The wheel on the door is a stuck nut, some receding part of her said. It’s a frozen bolt.
And hadn’t she made a reputation as a young shadow for working them free?
Juliette told herself that this could be done. Grease, heat, leverage. Those were the secrets to a piece of metal that wouldn’t budge. She didn’t have any of the three, but she looked around anyway. There was no squeezing back through the outer door; she knew she wouldn’t make it a second time, not that kind of straining. So she had this room. The bench was secured to the wall along the back edge and hung from two chains. Juliette wiggled the chains but didn’t see how they could come free, or what good they would do her anyway.
In the corner, there was a pipe snaking up that led into a series of vents. It must be what delivered the argon, she thought. She wrapped her hands around the pipe, put her feet on the wall, and tugged.
The connection to the vent wiggled; the toxic air had corroded and weakened it. Juliette smiled, set her teeth, and yanked back ferociously.
The pipe came free of the vent and bent at its base. She felt a sudden thrill, like a wild rat standing over a large crumb. She grabbed the free end of the pipe and worked it back and forth, bending and wrenching the fastened end. Metal would snap if you could wiggle it even a little bit, if you did it long enough. She had felt the heat of weakened steel countless times while bending it over and over until it broke.
Sweat beaded on her brow and twinkled in the dim light allowed by her visor screen. It dripped down her nose, fogged the screen, and still she yanked and pushed, back and forth, growing frantic and desperate—
The pipe snapped, taking her by surprise. Just a faint pop bled through her helmet, and then the long piece of hollow metal was free. One end was crushed and twisted, the other whole and round. Juliette turned to the door, a tool now in hand. She slid the pipe through the wheel, leaving as much as she could hanging out the side, just short enough not to brush the wall. With both gloved hands wrapped around the pipe, she hoisted herself and bent at the waist over the pipe, her helmet touching the door. She bounced her weight on the lever, knowing it was a jerking motion that freed a bolt, not a steady force. She wiggled her way toward the end of the pipe, watching it bend a little, worried it might snap in half long before the door budged.
When she got toward the end—maximum leverage—she threw her weight up and down with all her strength, and she cursed as the pipe snapped. There was a loud clang, barely muffled by her suit, and then she collapsed to the floor, landing painfully on her elbow.
The pipe was at an angle beneath her, digging into her ribs. Juliette tried to catch her breath. Her sweat dripped against the visor screen, blurring her view. She got up and saw that the pipe was unbroken. She wondered if it had slipped free, but it was still threaded through the spokes of the large wheel.
Disbelieving, excited, she slid the pipe out the other side. She wrapped her hands around the spokes and leaned into it.
And the wheel.
It budged.
37
Walker made it to the end of the hallway and found himself leaving the comforting confines of a tight corridor to enter the wider entrance hall to Mechanical. The room, he saw, was full of young shadows. They hung out in groups, whispering to themselves. Three boys crouched near one wall, throwing stones for chits. Walker could hear a dozen interwoven voices spilling out of the mess hall across the room. The casters had sent these young ears away while they discussed adult things. He took a deep breath and hurried through that damned open space, focusing on each step, moving one foot ahead of him at a time, each small patch of floor a thing to conquer.
After a short lifetime, he finally crashed into the wall on the other side and hugged the steel panels in relief. Behind him, the shadows laughed, but he was too frightened to care. Sliding across the riveted steel, he grabbed the edge of the mess-hall door and pulled himself inside. The relief was enormous. Even though the mess hall was several times the size of his workshop, it was at least full of crowding furniture and people he knew. With his back to the wall, his shoulder against the open door, he could almost pretend it was smaller. He slumped to the ground and rested, the men and women of Mechanical arguing among themselves, voices rising, agitated, competing.
“She’d be out of air by now, anyway,” Rick was saying.
“You don’t know that,” Shirly said. She was standing on a chair so she could be at least as tall as the others. She surveyed the room. “We don’t know what advances they’ve made.”
“That’s because they won’t tell us!”
“Maybe it’s gotten better out there.”
The room quieted with this last. Waiting, perhaps, to see if the voice would dare speak again and break its anonymity. Walker studied the eyes of those facing his way. They were wide with a mixture of fear and excitement. A double cleaning had removed some taboos. Shadows had been sent away. The adults were feeling frisky and free to speak forbidden thoughts.
“What if it has gotten better?” someone else asked.
“Since two weeks ago? I’m telling you guys, it’s the suits! They figured out the suits!” Marck, an oilman, looked around at the others, anger in his eyes. “I’m sure of it,” he said. “They’ve sorted the suits and now we have a chance!”
“A chance to what?” Knox growled. The grizzled head of Mechanical sat at one of the tables, digging into a breakfast bowl. “A chance to send more of our people out to wander the hills until they run out of air?” He shook his head and took another bite, then jabbed at the lot of them with his spoon. “What we need to be talking about,” he said, chewing, “is this sham of an election, this rat-ass mayor, and us kept in the dark down here—!”
“They didn’t figure out the suits,” Walker hissed, still breathless from his ordeal.
“We’re the ones who keep this place humming,” Knox continued, wiping his beard. “And what do we get? Busted fingers and ratshit pay. And now? Now they come and take our people and send them out for a view we don’t care about!” He slammed the table with his mighty fist, sending his bowl hopping.
Walker cleared his throat. He remained crouched on the floor, his back against the wall. No one had seen him enter or heard him the first time. Now, while the room was scared quiet by Knox, he tried again.
“They did not figure out the suits,” he said, a little louder this time.
Shirly saw him from her perch. Her chin dropped, her mouth hanging open. She pointed, and a dozen other heads turned to follow.
They gaped at him. Walker was still trying to catch his breath and must’ve looked near death. Courtnee, one of the young plumbers who was always kind to him whenever she stopped by his workshop, left her seat and hurried to his side. She whispered his name in surprise and helped him to his feet, urging him to come to the table and take her chair.
Knox slid his bowl away from himself and slapped the table. “Well, people are just wandering all over the damned place now, aren’t they?”
Walker looked up sheepishly to see the old foreman chief smiling through his beard at him. There were two dozen other people staring at him, all at once. Walker half waved, then stared down at the table. It was suddenly too many people.