Karma of the Silo: The Collection Read online

  “Sure, Dylan.” He holds out the metal cup with his name on it and I pour in a little more juice. I know that it has some level of drugs in it—but so does all the water in the Silo, and it is impossible to keep the kids from drinking whatever they are feeding us. It seems that the dosage rises and falls. Over the years, even though I’m not drinking the stuff, I have been able to detect changes in the loopiness of the population. There must be a reason it ebbs and flows, but I don’t know why. Perhaps the powers that be are searching for the perfect sweet spot—a citizenry acquiescent but not stupid.

  The bigger question is who are the powers that be?

  Dylan takes his juice and immediately spills it when he trips over Sven’s foot. Before either one can yell or cry, I swoop in with the rag I keep in my desk. Getting down on my hands and knees to wipe up the spill, I feel dizzy. And a little sick to my stomach.

  I carefully finish the task and go back to my desk, bringing Dylan by the hand for another cup of juice. This time he makes it successfully back to his table with the drink still in his cup.

  Phylla, a little girl with red hair and a mischievous smile, comes up to me to ask for another cookie. “Don’t you want a cookie, teacher?” She picks one off the plate and offers it to me.

  I gently push it away, shaking my head. “No thanks, Phylla. I don’t like this kind of cookie.”

  Her eyes widen. “I love this kind of cookie!”

  The door swings open, and I turn to see who it is. Rose is standing there, clearly breathless and upset. She gestures to me to come over.

  “Delta,” she says. “Delta…” I can’t tell whether it is emotion or exertion that makes it impossible for her to speak.

  “What?” I say. I am afraid.

  “Delta… and her boyfriend… this morning, before she was supposed to get married.” Her voice is a hoarse whisper as she leans toward me and stares into my eyes with her young ones. “They snuck out together. They held hands.”

  My throat constricts. I nod for her to go on.

  “They jumped.”

  22

  My hand clamped over my mouth, I run to the bathroom and vomit. Sobs rack my body, and my stomach is in spasms.

  I pull the door closed behind me and hope that the children will be all right alone for a minute.

  Delta. Delta and Jared. Unbidden, a vision of the two of them comes to me. They are as beautiful as young colts, climbing the railing before the daytime lights brighten up. She takes his hand and they leap, flying into the depths, bodies smashed on impact.

  Dead. And for what?

  23

  I walk down the hall to Grace’s door. My body feels somehow disconnected.

  When I knock, I hear her say, “Come in.” I swing the door open and stand still.

  Here is my baby, Athena. I have a sudden gruesome vision of Athena’s body, mangled beyond identification, at the bottom of a stairway landing. I can feel my vision narrowing to a pinpoint.

  “Honey—Karma. Sit down.” Grace supports me as I move toward a chair, letting myself lean downward until I hit it.

  “Mommy?” It’s Athena, her eyes looking worried. She is trying to climb into my lap.

  “Athena, not now, dear,” Grace says. “Why don’t you go into the kitchen and find Mommy a cookie?”

  Athena trots off. Grace pats my hand and gazes into my face. “What is it? Are you all right?”

  “I… no, I’m not all right.” I notice that I am trembling. My heart is beating twice as fast as normal. From Grace’s kitchen come the smells of old vegetables and cooking oils. I feel as though I am going to vomit again.

  Leaning my head down between my legs, I gasp, “Sick.”

  Grace grabs a metal bucket from somewhere and puts it under me. I let out the sour sick and she hands me a rag to wipe my mouth.

  “You’re white as a sheet, Karma. Is your husband home yet? I don’t think you should be alone.”

  Athena has come back with a cookie for me and one for herself. I smile as well as I can, but I don’t take the cookie. My throat is raw, and I can only croak. “No. He’s not home yet. Not sure… when.”

  Grace turns to Athena again. “Sweetheart, get your Mommy a wet rag please. Can you do that? In the kitchen.”

  Athena nods, happy to be of service. “I’m almost six,” she says.

  “You certainly are,” Grace says, patting her head. “Such a big girl now. Run along and get that rag.”

  Athena leaves the room and Grace looks at me, her wrinkled face concerned. “Could you be pregnant, Karma?”

  My mouth falls open. It can’t be. “No. No, I’m just upset because a girl I know… a girl and a boy… they jumped.”

  “I heard. I understand she wanted to marry her young man.” Grace walks slowly to the other side of the small room and puts the smelly pail as far away from us as possible. “I don’t know when they decided that girls couldn’t choose their own husbands. That’s a new twist.”

  She places the rag across the top of the bucket. “Still, both of them jumping—two beautiful young people despairing like that. Giving up on the future. I don’t know why they’d do such a terrible thing.” Her mouth purses up. “Actually, I do know. Some days I question why I even bother to get up in the morning. There surely isn’t much to live for, since my husband Al died last year.”

  She comes back to me and pats my hand again. “But I don’t mean to go on about me and my lonesome self, Karma, with you in your condition.”

  I am starting to feel better physically, if not emotionally. “What condition?”

  Grace is smiling, but not in a superior way. “How old are you, Karma?”

  “Um… 37, I’m pretty sure.”

  “And you told me someone took that diaphragm I set you up with, so you’re unprotected—have you and hubby been having sex?”

  “Of course.” I feel a strange twinge of guilt admitting this, as though I was being unfaithful to my real husband. “But only as often as I have to.”

  She laughs. “You’re healthy, you’re young, you’re having unprotected sex. You’re nauseated and vomiting. Let me see your fingers.”

  I hold up my left hand. Even I can see that the fake wedding ring I somehow got is tighter than it normally is.

  “And your period?”

  With a sinking heart I realize that she could be right. I haven’t been keeping track the way I usually do… but I did miss this month. My hand goes to my head and I gasp.

  “Oh no. It can’t be. I don’t want….”

  I think I might be sick again. Children are throwing themselves to their deaths and I could be bringing another baby into this hellhole. I look up at the gray-haired woman and hear myself whispering. “I don’t want to have a baby. I can’t have another baby. Are you sure?”

  Grace nods gently. “Karma, I think it’s safe to say that the rabbit died.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Old expression. It was old even when I was born, back in 1990. Ancient stuff. Like me.” She gives a sad-sounding chuckle.

  Athena comes back into the room, water dripping from the rag in her hand. She puts it up to my cheek, getting my coveralls wet. “You feel better now, Mommy?”

  Grace moves toward the door to her bedroom. “Let me get you something before you go back to your place.”

  I relax under Athena’s sweet, if damp, ministrations until Grace returns. She hands me a small package tied with string.

  “Some strong herbs here, Karma. To give you some options. Make them into a tea. It will be bitter.”

  “Thank you,” I say, standing up. I hold onto the back of the chair until the dizziness passes.

  “Karma…” Grace reaches out to take my arm. “This tea is powerful. It will help you if you don’t like where you are headed. Do you understand me?”

  And then I get it. I am startled at her calm suggestion. I haven’t even had time to process this.

  I nod. “I… I’m not sure what to do. I’m not sure what I want to do
.”

  “Think about it. But don’t think too long. This is effective only for the early days.”

  “Grace, I don’t even know for sure…” I look at Athena and stop.

  “No harm done, then, if you drink a little bitter tea.” Grace gives a small smile and leads me to the door. “But I suspect that you are.”

  Leaning down to Athena, Grace says, “Now, big girl, do you think you can help your Momma get safely back down the hall to where you live?”

  “I sure can,” Athena says, as she opens the door and leads me by the hand into an uncertain future.

  24

  I lie in bed staring at the ceiling. Can Grace be right? Am I carrying another child? This one, Rick’s, for sure.

  I am starting to believe that it is so. My body feels the way it did when I was carrying Athena. As though some great process is gearing up again.

  And I am terrified. Life in this underground hell is bad enough for me… but at least I have memories of another way of being. I grew up in the sunshine and felt the wind.

  What kind of life would I be bringing another baby into?

  I sink into dreams where a swarm of children chases past me on the stairway, screaming. Their feet are on fire as they race upward to get off the burning steps. Higher they go, until one of them mounts a rail and jumps. A body flies past me, and then two more. Finally, dozens of melting children, their faces an agony of screams, like an old painting I remember seeing. Silent now, frozen in contortions as they fall, an endless stream of pain.

  The last one is Athena.

  25

  The children have had their lunch and the classroom is mostly quiet, but Dylan and Phylla are tussling over a set of wooden blocks. I feel as though my head will explode. Everything about my body aches.

  I try to keep my voice calm.

  “Dylan, honey, we have another set. I think Phylla was playing with those blocks already.”

  There is a noise and the door opens. It’s Delta’s father and a powerfully built woman, whom I recognize as Copeland, the Sheriff.

  Copeland comes toward me and I see that she is carrying handcuffs. Who can she be after? There are only children here.

  “Can I help you?” I ask, as several children cluster around me, touching my coveralls, sensing the tension.

  “You’re under arrest, Karma,” says Jeff from IT, as the Sheriff locks the handcuffs around my wrists with stunning efficiency.

  “Mommy!” Athena screams.

  26

  The long night stretches ahead of me as I sit in the cell. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

  One by one my “art students” have come to visit me in here today, most of them crying, and all of them bewildered. I am afraid of what will come of them. I am afraid that if they keep meeting and sharing their memories of the time before, they will be discovered. I am afraid that if they stop meeting, they will despair.

  What will be done to these children if I am sent out to Clean? I cannot bear the thought that my attempts to help them survive life in the Silo will become the reason they are punished. What punishment could be devised? More, stronger drugs to make them forget? I shudder at the thought.

  And what about my Athena? Sometimes it seems that Rick merely tolerates her. He may well know that she is not his daughter. He is not a cruel man, but I could certainly imagine him ignoring her if I were not around.

  I envision a Silo without me, Athena raised by some new, uncaring stepmother, perhaps being pushed aside for another child that her father prefers.

  My head throbs. I close my eyes, clenching my fists and trying to rid my mind of such thoughts. The sheets, bunched beneath my hands on the small bed, are the only reason my fingernails do not pierce my skin.

  Opening my eyes again I watch the clouds swirl before me as the sun—the meager sun that we can see through the cell wallscreen—sinks. I have never seen this view before. The camera I can see from on this side captures different hills. The same brown hills, of course, and the same toxic gray clouds as on the cafeteria screen. But somehow, to see something different is in itself amazing. Not that I have looked at the cafeteria view much since Andy’s body became a feature of the scenery, his suit rotting away and his body gradually doing the same inside the peeling layers.

  I shiver at the specter of my own body out there, encased in a worthless suit, lying there decaying as my daughter, her daughter, and generations to come live and die locked in this mausoleum below the earth.

  Surely they will send me out for Cleaning. It won’t matter that the lenses have been buffed mere months ago by the Cleaner before me. There has been tension in the Silo—anger and agitation, particularly since young Delta and Jared joined hands and jumped—and even the most obedient citizens know that there is something wrong when young people are forced into a desperate death because of the rigidity of their elders.

  Such tragedy calls for a response, even if that response is absurd. Something dramatic and satisfying. A casting out of the wrong, so that they can begin anew, cleansed of the past.

  I am likely to be the sacrificial lamb.

  I hear a noise in the hallway. Reluctantly, I pull my gaze away from the view. As toxic as it is, to see the Outside is incredible after all the years in here.

  Rick stands outside the bars. I am surprised to see him. I don’t know what I expected, or if I thought he’d ignore me, but I certainly didn’t imagine I would see him, fists gripping the bars, with tears in his eyes.

  “Why did you do it?” he asks.

  “Do what?” I have done so many things of which he wouldn’t approve, I can’t guess what he means.

  “You… you tried to stop our baby.”

  Does he mean the diaphragm? The tea that presumably would have ended the pregnancy? I think I am damned in any case, but if there is even a sliver of a chance I will get out of this cell to go back to live with—to live for—Athena, I will not give him any potential ammunition.

  “I… what do you mean?”

  “Karma… I love you. I will do whatever I can for you. But I don’t have unlimited power. And you have hurt me.” He thumbs the moisture from the corners of his eyes. I am astonished.

  With that he turns and leaves. For a moment, I don’t move. I’ve never heard language like this from Rick. He spoke to me as if he knew that I was capable of thinking, capable of something those on the happy juice are not—remembering and reasoning and making choices. Has he always known I am more than I’ve been pretending to be?

  The merest glow is still visible in the swirling sky before me, now so dark that the clouds are like shadows of shadows layered one upon the other. I feel blessed to have this view. I can see what remains of the world without having to gaze upon Andy’s disintegrating suit and body.

  As the deepest twilight imaginable falls, I believe I actually see a star.

  Any moment I expect someone to show up to talk to me about my fate. They have not explained why I’m in here. Even Sheriff Copeland was mute when she locked me into my cell. Only the Deputy, Timmons, who came to bring me some unappetizing supper on a tray, gave me information.

  “They’re talking,” he said. “Your case hasn’t been decided. Charges not clear.” He didn’t smile, but he gave me a nod, which might have been encouragement, as he slipped the tray in.

  “Thank you,” I said. He left the food about three hours ago, before Rick came.

  Oddly enough, I am glad for the time. Glad for the solitude. Even though it is nerve-wracking not to know whether I will be suited up and sent to die… or set free and left to molder in this concrete coffin until I die naturally… it is nice to have privacy.

  I turn over in my head the idea of dying. I am not afraid to die. What I don’t relish is a terrible, painful death.

  For a moment I imagine my lungs constricting as the toxins break through. The first fall. The spasms. The breathless, poisoned death. And my baby, my Athena, watching my body sit there disintegrating on the wallscreen for the rest of her
life. I also wonder about Rick… will he care if I lie there in a tattered suit?

  I am convinced that I am pregnant—all signs point to it. The bitter tea Grace gave me is still sitting in my bag in the bathroom in our apartment. Would I have used it? A moot point now. I think I would not. As reluctant as I am to bring another child into this world, I am also reluctant to squelch that possibility.

  If there is a God, perhaps he… or she… will lend me some wisdom. Perhaps take the decision out of my hands.

  I sit up. The tea. Of course. Someone must have found it. The same person who took my diaphragm. Was it Rick? Who else would be in our apartment?

  Would Rick turn me in for trying to keep from conceiving?

  There were so many secrets I was keeping… so many reasons that I could be put to Clean. It would take just one.

  All the memories I have. The way I avoid the drugs in the water. Athena’s real parentage. The tiny extra toe I removed… I give an involuntary shiver when I think about that day.

  My conversations with Ethel, so long ago, the first person I found in here who remembered the past—or would admit to it. She got together with what she called the “Rememberers.” Who may all be dead now. Pushed off the stairway by those who had fooled them into thinking they could share safely. Pushed by… maybe by Jeff. Delta’s father.

  My conversations with Andy. Being part of what we called the chain. No one had ever come forward to connect with me again. Were they all gone too?

  The girls I am talking to about the time before. I put my head down in my hands and weep to think about the danger I might be putting them in. Perhaps it would be better to let them suffer alone than encourage sharing knowledge that could get them all killed.

  I lie in the narrow bed in the cell looking out the wallscreen at the darker than dark clouds, seeing an occasional tiny spark of what must be a star. I am glad to know that the stars are still out there. The moon too, I’m sure, though I haven’t seen it in… more than five years. The universe is out there, and I remember it. The truth is out there, and I remember that, too.