羊毛战记 Part 3 Casting Off 19

　　19,　　Days Earlier,　　Juliette sat on the floor of the holding cell, her back against the tall rows of steel bars, a mean worlddisplayed on the wallscreen before her. For the past three days, while she had attempted to teachherself how to be silo sheriff, she had studied this view of the outside and wondered what the fusswas all about.,　　All she saw out there were dull slopes of ground, these gray hills rising up toward grayer clouds,dappled sunlight straining to illuminate ¹ the land with little success. Across it all were the terriblewinds, the frenzied ² gusts ³ that whipped small clouds of soil into curls and whorls that chased oneanother across a landscape meant only for them.,　　For Juliette, there was nothing inspiring about the view, nothing that aroused her curiosity. It wasan uninhabitable wasteland devoid ⁴ of anything useful. There were no resources beyond the taintedsteel of crumbling ⁵ towers visible over the hills, steel it would no doubt cost more to reclaim,transport, smelt ⁶, and purify than it would to simply pull new ore from the mines beneath the silo.,　　The forbidden dreams of the outside world, she saw, were sad and empty. They were deaddreams. The people of the up top who worshipped this view had it all backward—the future wasbelow. That’s where the oil that provided their power came from, the minerals that became anythinguseful, the nitrogen that renewed the soil in the farms. Any who shadowed in the footsteps ofchemistry and metallurgy knew this. Those who read children’s books, those who tried to piecetogether the mystery of a forgotten and unknowable past, remained deluded ⁷.,　　Juliette looked from the dry hills and the fog of soil to the scattered ¹⁰ folders ¹² around her. It was herpredecessor’s unfinished work. A shiny star sat balanced on one of her knees, not yet worn. Therewas a canteen sitting on one of the folders, safe inside a plastic reusable evidence bag. It lookedinnocent enough lying there, having already done its deadly deed. Several numbers written withblack ink on the bag had been crossed out, cases long since solved or abandoned. A new numberstood to one side, a case number matching a folder ¹¹ not present, a folder filled with page after page oftestimony and notes dealing ¹³ with the death of a mayor whom everyone had loved — but whomsomeone had killed.,　　Juliette had seen some of those notes, but only from a distance. They were written in DeputyMarnes’s hand, hands that would not relinquish ¹⁴ the folder, hands that clutched it madly. She hadtaken peeks ¹⁵ at the folder from across his desk and had seen the spattered tears that smearedoccasional words and caused the paper to pucker ¹⁶. The writing amid those drying tears was a scrawl,not as neat as his notes in the other folders. What she could see seemed to crawl angrily across thepage, words slashed ¹⁷ out violently and replaced. It was the same ferocity Deputy Marnes displayed allthe time now, the boiling anger that had driven Juliette away from her desk and into the holding cellto work. She had found it impossible to sit across from such a broken soul and be expected to think.,　　The view of the outside world that loomed ¹⁸ before her, however sad, cast a far less depressingshadow.,　　It was in the holding cell that she killed time between the static-filled calls on her radio and thejaunts down to some disturbance ¹⁹. Often, she would simply sit and sort and resort her foldersaccording to perceived severity. She was sheriff of all the silo, a job she had not shadowed for butone she was beginning to understand. One of the last things Mayor Jahns had told her had provedtruer than she could imagine: people were like machines. They broke down. They rattled ²¹. They couldburn you or maim ²² you if you weren’t careful. Her job was not only to figure out why this happenedand who was to blame, but also to listen for the signs of it coming. Being sheriff, like being amechanic, was as much the fine art of preventive maintenance as it was the cleaning up after abreakdown.,　　The folders scattered on the floor were sad cases of the latter: complaints between neighbors thatgot out of hand; reported thefts; the source of a poisonous batch ²³ of amateur tub gin; several morecases stemming from the trouble this gin had caused. Each folder awaited more findings, morelegwork, more hikes down the twisting stairs to engage in twisted dialogue, sorting lies from truth.,They use games and drawings to illuminate their subject.他们用游戏和图画来阐明他们的主题
。,Will this push him too far and lead to a frenzied attack? 这会不会逼他太甚，导致他进行疯狂的进攻？