her own key out of her pocket and compared it to the key in her hand. Similar. Not identical, but similar. Maybe it goes to a safe house? Arghh! Where could it be?
She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. She took a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders and arms. She began breathing diaphragmatically and attempted to will her heart rate to decrease.
Who gave me the key? Ivan.
That’s when she realized that she needed to make this more personal. Ivan had given her a note telling her where to find the key. He expected her to know what the key went to, and he showed no doubt that she would figure it out because he didn’t mention it again in the note she’d just read. He expected her to just know! So it was personal. Where could it be?
Alexander.
“Could it be the key to Alexander’s old apartment?” She actually asked this question aloud to herself. Alexander had been dead for two years. Surely they’d assigned the living space to someone else by now. How could she find out? Alexander had lived on 60, three levels down, though he’d worked as a picker in the recycling unit for his whole life. She’d have to go down there to try the key in order to find out.
It took her only a few minutes to make it back to her apartment. She slipped the brass key into her pocket and then pulled on a woolen sweatshirt. She carefully rolled up the four page manuscript and put the roll up her left sleeve. She didn’t want to be carrying any bags or packages because doing that might catch the attention of a porter. She pulled on a cap and left her apartment, locking the door behind her. As she did, she wondered if she’d ever see her home again.
12
The walk down to 60 passed swiftly because Leah busied her mind by going through the events of the past several days in her head, and at some point she began to feel like she was starting to make sense of it all. She didn’t have it completely worked out yet, but she was… just.. just… on the verge of some breakthrough.
Whenever she would pass someone on the stairs, she’d look down and away, maybe peering over the railing towards the down-deep because she didn’t want anyone to recognize her or stop her to ask her questions. From here, you could see all the way down to 99, which was the unofficial start of the down-deep.
She didn’t know what time it was. Time was always a mystery in the silo unless you were the kind of person who paid attention to such things. Leah wasn’t that kind of person. She figured it was late, but didn’t know how late.
When she reached the landing on 60, she loitered for a moment, checking out the situation, seeing if she’d been followed, looking for inquiring eyes and to see if anyone was paying special attention to her. No one was, so she sprinted down the hallway that led to Alexander’s old apartment.
I don’t even know if someone is living here now! The thought was screaming in her head as she stuck the key in the lock, and she closed her eyes before she made the willful decision to try and turn the key. A gentle twist of the wrist and the key turned smoothly in the cylinder, and she heard the locking mechanism tick as the pins all cleared their obstructions, and the door responded to the pressure she applied to it by swinging open slowly to reveal a room not unlike Ivan’s living room. This room was also sparsely furnished, but there was a large desk pushed against one wall, and a heating vent, which was partway up the same wall, was opened. The louvered grill that had once covered the heating vent was lying on the desk. A rope was hanging from the heater vent—one end of it down inside the ducting and the other was tied to the leg of the desk. No human had escaped down the heating vent. The desk was heavy, but not heavy enough to hold the weight of a person. Something else then.
Leah closed the door and made a quick perusal of the living area. The small kitchen looked as if it were used often, and there were a few dirty cups and spoons in the sink. The tiny bedroom had been turned into another work area, and there was a desk and couple of metal shelves in that room, but nothing else of note for her to investigate. Apparently, someone or some group had commandeered the apartment and was using it as a work space.
She’d just started to examine the rope when it went taut. Stepping back a few steps, she could tell from the tension on the rope that something was now hanging on the other end. There were a few sharp metallic raps coming from the vent, then there was silence, and the rope hung still and stiff. For a few moments she just stared at it, uncertain what she should do.
After a minute or so had passed, she decided she’d check the rope, and when she pulled on it, she noted the resistance and that whatever was tied on the other end wasn’t too heavy, so she pulled the rope up slowly, trying her best not to make too much noise as she did.
When the object at the end of the rope cleared the mouth of the heating vent, she saw that there were several books tied to the rope. Homemade books. Books made with black-market paper. She untied the bundle and carefully placed the books on the desk.
The top book caught her attention. The title was written in large print… Lex Rex, and the author was someone named Samuel Rutherford. She had no idea who Samuel Rutherford was, but whoever had published this book had cared a great deal about the content, because the book was completely copied out in charcoal.
The second book looked like a book of poetry. The third and final book was the one that really shook her.
On Literary Freedom, by Alexander Sonjean
…her Alexander!
The book was thick and, like the other books, it had been built by hand. Someone had bound the book by first sewing it with heavy yarn. Then the spine had been dipped in a hard material, like glue or a very stiff wax. She flipped through the pages and she did not recognize the hand, but she recognized the spirit behind the words. Her heart jumped and she almost squealed with delight at the very thought that someone, somewhere, cared enough about Alexander’s words to put them into a book.