4
They were almost down to the fifties before Jahns could think straight. She imagined she could feel the weight of Peter Billings’s contract in her pack. Marnes muttered his own complaints from a few steps behind, bitching about Bernard and trying to keep up, and Jahns realized she was fixated, now. The weariness in her thighs and calves had become compounded by the growing sense that this trip was more than a mistake: it was probably futile. A father who warns her that his daughter won’t accept. Pressure from IT to choose another. Now, each step of their descent could be taken with dread. Dread and yet a new certainty that Juliette was their man. This woman from Mechanical would be convinced to take the job, if only to show Bernard, if only to keep the arduous journey from becoming a total waste.
Jahns was old, had been Mayor a long time, partly because she got things done, partly because she prevented worse things from happening, but mostly because she made little turmoil. She felt like it was about time. Now, while she was old enough for it to not matter the consequences. She glanced back at Marnes and knew the same went for him. Their time was almost up. The best, the most important thing they could do for the silo, was to make sure their legacy endured. No uprisings. No abuses of power. It was why she ran unopposed the last few elections. But now she could sense that she was gliding to the finish while stronger and younger runners were preparing to overtake her. How many judges had she signed off on at Bernard’s request? And now the sheriff, too? How long before Bernard was mayor? Or worse: a puppet master with strings interwoven throughout the silo.
“Take it easy,” Marnes huffed.
Jahns realized she was going too fast. She slowed her pace.
“That bastard’s got you riled up,” he said.
“And you better be as well,” she hissed back at him.
“You’re passing the gardens.”
Jahns checked the landing number and saw that he was right. If she’d been paying attention, she would’ve noticed the smell. When the doors on the next landing flew open, a porter bearing sacks of fruit on each shoulder strode out, the scent of lush and wet vegetation accompanying him and overpowering her.
It was past dinner time, and the smell was intoxicating. The porter, even overburdened, saw that they were leaving the stairwell for the landing and held the door open with a planted foot as his arms bulged around the weight of the large sacks.
“Mayor,” he said, bowing his head and then nodding to Marnes as well.
Jahns thanked him. Most of the porters looked familiar to her, having seen them over and over as they delivered throughout the silo. But they never stayed in one place long enough for her to catch and remember a name, a normally keen skill of hers. She wondered, as she and Marnes entered the hydroponic farms, if the porters made it home every night to be with their families. Or did they even have families? Were they like the priests? She was too old and too curious not to know these things. But then, maybe it took a day on the stairwell to appreciate their job, to fully notice them. The porters were like the air she breathed, always there, always serving, so necessary as to be ubiquitous and taken for granted. But now the weariness of the climb had opened her senses fully to them. It was like a sudden drop in the oxygen, triggering her appreciation.
“Smell those oranges,” Marnes said, snapping Jahns out of her thoughts. He sniffed the air as they passed through the low garden gates. A staff member in green coveralls waved them through. “Bags here, Mayor,” he said, gesturing to a wall of cubbies sporadically occupied with shoulder bags and bundles.
Jahns complied, leaving her kit in one of the cubbies. Marnes pushed hers to the back and added his to the same one. Whether it was to save space or merely his habitual protectiveness, Jahns found the act as sweet as the air inside the gardens.
“We have reservations for the evening,” Jahns told the worker.
He nodded. “One flight down for the rooms. I believe they’re still getting yours ready. Are you here just for a visit or to eat?”
“A little of both.”
The young man smiled. “Well, by the time you’ve had a bite, your rooms should be available.”
Rooms, Jahns thought. She thanked the young man and followed Marnes into the garden network.
“How long since you were here?” she asked the Deputy.
“Wow. A while back. Four years or so?”
“That’s right.” Jahns laughed. “How could I forget? The heist of the century.”
“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” Marnes said.
At the end of the hallway, the twisting spiral of the hydroponic gardens diverged. This main tunnel snaked through two levels of the silo, curving maze-like all the way to the edges of the distant concrete walls. The constant sound of water dripping from the pipes was oddly soothing, the splatters echoing off the low ceiling. The tunnel was open on either side, revealing the bushy green of plants, vegetables, and small trees growing amid the lattice of white plastic pipes, twine strung everywhere to give the creeping vines and stems something to hold. Men and women with their young shadows tended to the plants, all in green coveralls. Sacks hung around their necks bulged with the day’s harvest, and the cutters in their hands clacked like little claws that were a biological part of them. The pruning was mesmerizingly adroit and effortless, the sort of task that only came from day after week after year of practice and repetition.
“Weren’t you the first one to suggest the thievery was an inside job?” Jahns asked, still laughing to herself. She and Marnes followed the signs pointing toward the tasting and dining halls.
“Are we really going to talk about this?”
“I don’t know why it’s embarrassing. You’ve got to laugh about it.”
“With time.” He stopped and gazed through the mesh fencing at a stand of tomatoes. The powerful odor of their ripeness made Jahns’ stomach grumble.
“We were really hyped up to make a bust at the time,” Marnes said quietly. “Holston was a mess during all of this. He was wiring me every night for an update. I’ve never seen him want to take someone down so bad. Like he really needed it, you know?” He wrapped his fingers in the protective grate and stared past the vegetables as if into the years gone by. “Looking back, it’s almost like he knew something was up with Allison. Like he saw the madness coming.” Marnes turned to Jahns. “Do you remember what it was like before she cleaned? It had been so long. Everyone was on edge.”
Jahns had long since stopped smiling. She stood close to Marnes. He turned back to the plants, watched a worker snip off a red ripe tomato and place it in her basket.
“I think Holston wanted to let the air out of the silo, you know? I think he wanted to come down and investigate the thefts himself. Kept wiring me every day for reports like a life depended on it.”
“I’m sorry to bring it up,” Jahns said, resting a hand on his shoulder.
Marnes turned and looked at the back of her hand. His bottom lip was visible below his mustache. Jahns could picture him kissing her hand. She pulled it away.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Without all that baggage, I guess it is pretty funny.” He turned and continued down the hallway.
“Did they ever figure out how it got in here?”
“Up the stairwell,” Marnes said. “Had to be. Though I heard one person suggest that a child could’ve stolen one to keep as a pet and then released it up here.”
Jahns laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “One rabbit,” she said, “confounding the greatest lawman of our time and making off with a year’s salary of greens.”
Marnes shook his head and chuckled a little. “Not the greatest,” he said. “That was never me.” He peered down the hallway and cleared his throat, and Jahns knew perfectly well who he was thinking of.
• • • •
After a large and satisfying dinner, they retired a level down to the guest rooms. Jahns had a suspicion that extra pains had been taken to accommodate them. Every room was packed, many of them double- and triple-booked. And since the cleaning had been scheduled well before this last-minute interview adventure of theirs, she suspected rooms had been bumped around to make space. The fact that they had given them separate rooms, the mayor’s with two beds, made it worse. It wasn’t just the waste, it was the arrangement. Jahns was hoping to be more…inconvenienced.
And Marnes must’ve felt the same way. Since it was still hours before bedtime, and they were both buzzing from a fine meal and strong wine, he asked her to his small room so they could chat while the gardens settled down.
His room was tastefully cozy, with only a single twin bed, but nicely appointed. The upper gardens were one of just a dozen large private enterprises. All the expenses for their stay would be covered by her office’s travel budget, and that money and the fares of the other travelers helped to afford finer things, like nice sheets from the looms and a mattress that didn’t squeak.
Jahns sat on the foot of the bed. Marnes took off his holster, placed it on the dresser, and plopped onto a changing bench just a few feet away. While she kicked off her boots and rubbed her sore feet, he went on and on about the food, the waste of separate rooms, brushing his mustache down with his hand as he spoke.
Jahns worked her thumbs into the soreness in her heels. “I feel like I’m going to need a week of rest at the bottom before we start the climb up,” she said during a pause.
“It’s not all that bad,” Marnes told her. “You watch. You’ll be sore in the morning, but once you start moving, you’ll find that you’re stronger than you were today. And it’s the same on the way up. You just lean into each step, and before you know it, you’re home.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Besides, we’ll do it in four days instead of two. Just think of it as an adventure.”
“Trust me,” Jahns said. “I already am.”
They sat quietly for a while, Jahns resting back on the pillows, Marnes staring off into space. She was surprised to find how calming and natural it was, just being in a room, alone, with him. The talk wasn’t necessary. They could just be. No badge, no office. Two people.
“You don’t take a priest, do you?” Marnes finally asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “Do you?”
“I haven’t. But I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Holston?”
“Partly.” He leaned forward and rubbed his hands down his thighs like he was squeezing the soreness out of them. “I’d like to hear where they think his soul has gone.”
“It’s still with us,” Jahns said. “That’s what they’d say, anyway.”
“What do you believe?”
“Me?” She leaned up from the pillows and rested on one elbow, watching him watch her. “I don’t know, really. I keep too busy to think about it.”
“Do you think Donald’s soul is still here with us?”
Jahns felt a shiver. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had uttered his name.
“He’s been gone more years than he was ever my husband,” she said. “I’ve been married more to his ghost than to him.”
“That don’t seem like the right thing to say.”
Jahns looked down at the bed, the world a little blurry. “I don’t think he’d mind. And yes, he’s still with me. He motivates me every day to be a good person. I feel him watching me all the time.”
“Me too,” Marnes said.
Jahns looked up and saw that he was staring at her.
“Do you think he’d want you to be happy? In all things, I mean?” He stopped rubbing his legs and sat there, hands on his knees, until he had to look away.
“You were his best friend,” Jahns said. “What do you think he’d want?”
He rubbed his face, glanced toward the closed door as a squealing kid thundered down the hallway. “I reckon he only ever wanted you to be happy. That’s why he was the man for you.”
Jahns wiped at her eyes while he wasn’t looking and peered curiously down at her wet fingers.
“It’s getting late,” she said. She slid to the edge of the small bed and reached down for her boots. Her bag and stick were waiting for her by the door. “And I think you’re right. I think I’ll be a little sore in the morning, but I think I’ll feel stronger, eventually.”