‘Give Jeffery this, and then see that Rodny gets my note. From you personally, okay?’
He grabbed his pack and slid both pieces of correspondence into his courier pouch. There was no mention of payment, just the twinge of guilt Mission felt for even thinking of it. Digging into the pack reminded him of the items he had brought her, forgotten due to the previous night’s brawl.
‘Oh, I brought you these from the farm.’ He pulled out a few small cucumbers, two peppers and a large tomato, bearing a bruise. He placed them on her desk. ‘For your veggie drinks,’ he said.
Mrs Crowe clasped her hands together and smiled with delight.
‘Is there anything else you need next time I’m passing by?’
‘These visits,’ she said, her face a wrinkle of smiles. ‘All I care about are my little ones. Stop by whenever you can, okay?’
Mission squeezed her arm, which felt like a broomstick tucked into a sleeve. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘And that reminds me: Frankie told me to tell you hello.’
‘He should come more often,’ she told him, her voice aquiver.
‘Not everyone gets around like I do,’ he said. ‘I’m sure he’d like to see you more often as well.’
‘You tell him,’ she said. ‘Tell him I don’t have much time left—’
Mission laughed and waved off the morbid thought. ‘You probably told my grandfather the same thing when he was young, and his father before him.’
The Crow smiled as if this were true. ‘Predict the inevitable,’ she said, ‘and you’re bound to be right one day.’
Mission smiled. He liked that. ‘Still, I wish you wouldn’t talk about dying. Nobody likes to hear it.’
‘They may not like it, but a reminder is good.’ She held out her arms, the sleeves of her flowered dress falling away and revealing the bandage once more. ‘Tell me, what do you see when you look at these hands?’ She turned them over, back and forth.
‘I see time,’ Mission blurted out, not sure where the thought came from. He tore his eyes away, suddenly finding her skin to be grotesque. Like shrivelled potatoes found deep in the soil long after harvest time. He hated himself for feeling it.
‘Time, sure,’ Mrs Crowe said. ‘There’s time here aplenty. But there’s remnants too. I remember things being better, once. You think on the bad to remind yourself of the good.’
She studied her hands a moment longer, as if looking for something else. When she lifted her gaze and peered at Mission, her eyes were shining with sadness. Mission could feel his own eyes watering, partly from discomfort, partly due to the sombre pall that had been cast over their conversation. It reminded him that today was his birthday, a thought that tightened his neck and emptied his chest. He was sure the Crow knew what day it was. She just loved him enough not to say.
‘I was beautiful, once, you know.’ Mrs Crowe withdrew her hands and folded them in her lap. ‘Once that’s gone, once it leaves us for good, no one will ever see it again.’
Mission felt a powerful urge to soothe her, to tell Mrs Crowe that she was still beautiful in plenty of ways. She could still make music. Could paint. Few others remembered how. She could make children feel loved and safe, another bit of magic long forgotten.
‘When I was your age,’ the Crow said, smiling, ‘I could have any boy I wanted.’
She laughed, dispelling the tension and casting away the shadows, but Mission believed her, even though he couldn’t picture it, couldn’t imagine away the wrinkles and the spots and the long strands of hair on her knuckles. Still, he believed her. He always did.
‘The world is a lot like me.’ She lifted her gaze to the ceiling and perhaps beyond. ‘The world was beautiful once too.’
Mission sensed an Old Time story brewing like a storm of clouds. More lockers were slammed in the hallway, little voices gathering.
‘Tell me,’ Mission said, remembering the hours that had passed like eyeblinks at her feet, the songs she sang while children slept. ‘Tell me about the old world.’
The Old Crow’s eyes narrowed and settled on a dark corner of the room. Her lips, furrowed with the wrinkles of time, parted and a story began, a story Mission had heard a thousand times before. But it never got old, visiting this land of the Crow’s imagination. And as the little ones skipped into the room and slipped into their tiny desks, they too fell silent and gathered around, following along with the widest of eyes and the most open of minds these tales of a world, once beautiful, and now fairly forgotten.
34
• Silo 18 •
THE STORIES MRS Crowe made up were straight from the children’s books. There were blue skies and lands of green, animals like dogs and cats but bigger than people. Juvenile stuff. And yet, these fantastic tales of a better place left Mission angry at the world he lived in. As he left the up top behind and wound his way down, past the farms and the levels of his youth, he thought of this better world and was dismayed at the one he knew. The promise of an elsewhere highlighted the flaws of the familiar. He had gone off to be a porter, to fly away and be all that he wished, and now what he wished was to be further away than this world would allow.
These were dangerous thoughts. They reminded him of his mother and where she had been sent seventeen years ago to the day.
Past the farms, Mission noted a hint of something burning further down the silo. The air was hazy, and there was the bitter tinge of smoke on the back of his tongue. A trash pile, maybe. Someone who didn’t want to pay the fee to have it ported to recycling. Or someone who didn’t think the silo would be around long enough to need to recycle.
It could be an accident, of course, but Mission doubted it. Nobody thought that way any more. He could see it on the faces of those on the stairwell. He could see by the way belongings were clutched, children sheltered, that the future of the silo hung in the balance. Last night’s fight seemed to prove it.
Mission adjusted his pack and hurried down to the IT levels on thirty-four. When he arrived, there was a crowd gathering on the landing. It was mostly boys his age or a little older, many that he recognised, a lot from the mids. Several stood with computers tucked under their arms, wires dangling, jostling with the throng. Mission picked his way through. Inside, he found a barrier had been set up just beyond the door. Two men from Security manned the temporary gate and allowed only crumpled IT workers through.
‘Delivery,’ Mission shouted. He worked his way to the front, carefully extracting the note Mrs Crowe had written. ‘Delivery for Officer Jeffery.’
One of the security men took the note. Mission was pressed against the barrier by the crush behind him. A woman was waved through. She hurried towards the proper security gate leading into the main hall, smoothing her overalls with obvious relief. There were crowds of young men being given instructions in one corner of the wide hall. They stood to attention in neat rank and file, but their wide eyes gave away their obvious fear.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Mission asked as the barrier was parted for him.
‘What the hell isn’t?’ one of the security guards answered. ‘Power spike last night took out a load of computers. Every one of our techs is pulling a double. There’s a fire down in Mechanical or something, and some kinda violence up in the farms. Did you get the wire?’
Mechanical. That was a long way away to nose a fire. And word was out about last night’s raid, making him self-conscious of the cut on his nose. ‘What wire?’ he asked.
The security guard pointed to the groups of boys. ‘We’re hiring. New techs.’