羊毛战记 Part 2 Proper Gauge 10

　　10,　　It was lunchtime, but neither of them was powerfully hungry. Jahns nibbled on a cornbar while shewalked, priding herself on “eating on the climb” like a porter. They continued to pass thesetradesmen, and Jahns’s esteem of their profession grew and grew. She had a strange pang of guiltfrom heading down under such a light load while these men and women trudged up carrying somuch. And they moved so fast. She and Marnes pressed themselves against the rail as a downwardporter apologetically stomped past. His shadow, a girl of fifteen or sixteen, was right behind him,loaded down with what looked to be sacks of garbage for the recycling center. Jahns watched theyoung girl spiral out of sight, her sinewy and smooth legs hanging miles out of her shorts, andsuddenly felt very old and very tired.,　　The two of them fell into a rhythmic pace, the reach of each foot hovering over the next tread, asort of collapsing of the bones, a resignation to gravity, falling to that foot, sliding the hand,extending the walking stick forward, repeat. Doubt crept into Jahns around the thirtieth floor. Whathad seemed a fine adventure at sunrise now seemed a mighty undertaking. Each step was performedreluctantly, with the knowledge of how grueling it would be to win that elevation back.,　　They passed the upper water treatment plant on thirty-two, and Jahns realized she was seeingportions of the silo that were practically new to her. It had been a lifetime ago that she’d been thisdeep, a shameful thing to admit. And in that time, changes had been made. Construction and repairswere ongoing. Walls were a different color than she remembered. But then, it was hard to trust one’smemory.,　　The traffic on the stairs lightened as they neared the IT floors. Here were the most sparselypopulated levels of the silo, where less than two dozen men and women—but mostly men—operatedwithin their own little kingdom. The silo servers took up almost an entire floor, the machines slowlyreloading with recent history, having been wiped completely during the uprising. Access to them wasnow severely restricted, and as Jahns passed the landing on the thirty-third, she swore she could hearthe mighty thrumming of all the electricity they consumed. Whatever the silo had been, or had beenoriginally designed for, she knew without asking or being told that these strange machines were someorgan of primacy. Their power draw was a constant source of contention during budget meetings. Butthe necessity of the cleaning, the fear of even talking about the outside and all the dangerous taboosthat went with it, gave IT incredible leeway. They housed the labs that made the suits, each onetailored to the person waiting in the holding cell, and this alone set them apart from all else.,　　No, Jahns told herself, it wasn’t simply the taboo of the cleaning, the fear of the outside. It was thehope. There was this unspoken, deadly hope in every member of the silo. A ridiculous, fantasticalhope. That maybe not for them, but perhaps for their children, or their children’s children, life on theoutside would be possible once again, and that it would be the work of IT and the bulky suits thatemerged from their labs that would make it all possible.,　　Maybe God would hear her thoughts and rat her out. She imagined herself in a cleaning suit, a far toocommon thought, placing herself into the flexible coffin to which she had condemned so many.,　　On the thirty-fourth, she slipped off onto the landing. Marnes joined her, his canteen in hand.,　　Jahns realized she’d been drinking out of his all day while hers had stayed strapped to her back.,　　There was something childlike and romantic about this, but also something practical. It was moredifficult to reach one’s own water than it was to grab that of the other from their pack.,　　“You need a break? ” He passed the canteen, which had two swallows left in it. Jahns took one ofthem.,