Refuse

9

The hard concrete bunk in the cell was cold and she still had her eyes closed, but now she could hear the voices as they came in and out of her consciousness like waves.

“…SAMIZDAT…”

“…Underground publishing… books… Alexander…”

“…some kind of distribution system… porters, sweepers, supply, maintenance…”

“…copy each book by hand. It’s crazy…”

“…what if she won’t cooperate?”

“…clean. And if she doesn’t, they’ll all likely die anyway…”

“…uprising…”

When she was finally fully conscious, Sheriff Tatum told the deputy to prepare the paperwork for her release. The irony was not lost on her. Paper was to be the medium of her freedom, however temporary.

Another hour passed and she was up and pacing around the cell when Tatum and the deputy came in to release her. The Sheriff seemed slightly more confident, though there were still traces of fear in his eyes if she looked closely enough.

“Leah,” Tatum said, matter-of-factly, “this is all pretty simple. We need information from you, and we’re on a schedule. If you fail to help us, you’ll be condemning your friends to the death penalty. If you help us, you will save your friends, you might save your father too, and you’ll certainly save us all a lot of trouble. Lives are at stake, Leah. If you come through with some information we can use, then the Mayor has promised that all pressure will be brought to bear to try to bring about lesser sentences for your friends. It’s all up to you.”

“You can let me out or lock me up, Sheriff,” Leah said. “I’ll never help you.”

“I think you will.”

“Then you don’t know me.”

“I don’t have to know you, Leah. I know people, and I know how we humans usually want to keep our loved ones from dying. You’re not special in that respect, unless you are so callous that you’d send them to clean just to capture or maintain some feeling of rebellion or revolution. Do you think you’re special? Are you a hero? Are you going to get your friends killed so you can be some kind of martyr? Yeah, I think I know people, Leah. You’ll want to see your friends live, that’s what I think. And maybe you’ll even help them get released back into the silo to live their lives out in peace.”

Peace. She laughed. What is it good for?

She was in her apartment alone. There’d been a single note from her mother saying that she’d gone up-top to visit friends. That was it. Leah didn’t believe it for a minute. It was her mother’s handwriting, but she didn’t believe her mother would have gone without some further explanation. Especially with her daughter locked up in jail. Something fishy going on.

Leah wasn’t particularly close to her mother. They saw the world differently. Her mother was one of them. Her father and her mother barely even got along, and the two weeks her father had been in the down-deep had been the first time she hadn’t heard constant arguing in weeks. So… where’s Mom?

The first couple of days after her release passed like silo syrup. She didn’t go to work, because she wanted the rumors and the gossip about her arrest to die down a bit. She’d called in sick for those days, but she knew that the excuse wouldn’t hold up for long. Everyone knew that she wasn’t sick. She’d been arrested. That meant that she was a criminal. She was an enemy to them, an outcast in the silo. Maybe that was why her mother had taken off.

Leah wasn’t ashamed, though. However much she examined herself, she never developed the feeling that she’d done something wrong. It even surprised her a little bit that she didn’t feel ashamed, and, even though she was too disturbed by the whole situation to return to work, she still had a latent sense of satisfaction that she’d been doing what she thought was right.

Time, however, is often the enemy of courage and discipline. The feeling of strength and the desire to stand steadfast against oppression waned as the hours ticked by. Now, the sense of their being options began to bounce around in her brain. If she did nothing, she knew that every member of the paper guild would be sent out to clean. Ivan would die for her intransigence. He was the best friend she had in the whole silo ever since Alexander died. Maybe… maybe she even loved him. Did she? Why did that thought even come up? And now, if she did nothing, he would soon be dead. Was that fair? What if the whole silo erupted in violence? She’d feel a lot better if she were with her brothers and sisters in chains, she thought. But is that even true? Am I ready to die? When she was in the cell down on 70, she’d felt more than ready to die, but now, she wasn’t so sure.

Doubt. Uncertainty. Fear?

Her biggest area of confusion lay in the connection, or lack thereof, between whatever was going on down in Maintenance, and the papermaking guild. As far as she knew, she and her father were the only ones who provided a connection between the two enterprises. She didn’t know what her father was up to, and she was fairly sure that he was ignorant of her illegal activities. The authorities had two problems in the silo, and apparently they had determined that she was the missing link.

She was deep in thought when it happened. The knock on the door was barely recognizable. Her thoughts fled from her and she caught her breath and waited in trembling silence. After a few moments, she heard it again. She had to do something. Twisting the knob, she felt her heart race in her chest. She cracked the door open slightly and a hand began to push against the door. She thought about resisting but before the thought could produce action, a porter rushed through it and quickly slammed it shut behind himself.

“I have only a few seconds,” he said, as he flipped open his satchel and rifled through the contents. Deep in the bag, buried down in a corner, he found what he was looking for and pulled it out. His hands shook as he opened the small envelope. Inside, there were two notes.

“These are from someone up-top. You’ll know who when you read them. This one first,” he said as he handed her one of the notes.

She flipped it open and read the charcoal words and recognized the firm hand and the slant of the letters and immediately knew its author:

The note was initialed by all of the five guild members who’d been arrested. When she finished reading it, the porter handed her the second note and nodded his head in farewell as he took a step to leave and reached for the door.

“Wait!” Leah said. “Let me give you some chits for the delivery.”

“No. I won’t take them. I didn’t do this for chits.”

“Well… what’s your name?”

“Morgan.”

“Thank you, Morgan.”

The porter smiled at her, and with that, he was gone.