‘So what do we do now?’ Carter asked. He was a powerful porter, in his early thirties, when men find their strength and have yet to lose their joints, but he looked absolutely beat. His hair clung to his forehead in wet clumps. There were black smears on his face, and you could no longer tell what colour his ’chief had been.
‘Now we burn their crops,’ someone suggested.
‘The crops we eat?’
‘Just the upper farms. They’re the ones who did this.’
‘We don’t know who did this,’ Morgan said.
Mission caught his old caster’s eye. ‘In the main hall,’ he said. ‘I saw… Was that… ?’
Morgan nodded. ‘Roker. Aye.’
Carter slapped the wall and barked profanities. ‘I’ll kill ’em!’ he yelled.
‘So you’re…’ Mission wanted to say Lower chief, but it was too soon for that to make sense.
‘Aye,’ Morgan said, and Mission could tell it made little sense to him either.
‘People will be carrying whatever they like for a few days,’ Joel said. ‘We’ll appear weak if we don’t strike back.’ Joel was two years older than Mission and a good porter. He coughed into his fist while Lyn looked on with concern.
Mission had other concerns besides appearing weak. The people above thought a porter had attacked them. And now this assault from the farmers, so far from where they’d been hit the night before. Porters were the nearest thing to a roaming sentry and they were being taken out by someone, purposefully, he thought. Then there were all those boys being recruited into IT. They weren’t being recruited to fix computers; they were being hired to break something. The spirit of the silo, perhaps.
‘I need to get home,’ Mission said. It was a slip. He meant to say up top. He worked to unknot his ’chief. The thing reeked of smoke, as did his hands and his overalls. He would have to find different overalls, a different colour to wear. He needed to get in touch with his old friends from the Nest.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Morgan asked. His former caster seemed ready to say something else as Mission tugged the ’chief away. Instead, the old man’s eyes fell to the bright red weal around Mission’s neck.
‘I don’t think this is about us at all,’ Mission said. ‘I think this is bigger than that. A friend of mine is in trouble. He’s at the heart of all that’s going wrong. I think something bad is going to happen to him or that he might know something. They won’t let him talk to anyone.’
‘Rodny?’ Lyn asked. She and Joel had been two years ahead at the Nest, but they knew Mission and Rodny, both.
Mission nodded. ‘And Cam is dead,’ he told the others. He explained what’d happened on his way down, the blast, the people chasing him, the gap in the rails. Someone whispered Cam’s name in disbelief. ‘I don’t think anyone cares that we know,’ Mission added. ‘I think that’s the point. Everyone’s supposed to be angry. As angry as possible.’
‘I need time to think,’ Morgan said. ‘To plan.’
‘I don’t think there is much time,’ Mission said. He told them about the new hires at IT. He told Morgan about seeing Bradley there, about the young porter applying for a different job.
‘What do we do?’ Lyn asked, looking to Joel and the others.
‘We take it easy,’ Morgan said, but he didn’t seem so sure. The confidence he displayed as a senior porter and caster seemed shaken now that he was a chief.
‘I can’t stay down here,’ Mission said flatly. ‘You can have every vacation chit I own, but I’ve got to get up top. I don’t know how, but I have to.’
48
• Silo 18 •
BEFORE HE WENT anywhere, Mission needed to get in touch with friends he could trust, anyone who might be able to help, the old gang from the Nest. As Morgan urged everyone on the landing back to work, Mission slunk down the dark and smoky hallway towards the sorting room, which had a computer he might be able to use. Lyn and Joel followed, more eager to find out about Rodny than to clean up after the fire.
They checked the monitor at the sorting counter and saw that the computer was down, possibly from the power outage the night before. Mission remembered all those people with their broken computers earlier that morning at IT and wondered if there would be a working machine anywhere on five levels. Since he couldn’t send a wire, he picked up the hard line to the other Dispatch offices to see if they could get a message out for him.
He tried Central first. Lyn stood with him at the counter, her flashlight illuminating the dials, piercing the haze of smoke in the room. Joel splashed among the shelves, moving the reusable sorting crates on the bottom higher up to keep them from getting wet. There was no response from Central.
‘Maybe the fire got the radio too,’ she whispered.
Mission didn’t think so. The power light was on and the speaker was making that crackling sound when he squeezed the button. He heard Morgan splash past in the hallway, yelling and complaining that his workforce was disappearing. Lyn cupped her hand over her flashlight. ‘Something is going on at Central,’ he told Lyn. He had a bad feeling.
The second way station he tried up top finally won a response. ‘Who’s this?’ someone asked, their voice shaking with barely concealed panic.
‘This is Mission. Who’s this?’
‘Mission? You’re in big trouble, man.’
Mission glanced up at Lyn. ‘Who is this?’
‘This is Robbie. They left me alone up here, man. I haven’t heard from anybody. But everyone’s looking for you. What’s going on down there in Lower?’
Joel stopped with the crates and trained his flashlight on the counter.
‘Everyone’s looking for me?’ Mission asked.
‘You and Cam, a few of the others. There was some kind of fight at Central. Were you there for that? I can’t get word from anyone!’
‘Robbie, I need you to get in touch with some friends of mine. Can you send out a wire? Something’s wrong with our computers down here.’
‘No, ours are all kind of sideways. We’ve been having to use the terminal up at the mayor’s office. It’s the only one working.’
‘The mayor’s office? Okay, I need you to send a couple of wires, then. You got something to write with?’
‘Wait,’ Robbie said. ‘These are official wires, right? If not, I don’t have the authority—’
‘Dammit, Robbie, this is important! Grab something to write with. I’ll pay you back. They can dock me for it if they want.’ Mission glanced up at Lyn, who was shaking her head in disbelief. He coughed into his fist, the smoke tickling his throat.
‘All right, all right,’ Robbie said. ‘Who’m I sending this to? And you owe me for this piece of paper because that’s all I have to write on.’
Mission let go of the transmit button to curse the kid. He thought about who would be most likely to get a wire and send it along to the others. He ended up giving Robbie three names, then told him what to write. He would have his friends meet him at the Nest, or meet each other if he couldn’t make it there himself. The Nest had to be safe. Nobody would attack the school or the Crow. Once the gang was together, they could figure out what to do. Maybe the Crow would know what to do. The hardest part for Mission would be working out how to join them.
‘You got all that?’ he asked Robbie when the boy didn’t reply.
‘Yeah, yeah, man. I think you’re gonna be over the character limit, though. This better come out of your pay.’
Mission shook his head in disbelief.
‘Now what?’ Lyn asked as he hung up the receiver.