“Ma’am?”
Mayor Jahns turned away from the sight of the dead hills cradling her recently deceased sheriff. She turned to find Deputy Marnes standing by her side.
“Yes, Marnes?”
“You asked for these.”
Marnes placed three manila folders on the cafeteria table and slid them toward her through the scattered crumbs and juice stains of last night’s cleaning celebration. Jahns set her knitting aside and reluctantly reached for the folders. What she really wanted was to be left alone a little longer to watch rows of knots become something. She wanted to enjoy the peace and quiet of this unspoiled sunrise before the grime and the years dulled it, before the rest of the upper silo awoke, rubbed the sleep from their eyes and the stains from their consciences, and came up to crowd around her in their own plastic chairs and take it all in.
But duty beckoned: she was mayor by choice, and the silo needed a sheriff. So Jahns put aside her own wants and desires and weighed the folders in her lap. Caressing the cover of the first one, she looked down at her hands with something between pain and acceptance. The backs of them appeared as dry and crinkled as the pulp paper hanging out of the folders. She glanced over at Deputy Marnes, whose white mustache was flecked with the occasional black. She remembered when the colors were the other way around, when his tall, thin frame was a mark of vigor and youth rather than gaunt fragility. He was handsome still, but only because she knew him from long ago, only because her old eyes still remembered.
“You know,” she told Marnes, “we could do this different this time. You could let me promote you to sheriff, hire yourself a deputy, and do this proper.”
Marnes laughed. “I’ve been deputy almost as long as you’ve been mayor, ma’am. Don’t figure on being nothing else but dead one day.”
Jahns nodded. One of the things she loved about having Marnes around was that his thoughts could be so black as to make hers shine gray. “I fear that day is rapidly approaching for us both,” she said.
“Truer than true, I reckon. Never figured to outlive so many. Sure as sin don’t see me outliving you.” Marnes rubbed his mustache and studied the view of the outside. Jahns smiled at him, opened the folder on top, and studied the first bio.
“That’s three decent candidates,” Marnes said. “Just like you asked for. Be happy to work with any of them. Juliette, I think she’s in the middle there, would be my first pick. Works down in Mechanical. Don’t come up much, but me and Holston . . .” Marnes paused and cleared his throat.
Jahns glanced over and saw that her deputy’s gaze had crept toward that dark crook in the hill. He covered his mouth with a fist of sharp knuckles and faked a cough.
“Excuse me,” he said. “As I was sayin’, the sheriff and me worked a death down there a few years back. This Juliette—I think she prefers Jules, come to think of it—was a right shiner. Sharp as a tack. Big help on this case, good at spotting details, handling people, being diplomatic but firm, all that. I don’t think she comes up past the eighties much. A down-deeper for sure, which we ain’t had in a while.”
Jahns sorted through Juliette’s folder, checking her family tree, her voucher history, her current pay in chits. She was listed as a shift foreman with good marks. No history in the lottery.
“Never married?” Jahns asked.
“Nope. Something of a johnboy. A wrencher, you know? We were down there a week, saw how the guys took to her. Now, she could have her pick of them boys but chooses not to. Kind of person who leaves an impression but prefers to go it alone.”
“Sure seems like she left an impression on you,” Jahns said, regretting it immediately. She hated the jealous tone in her own voice.
Marnes shifted his weight to his other foot. “Well, you know me, Mayor. I’m always sizing up candidates. Anything to keep from bein’ promoted.”
Jahns smiled. “What about the other two?” She checked the names, wondering if a down-deeper was a good idea. Or possibly worried about Marnes’s having a crush. She recognized the name on the top folder. Peter Billings. He worked a few floors down in Judicial, as a clerk or a judge’s shadow.
“Honestly, ma’am? They’re filler to make it seem fair. Like I said, I’d work with them, but I think Jules is your girl. Been a long time since we had a lass for a sheriff. Be a popular choice with an election comin’ up.”
“That won’t be why we choose,” Jahns said. “Whoever we decide on will probably be here long after we’re gone—” She stopped herself as she recalled having said the same thing about Holston, back when he’d been chosen.
Jahns closed the folder and returned her attention to the wallscreen. A small tornado had formed at the base of the hill, the gathering dust whipped into an organized frenzy. It built some steam, this small wisp, as it swelled into a larger cone, spinning and spinning on a wavering tip like a child’s top as it raced toward sensors that fairly sparkled in the wan rays of a clear sunrise.
“I think we should go see her,” Jahns finally said. She kept the folders in her lap, fingers like rolled parchment toying with the rough edges of handmade paper.
“Ma’am? I’d rather us fetch her up here. Do the interview in your office like we’ve always done. It’s a long way down to her and an even longer way back up.”
“I appreciate the concern, Deputy, I do. But it’s been a long while since I’ve been much past the fortieth. My knees are no excuse not to see my people—” The mayor stopped. The tornado of dust wavered, turned, and headed straight for them. It grew and grew—the wide angle of the lens distorting it into a monster much larger and more fierce than she knew it to actually be—and then it blew over the sensor array, the entire cafeteria descending into a brief darkness until the zephyr caromed past, retreating across the screen in the lounge and leaving behind it a view of the world now tainted with a slight, dingy film.
“Damn those things,” Deputy Marnes said through gritted teeth. The aged leather of his holster squeaked as he rested his hand on the butt of his gun, and Jahns imagined the old deputy out on that landscape, chasing the wind on thin legs while pumping bullets into a cloud of fading dust.
The two of them sat silent a moment, surveying the damage. Finally, Jahns spoke.
“This trip won’t be about the election, Marnes. It won’t be for votes, either. For all I know, I’ll run again unopposed. So we won’t make a deal of it, and we’ll travel light and quiet. I want to see my people, not be seen by them.” She looked over at him, found that he was watching her. “It’ll be for me, Marnes. A getaway.”
She turned back to the view.
“Sometimes . . . sometimes I just think I’ve been up here too long. The both of us. I think we’ve been anywhere too long . . .”
The ringing of morning footsteps on the spiral staircase gave her pause, and they both turned toward the sound of life, the sound of a waking day. And she knew it was time to start getting the images of dead things out of her mind. Or at least to bury them for a while.
“We’ll go down and get us a proper gauge of this Juliette, you and me. Because sometimes, sitting here, looking out on what the world makes us do—it needles me deep, Marnes. It needles me straight through.”
They met after breakfast in Holston’s old office. Jahns still thought of it as his, a day later. It was too early for her to think of the room as anything else. She stood beyond the twin desks and old filing cabinets and peered into the empty holding cell while Deputy Marnes gave last-minute instructions to Terry, a burly security worker from IT who often held down the fort while Marnes and Holston were away on a case. Standing dutifully behind Terry was a teenager named Marcha, a young girl with dark hair and bright eyes who was apprenticing for work in IT. She was Terry’s shadow; just about half of the workers in the silo had one. They ranged in age from twelve to twenty, these ever-present sponges absorbing the lessons and techniques for keeping the silo operational for at least one generation more.