“But it all looks the same,” he grumbled as he continued to forge ahead.
Jahns laughed at the manly display and hung back to bend the young mechanic’s ear, recognizing that he worked on Juliette’s shift. He smelled of the down deep, that odor that wafted in whenever a mechanic came up to repair something in her offices. It was the blend born of their work, a mix of perspiration, grease, and vague chemicals. But Jahns was learning to ignore that. She saw that Marck was a kind and gentle man, a man who took her by the arm when a trolley of rattling parts was hurried past, a man who acknowledged every single person they passed in those dim corridors of jutting pipes and drooping wires. He lived and breathed well above his lot in life, Jahns thought. He radiated confidence. Even in the darkness, his smile threw shadows.
“How well do you know Juliette?” she asked him, once the noisy cart rattled out of earshot.
“Jules? I know her like a sister. We’re all family down here.”
He said this as though he assumed the rest of the silo operated differently. Ahead of them, Marnes scratched his head at the next intersection before guessing correctly. A pair of mechanics crowded around the corner from the other direction, laughing. They and Marck exchanged a snippet of conversation that sounded to Jahns like a foreign language. She suspected Marck was right, that perhaps things did work differently in the deepest depths of the silo. People down there seemed to wear their thoughts and feelings on the outside, seemed to say exactly what they meant, much as the pipes and wires of the place lay exposed and bare.
“Through here,” Marck said, pointing across a wide hall toward the sound of overlapping conversations and the tinking of knives and forks on metal plates.
“So, is there anything you can tell us about Jules?” Jahns asked. She smiled at Marck as he held the door for her. “Anything you think we should know?” The two of them followed Marnes to a handful of empty seats. The kitchen staff bustled among the tables, actually serving the food rather than having the mechanics line up for it. Before they’d even situated themselves on the dented aluminum benches, bowls of soup and glasses of water with lime slices bobbing on top were being set out, and hunks of bread torn from loaves and placed directly on the beaten-up surface of the table.
“Are you asking me to vouch for her?” Marck sat down and thanked the large man who portioned out their food and spoons. Jahns looked around for a napkin and saw most of the men and women using the greasy rags that dangled from their back or breast pockets.
“Just anything we should know,” she said.
Marnes studied his bread, sniffed it, then dunked one corner into his soup. A neighboring table erupted with laughter at the conclusion of some story or joke being told.
“I know she can do any job thrown at her. Always could. But I figure you don’t need me to talk you into something you’ve already walked this far to get. I’d imagine your minds are already made up.”
He sipped on a spoonful of soup. Jahns picked up her utensil and saw that it was chipped and twisted, the butt of the spoon scratched like it’d been used to gouge at something.
“How long have you known her?” Marnes asked. The deputy chewed on his soggy bread and was doing a heroic job of blending in with his surroundings, of looking like he belonged.
“I was born down here,” Marck told them, raising his voice over the din-filled room. “I was shadowing in Electrical when Jules showed up. She was a year younger than me. I gave her two weeks before I figured she’d be kicking and screaming to get out of here. We’ve had our share of runaways and transfers, kids from the mids thinking their problems wouldn’t dare follow them—”
He left the sentence short, his eyes lighting up as a demure woman squeezed in next to Marnes on the other side of the table. This new arrival wiped her hands with her rag, stuffed it into her breast pocket, and leaned over the table to kiss Marck on the cheek.
“Honey, you remember Deputy Marnes.” Marck gestured to Marnes, who was wiping his mustache with the palm of his hand. “This is my wife, Shirly.” They shook hands. The dark stains on Shirly’s knuckles seemed permanent, a tattoo from her work.
“And your mayor. This is Jahns.” The two women shook hands as well. Jahns was proud of herself for accepting the firm grip without caring about the grease.
“Pleased,” Shirly said. She sat. Her food had somehow materialized during the introductions, the surface of her soup undulating and throwing off steam.
“Has there been a crime, officer?” Shirly smiled at Marnes as she tore off a piece of her bread, letting him know it was a joke.
“They came to harangue Jules into moving up top with them,” Marck said, and Jahns caught him lifting an eyebrow at his wife.
“Good luck,” she said. “If that girl moves a level, it’ll be down from here and into the mines.”
Jahns wanted to ask what she meant, but Marck turned and continued where he’d left off.
“So I was working in Electrical when she showed up—”
“You boring them with your shadow days?” Shirly asked.
“I’m tellin’ them about when Jules arrived.”
His wife smiled.
“I was studying under old Walk at the time. This was back when he was still moving around, getting out and about now and then—”
“Oh yeah, Walker.” Marnes jabbed a spoon at Jahns. “Crafty fellow. Never leaves his workshop.”
Jahns nodded, trying to follow. Several of the revelers at the neighboring table got up to leave. Shirly and Marck waved good-bye and exchanged words with several of them, before turning their attention back to the table.
“Where was I?” Marck asked. “Oh, so the first time I met Jules was when she arrived at Walk’s shop with this pump.” Marck took a sip of his water. “One of the first things they have her doing—now, keep in mind this is just a waif of a girl, right? Thirteen years old. Skinny as a pipe. Fresh from the mids or somewhere up there.” He waved his hand like it was all the same. “They’ve got her hauling these massive pumps up to Walk’s to have him respool the motors, basically unwrap a mile of wire and lay it back in place.” Marck paused and laughed. “Well, to have Walk make me do all the work. Anyway, it’s like this initiation, you know? You all do that sort of thing to your shadows, right? Just to break ’em down a little?”
Neither Jahns nor Marnes moved. Marck shrugged and continued. “Anyway, these pumps are heavy, okay? They had to weigh more than she did. Maybe double. And she’s supposed to wrestle these things onto carts by herself and get them up four flights of stairs—”
“Wait. How?” Jahns asked, trying to imagine a girl that age moving a hunk of metal twice her weight.
“Doesn’t matter. Pulleys, ropes, bribery, whatever she likes. That’s the point, right? And they’ve got ten of these things set aside for her to deliver—”
“Ten of them,” Jahns repeated.
“Yeah, and probably two of them actually needed respooling,” Shirly added.
“Oh, if that.” Mark laughed. “So Walk and I are taking bets on how long before she cuts and runs back to her old man.”
“I gave her a week,” Shirly said.
Marck stirred his soup and shook his head. “The thing was, after she pulled it off, none of us had any idea how she’d done it. It was years later that she finally told us.”
“We were sitting over at that table.” Shirly pointed. “I’d never laughed so hard in my life.”
“Told you what?” Jahns asked. She had forgotten her soup. The steam had long stopped swirling from its surface.