The wire and hose turned down a flight of square steps. Jimmy followed them, careful not to trip. Water fell occasionally from the pipes and wires overhead and smacked him on the shoulder and head. The drops twinkled in the beam of his flashlight. Everything else was dark. He tried to imagine being down there when the place was full of water – and couldn’t. It was scary enough while dry.
A smack of water right on the crown of his head, and then a tickle as the rivulet raced into his beard. “Mostly dry, I meant,” Jimmy said, talking to the ceiling. He reached the bottom of the steps. It was only the wire now guiding him along, and tricky to see. He splashed through a thin film of water as he headed down the hall. Juliette said it was important to be there when the pump got done. Someone would have to be around to turn it on and off. Water would continue seeping in, and so the pump needed to do its job, but it was bad for the thing to run dry. Something called an “impeller” would burn, she had told him.
Jimmy found the pump. It was rattling unhappily. A large pipe bent over the lip of a well – Juliette had told him to be careful not to fall in – and there was a sucking, gurgling sound from its depths. Jimmy aimed the flashlight down and saw that the shaft was nearly empty. Just a foot or so of water thrown into turbulence by the fruitless pull of the great pipe.
He pulled his cutters out of his breast pocket and fished the wire out of the thin layer of water. The pump growled angrily, metal clanging on metal, the smell of hot electrics in the air, steam rising from the cylindrical housing that provided the power. Teasing apart the two joined wires, Jimmy severed one of them with his cutters. The pump continued to run for a breath but slowly wound itself down. Juliette had told him what to do. He stripped the cut wire back and twisted the ends. When the basin filled again, Jimmy would have to short out the starter switch by hand, just as she had done all those weeks ago. He and the kids could take turns. They would live above the levels ruined by the floods, tend the Wilds, and keep the silo dry until Juliette came for them.
Silo 18
7
The argument with Shirly about the generator went badly. Juliette got her way, but she didn’t emerge feeling victorious. She watched her old friend stomp off and tried to imagine being in her place. It had only been a couple of months since her husband, Marck, had died. Juliette had been a wreck for a solid year after losing George. And now some mayor was telling the head of Mechanical that they were taking the backup generator. Stealing it. Leaving the silo at the whim of a mechanical failure. One tooth snaps off one gear, and all the levels descend into darkness, all the pumps fall quiet, until it can be fixed.
Juliette didn’t need to hear Shirly argue the points. She could well enough name them herself. Now she stood alone in a dim hallway, her friend’s footsteps fading to silence, wondering what in the world she was doing. Even those around her were losing their trust. And why? For a promise? Or was she just being stubborn?
She scratched her arm, one of the scars beneath her coveralls itching, and remembered speaking with her father after almost twenty years of hardheaded avoidance. Neither of them had admitted how dumb they’d been, but it hung in the room like a family quilt. Here was their failing, the source of their drive to accomplish much in life and also the cause of the damage they so often left behind – this injurious pride.
Juliette turned and let herself back into the generator room. A clanging racket along the far wall reminded her of more … unbalanced days. The sound of digging was not unlike the warped generator of her past: young and hot and dangerous.
Work was already underway on the backup generator. Dawson and his team had the exhaust coupling separated. Raph worked one of the large nuts on the forward mount with a massive wrench, separating the generator from its ancient mooring. Juliette realized she was really doing this. Shirly had every right to be pissed off.
She crossed the room and stepped through one of the holes in the wall, ducked her head under the rebar, and found Bobby at the rear of the great digger, scratching his beard. Bobby was a boulder of a man. He wore his hair long and in the tight braids miners enjoyed, and his charcoal skin hid the efforts of dark digging. He was in every way his friend Raph’s antithesis. Hyla, his daughter and also his shadow, stood quietly at his elbow.
“How goes it?” Juliette asked.
“How goes it? Or how goes this machine?” Bobby turned and studied her a moment. “I’ll tell you how this rusted bucket goes. She’s not one for turning, not like you need. She’s aimed straight as a rod. Not meant to be guided at all.”