Karma of the Silo: The Collection Read online

5

  I think it was two years ago that Andy talked about wanting to go outside. It’s hard to know exactly. The passage of time is not a topic for discussion here.

  “I’m curious,” Andy said.

  “You’re nuts,” I said, my hand reaching out to grasp his wrist, and then quickly dropping it. We were sitting in the cafeteria as clumps of people came in and out for lunch. Here, people could talk. There was a constant babble, but that was good.

  Andy was my partner in the chain… the chain connecting those who still remembered a past we were supposed to forget. It was surprisingly easy to talk about the forbidden in the middle of the noisy cafeteria—no one would suspect we would dare discuss the time before out in the open like this.

  “I just want to see,” Andy said, his bushy eyebrows pulled together. “How bad could it be?”

  “Very bad. Bad enough to kill you.”

  “But not right away. They have to have suits or something—I mean, we went to the moon, for God’s sake, Karma, all that technology—”

  “Careful.” I looked around to see if anyone was listening. Andy had crossed a line in mentioning something he remembered about the time before. We could depend upon most people in the Silo to know little and care less about last month, and barely recall last year—but if the wrong person were seated nearby, his words could be fatal.

  I thought I saw a man turn just slightly in our direction as he carried his tray toward the back of the caf. But then he walked past. All was safe.

  I had already lost a friend to “suicide” in the three years we’d been underground. It was easy for someone to get pushed off the spiral staircase when the lights were dimmed for sleeping time.

  Looking back, I kick myself thinking of how foolish Andy and I were that day in the cafeteria, talking so openly. There had been few recent jumpers, so perhaps our guard was down.

  “I’m gonna do it,” Andy said, pushing his chair back with a scrape, “before I lose my nerve… or you talk me out of it.”

  “Then I’m coming with you.” I stood up and felt a surge of glee—why not? Why not go outside, and see what was out there? The worst that could happen is that we would confirm that the air was toxic… and then we’d come back in.

  I smiled as I made my way through the crowds of people taking dirty dishes to the back of the cafeteria.

  But Andy turned suddenly and put his hand on my elbow. “Karma, let me do this alone. We both know it’s a risk—”

  “How do you know?” I held my ground. “They might be grateful for volunteers. Maybe they’ve been doing this all along, sending guys out in suits to check out the air quality—but only at night when the caf is empty. Maybe I’ll be the first woman to go—”

  “No. It’s not smart for you. You’ve got a little girl, a husband… you’re part of the chain. You’re too important. We need your memories to add to what we know—”

  “You’re part of the chain too!” Now I was whispering, but always keeping an artificial smile on my face while I pleaded.

  “Look,” he said, his expression equally bland as we walked slowly across the large room, “just don’t do anything until I see what kind of reception I get. You go back down, and I’ll simply stop in the Sheriff’s office to ask what the procedure is to volunteer.”

  Reluctantly, I nodded. Part of me was crushed, but part of me was relieved. And all of me was worried for Andy.

  “So I’ll meet you here at the usual time next week for lunch?”

  He grinned. “And I’ll tell you all about my great outside adventure.”

  It was only then that they swooped in, two men in white coveralls, startling us both as they grabbed onto Andy’s arms and hauled him, backwards, toward the Sheriff’s office.

  “Hey!” he said, trying to pull out of their grip, his feet scraping desperately against the smooth concrete floor. “What the hell?”

  The look on his face was one of surprise but not panic. He seemed stunned, and his first reaction was an animal instinct to hold onto physical control.

  I started shouting, my voice shrill and unfamiliar. “Where are you taking him? He’s done nothing wrong—” and then I saw Andy make a desperate gesture—his hand managing to reach toward his neck in the ancient throat-cutting signal. Shut up, he was saying. He jerked his head to the left. Get out of here, he was saying. Save yourself.

  And I did.

  The last time I saw Andy was through the wallscreen, as my friend retched and buckled and gasped his last.

  At night, in dreams, I see him die over and over again.

  6

  “Wanna go home, Mommy,” Athena says, and I can see that her eyelids are drooping. She’s sitting up on top of Rick’s shoulders, high above the crowd.

  I, too, am ready to go. I have seen enough of the barren wasteland outside, and the swirling clouds of dust that form and break over the dry ridges in front of us. The view is definitely clearer, but it’s no more reassuring than it ever was.

  For many months I had visited the cafeteria regularly for my lunches with Andy. But in the years since then, I have barely been able to stomach the place.

  At the base of the ridge in front of me are his remains, covered by the now-tattered protective suit that he’d donned in an attempt to shield himself from whatever was out there.

  It was because of Andy that we had enjoyed, for a while, a cleaner view. But it had slowly deteriorated, the dusty grime dimming the wallscreen.

  And now, another Cleaning.

  The body of the second man, in a fresh suit and helmet, lies scant yards past what is left of Andy.

  From what I have heard whispered between the levels, the second Cleaner didn't go willingly. Nevertheless, he has done his scrubbing and left us with a better view of the outside.

  And now we stand and gaze through the newly washed lenses at the toxic environment that keeps us all inside.

  The message is clear.

  7

  Rick pushes the door to our apartment open and carefully hands me Athena while he ducks under the low frame and inside. I squeeze past him through the kitchen and into her sleeping room, then tuck her gently into her narrow bed. I smile to see my little girl so happily exhausted. This was a big trip for her—one of the biggest of her life.

  In quiet moments it hits me how different her growing up years will be from mine. No camping trips in the mountains, smelling the scent of fresh pine and hearing the song of morning birds through the tent walls. No bobbing up and down in the frothing ocean, holding onto Daddy’s hand while waves break and his strong grip keeps her upright. No plane flights to see family on the other side of the country, watching as the sun sets in oranges and pinks over the curvature of the earth.

  I shake myself and try to banish these maudlin ideas. Athena knows nothing about mountains or oceans or sunsets—she doesn’t miss them because she’s never seen them, and she never will. She gets plenty of exercise running around the Silo, and for her the world of the Up Top is glorious and still unlimited, with more space than she can imagine.

  “Mommy,” she says, her eyelids fluttering. “Tell me a story.” Nestling under the covers, she clutches her yarn doll. “Tell me a Helen story.”

  I gasp a bit when I hear my old name. I made the mistake of using it once to tell Athena something about an imaginary little girl who went to the zoo—a place of which she could have no conception. The zoo had animals I knew to be perfectly real—giraffes and elephants and lions—but which seemed quite unbelievable to my daughter.

  Somehow, she clung to the name Helen, though I mentioned it only once. I was petrified that Athena would use it in front of Rick, with what consequences I didn’t know, but I didn’t relish discovering.

  “I’ll tell you a story, honey, but it’s going to be about a girl named… Ella. Okay?” Close enough, I figured.

  “But Helen will be her secret name,” she murmured, half asleep, her lids closed and her breathing regular.

  I shook my head and started a story ab
out a girl with the secret name of Helen, and before I got past “Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Ella, and she climbed up a long long staircase to the top of a statue. The statue was a gigantic lady made of metal and you could look out the windows in her crown and see the water sparkling below…” she was sound asleep.

  8

  “Pros? I can see the Cons, but what are the pros?” I said, trying to keep my voice low and my expression cheerful as I sat across from Andy over a lunch of potatoes, greens, and a meager portion of gristly chicken. We were in the busiest part of the cafeteria, voices raised all around us, and it seemed a safe time to talk.

  “Well,” he said, raising his forkful of salad to the air, “food, for one. We all have enough food. No one goes hungry.”

  I nodded, slowly. “True, though most people didn’t go hungry… before.” I said the last word quietly.

  “Well, maybe not the people we hung around with. In our neighborhoods. In our country.” Andy seemed to realize that even this vocabulary was dangerous. He went back to monosyllables. Raising one finger, he said, “Food. We have.”

  I nodded. “Work. Everyone has work.”

  He dipped his head in agreement and forked a hunk of tomato into his mouth.

  “Education?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Of a sort,” he said. “Rudimentary education. At least in terms of vocational instruction. And apprenticeships.”

  After a minute of thought, I added, “As much indoctrination as education.”

  He smiled. “So that’s not a pro, is it? More of a con.”

  “Right.” I thought for a moment, munching my salad, which held a couple of slices of good tomato but disappointingly soggy greens.

  “One pro is safety,” I said. “Especially for women.”

  “True. At least, you’re not as likely to get raped or murdered.” He stabbed his own tomato, looking sober.

  “Unless they kill you,” I said, and started to grin.

  The two of us stifled our laughter with bites of mushy potatoes, trying not to look like we were having too much fun. Secondary to the brazen risk we were taking in chatting about the time before was the danger of being perceived as an adulterous couple—a crime that would get you some serious punishment in the Silo. But Andy and I were just friends, he a widow still grieving for his wife, and I solidly married to Rick.

  “Cons?” Andy asked.

  “No travel,” I said.

  “No art.”

  “No music, no books, no movies… no romance.” I swallowed once and lowered my voice. “And speaking of romance, did you know they are putting some kind of implants in the baby girls now?”

  He shook his head. “Implants of…?”

  “Birth control,” I said, practically whispering, my head swiveling to the tables around us to make sure everyone else was talking too loudly to hear.

  “In babies?” Andy looked skeptical. “That’s bizarre.” His eyebrows came together as they did when he was thinking. “Did you get one, too?”

  “I don’t… I… guess I don’t really know. They might have done it without my knowing.” For a moment I felt the way I did when I inadvertently drank the water filled with what my friend Ethel used to describe as happy juice. Muddle-headed, my mind as confused as it had been for my first months in the Silo.

  I knew they had placed an implant in Athena’s tiny hip, in a quick operation within a month of her birth. Rick had assured me that it was safe and painless. I hadn’t dared protest too much for fear of arousing suspicion, since playing dumb was a requirement for everyone in the Silo, especially those of us who remembered the past and who were part of the chain.

  Acting passive and dopily acquiescent had become automatic for me by that time. Only something that really threatened Athena’s safety would be critical enough to protest—and even then, since the result of objections would probably be my own death, I was primarily resigned to silence. Plus, in terms of the impact of an implanted birth control device, her reproductive years were decades away.

  But had they planted a contraceptive device in me? Though I saw no evidence, it was certainly possible.

  “So, that’s a con,” I said. “They’ll soon have control over when and if you can procreate. If they don’t already.”

  Andy nodded. He put his hand on the table and began to count off on his fingers.

  “No freedom,” he said. “No knowledge of the world.” Two fingers up.

  “No self-determination.” I poked a slice of tomato with my fork and put it in my mouth.

  He raised another finger.

  “Drugs in the water,” he said, putting up a fourth finger.

  “No sun,” I said, as he added his thumb, splaying his whole hand against the table. “No mountains, beaches, sunsets, stars, moon, clouds—”

  “No rain, wind, snow, ice, lakes, oceans—”

  “No autumn leaves, skiing, flying, sailing, swimming—”

  We both had our hands open flat against the table, fingers spread, eyes glistening.

  “No fire,” he said.

  “No storms,” I said.

  “No forests, horses, orchestras, dancing—”

  “No wife,” he said, and he put his hand to his face to cover the tears. “No wife.”

  9

  Now, we don’t watch the Cleanings. Now, we find it too terrible.

  But the first time, we didn’t know.

  I stood in the cafeteria with hundreds of others, curious to see what Andy would encounter once the doors opened into what looked like a toxic world of swirling dust and dead soil. I was worried for him, but not really afraid. It didn’t seem possible that they would send him out—let him out, since he had been eager to volunteer—simply to die. How foolish that trust seems now.

  Rick stood beside me that day. We had left Athena, who was only three, in the nursery. I had worked out my routine by then—vague and mostly compliant with Rick, sharp and inquisitive with Andy. Somewhere in between for my daytime job. I had left the laundry, where I first worked, and found a position as a teacher in the elementary class for the Up Top. Though I had to remain cautious about revealing my clear memory of the time before, it seemed safe to demonstrate that I had enough intelligence to teach five-year-olds.

  At that point, we didn’t have any idea what was about to happen to Andy. At least I didn’t.

  I hadn’t seen him since the day he was dragged out of the cafeteria, not yet afraid, just stunned at what was happening to him.

  And now, I could see him. Though his face wasn’t visible through the reflective glass on his helmet, and his moves were jerky and impeded by the bulk of the protective suit, I still recognized my friend.

  I knew that when Andy made a slow, balletic but clumsy twirl, he must be awed by the view. Though the landscape featured only the usual menacing gray clouds of dust over barren hills, I figured that it still must be thrilling, for the first time in years, to get a 360 degree view of the sky and the world—what was left of it.

  He went to work right away scrubbing the lenses through which we saw the outside. A cheer went up after the wallscreen view cleared—and we realized that we had been looking through a grimy build-up of dirt and whatever else was flying through the air with the noxious clouds. Somehow Andy’s work with those ingenious pads—wool?—had made all the difference.

  But I was less concerned with the cosmetics of our view than with his health. Though everyone believed the outside air to be toxic, this suit they had put him in seemed to be doing the trick. Andy showed no signs of distress. Perhaps after he had completed the brave task of scrubbing the Silo lenses, he would be welcomed back in, penance completed, cleansed of whatever sins they considered him guilty.

  Rick was right beside me, his hand placed protectively on my shoulder. I was careful to keep both my expression and my body language neutral as the emotions raging through me swung from fear to relief and then back to fear.

  Andy had apparently finished his duties with th
e little cleaning pads, and had returned them carefully to the numbered pockets on his suit. He turned and started to walk away from the wallscreen toward the brown hill in front of us. He seemed to be heading for the ruins of the tall towers I knew to be what was left of Atlanta.

  My breath caught in my throat as I realized how naïve I had been to imagine a triumphant return into the Silo. I would have given anything to have him safe back inside again. What had felt like a prison only moments before seemed like a blessed refuge compared to the wasteland Andy was now shuffling through.

  Keeping my voice carefully neutral, I turned to Rick. “So what happens now?”

  He looked down at me and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  As was so often the case, I imagined I saw something in Rick’s eyes that meant he knew more than he was admitting. But how could he know what Andy’s punishment entailed? Rick wasn’t part of the Sheriff’s staff. And no one had ever gone outside before.

  I turned back to the screen to see Andy start to slow, and then stumble. What was wrong? Had the suit ripped? I couldn’t see any outward reason for his change of pace. Maybe he was simply getting tired.

  But then he fell, clutching his thickly padded hands to his gut. It was all I could do not to scream. He tried to rise again, but clearly could not. For a few feet, he crawled forward, even the awkward suit unable to conceal what looked like spasms. As my friend’s agony became apparent, and he drew what seemed to be painful breaths, his body heaving with the attempt, the mood in the packed cafeteria changed. What had first been curiosity, followed by a celebration after the lenses were cleared of grime, became gasps of horror and disbelieving cries. Shouts came from the crowd.

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Is he…?”

  Women began to sob and men clenched their jaws.

  Andy sank to the ground again and didn’t rise. I wept, ashamed and full of despair. How could I have let this happen to my sweet Andy?

  Rick wrapped his long arms around me.