“Sit,” Bernard said. He put the box down on the table, and he and Sims began emptying its contents while Lukas lowered himself into a chair.
“Vacation chits,” Sims said, pulling out the stack of paper coupons. Lukas watched the way the man’s arms rippled with muscle with even the slightest movement. Sims had been a tech once, until his body kept growing and made him too obviously suited for other, less cerebral, endeavors. He lifted the chits to his nose, took a sniff, and recoiled. “Smells like sweaty greaser,” he said.
“Counterfeit?” Bernard asked.
Sims shook his head. Bernard was inspecting the small wooden box. He shook it and rapped it with his knuckles, listening to the rattle of chits inside. He searched the exterior for a hinge or clasp.
Lukas almost blurted out that the top slid, that it was so finely crafted you could barely see the joints and that it took a bit of effort. Bernard muttered something and set the box aside.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Lukas asked. He leaned forward and grabbed the box, pretended to be inspecting it for the first time.
“Anything. A fucking clue,” Bernard barked. He glared at Lukas. “How did this greaser make it over the hill? Was it something she did? One of my techs? What?”
Lukas still couldn’t figure out the anger. So what if she hadn’t cleaned—it would’ve been a double anyway. Was Bernard furious because he didn’t know why she’d survived so long? This made sense to Lukas. Whenever he fixed something by accident, it drove him nearly as nuts as having something break. He’d seen Bernard angry before, but this was something different. The man was livid. He was manic. It was just how Lukas would feel if he’d had such an unprecedented piece of success with no cause to pin it on.
Sims, meanwhile, found the notebook and began flipping through it. “Hey, boss—”
Bernard snatched it from him and tore through the pages, reading. “Someone’ll have to go through all this,” he said. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “There might be some sign of collusion in here—”
“Hey, look,” Lukas said, holding out the box. “It opens.” He showed them the sliding lid.
“Lemme see that.” Bernard dropped the notebook to the table and snatched the wooden box away. He wrinkled his nose. “Just chits,” he said disgustedly.
He dumped them on the table and was about to toss the box aside, but Sims grabbed it from him. “That’s an antique,” the large man said. “You think it’s a clue, or can I . . . ?”
“Yes, keep it, by all means.” Bernard waved his arms out toward the window with its view of the entrance hall. “Because nothing of greater fucking importance is going on around here, is it, shit-for-brains?”
Sims shrugged noncommittally and slid the wooden box into his pocket. Lukas desperately wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere in the silo but there.
“Maybe she just got lucky,” Sims offered.
Bernard began dumping the rest of the box onto the table, shaking it to loosen the manual that Lukas knew was tightly wedged in the bottom. He paused in his efforts and squinted at Sims over the rims of his glasses.
“Lucky,” Bernard repeated.
Sims tilted his head.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Bernard told him.
Sims nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“No, I mean get out!” Bernard pointed at the door. “Getthefuckout!”
The head of security smiled like this was funny but lumbered for the door. He slid out of the room and gently clicked the door shut behind him.
“I’m surrounded by morons,” Bernard said once they were alone.
Lukas tried to imagine this was not meant as an insult directed at him.
“Present company excluded,” Bernard added, as if reading his mind.
“Thanks.”
“Hey, you at least can fix a goddamn server. What the hell do I pay these other ratshit techs to do?”
He pressed his glasses up the bridge of his nose again, and Lukas tried to remember if the IT head had always cursed this much. He didn’t think so. Was it the strain of being interim mayor that was getting to him? Something had changed. It felt strange to even consider Bernard his friend anymore. The man was so much more important now, so much busier. Perhaps he was cracking under the stress that came with the extra responsibility, the pain of being the one to send good people to cleaning—
“You know why I’ve never taken a shadow?” Bernard asked. He flipped through the manual, saw the play on the reverse side, and turned the bound sheets of paper around. He glanced up at Lukas, who lifted his palms and shrugged.
“It’s because I shudder to think of anyone else ever running this place.”
Lukas assumed he meant IT, not the silo. Bernard hadn’t been mayor very long.
Bernard set the play down and gazed out the window, where muffled voices argued once more.
“But I’ll have to, one of these days. I’m at that age where your friends, the people you grew up with, are dropping like flies, but you’re still young enough to pretend it won’t happen to you.”
His eyes fell to Lukas. The young tech felt uncomfortable being alone with Bernard. He’d never felt that before.
“Silos have burned to the ground before because of one man’s hubris,” Bernard told him. “All it takes is improper planning, thinking you’ll be around forever, but because one man disappears”—he snapped his fingers—“and leaves a sucking void behind, that can be enough to bring it all down.”
Lukas was dying to ask his boss what the hell he was talking about.
“Today is that day, I think.” Bernard walked around the long conference table, leaving behind him the scattered remnants of Juliette’s life. Lukas’s gaze drifted over the items. The guilt of going through them himself vanished when he saw how they’d been treated by Bernard. He wished instead that he’d stashed away more of them.
“What I need is someone who already has access to the servers,” Bernard said. Lukas turned to the side and realized the short, full-bellied head of IT was standing right beside him. He moved his hand up to his chest pocket, making sure it didn’t bulge open where Bernard could see.
“Sammi is a good tech. I trust him, but he’s nearly as old as I am.”
“You aren’t that old,” Lukas said, trying to be polite, to gather his wits. He wasn’t sure what was going on.
“There aren’t many I consider friends,” Bernard said.
“I appreciate that . . .”
“You’re probably the closest thing—”
“I feel the same—”
“I knew your father. He was a good man.”
Lukas swallowed and nodded. He looked up at Bernard and realized the man was holding out his hand. Had been for a while. He extended his own to accept, still not sure what was being offered.
“I need a shadow, Lukas.” Bernard’s hand felt small in Lukas’s own. He watched as his arm was pumped up and down. “I want you to be that man.”
39
Juliette forced her way through the inner airlock door and scrambled to get it closed. Darkness overwhelmed her as the heavy door squealed on its hinges and settled against its dry seals. She groped for the large locking wheel and leaned on the spokes, spinning it and sealing the door tight.