羊毛战记 Part 5 The Stranded 59

　　59,　　• Silo 17 •,　　Juliette flicked ¹ the lights on in the Suit Lab as she hauled in her latest load from Supply. Unlike Solo,she didn’t take the constant source of power for granted. Not knowing where it came from made hernervous that it wouldn’t last. So while he had the habit, the compulsion even, of turning every lighton to full and leaving it there, she tried to conserve ² the mysterious energy as much as possible.,　　She dropped her recent scavenges on her cot, thinking of Walker as she did so. Is this how heended up living among his work? Was it the obsession ³, the drive, the need to keep hammering awayat a series of never-ending problems until he couldn’t sleep more than a few paces from them?,　　The more she understood the old man, the farther away from him she felt, the lonelier. She satdown and rubbed her legs, her thighs ⁴ and calves ⁵ tight from the most recent hike up. She may’ve beengaining her porter legs these last weeks, but they were still sore all the time, the ache in them aconstant new sensation. Squeezing the muscles transformed that ache into pain, which she somehowpreferred. The sharp and definable sensations were better than the dull and nameless kind. She likedfeelings she could understand.,　　Juliette kicked her boots off—strange to think of these scavenged things as hers—and stood up.,　　She dumped the parts from Supply and thought about how strange it was to have access to, to livein this forbidden heart of some other silo. It was stranger still to appreciate these workbenches, theseimmaculate tools, all arranged for the purpose of sending people like her to their death.,　　Looking around at the walls, at the dozen or so cleaning suits hanging from racks in various statesof repair, it was like living and working in a room full of ghostly apparitions ¹⁰. If one of those suitsjumped down and started moving about on its own, it wouldn’t have surprised her. The arms and legson each one were puffy, as if full, the mirrored visors easily concealing ¹¹ curious faces. It was likehaving company, these hanging forms. They watched her impassively while she sorted her finds intotwo piles: one of items she needed for her next big project, the other of useful tidbits she had snaggedwith no specific idea of what she might use them for.,　　A valuable rechargeable battery went in this second group, some blood still on it that she hadn’tbeen able to wipe off. Images flashed through her mind of some of the scenes she’d found whilescrounging for materials, like the two men who had committed suicide in the head office of Supply,their hands interlocked, opposite wrists slit ¹², a rust-colored stain all around them. This was one of theworst scenes, a memory she couldn’t shake. There was more evidence of violence scattered ¹³ about thesilo. The entire place was haunted and marred ¹⁴. She completely understood why Solo limited hisrounds to the gardens. She also empathized with his habit of blocking off the server room every nightwith the filing cabinet, even though he had been alone for years. Juliette didn’t blame him. She slidthe dead bolts on the Suit Lab every night before she went to sleep. She didn’t really believe inghosts, but that conviction was being sorely tested by the constant feeling of being watched by—ifnot actual people—the silo itself.,　　She began her work on the air compressor and, as always, it felt good to be doing something withher hands. Fixing something. Staying distracted. The first few nights, after surviving the horribleordeal of being sent to clean, of fighting her way inside this carcass of a silo, she had searched longand hard for someplace that she could actually sleep. It was never going to be below the server room,not with the stench of Solo’s debris ¹⁵ piles pervading ¹⁶ the place. She tried the apartment for IT’s head,but thoughts of Bernard made it impossible even to sit still. The couches in the various officesweren’t long enough. The pad she’d tried to put together on the warm server-room floor was nice, butthe clicking and whirring of all those tall cabinets nearly drove her insane.,　　The Suit Lab, strangely enough, with the specters and ghouls hanging about, was the only spotwhere she’d won a decent night of sleep. It was probably the tools everywhere, the welders ¹⁷ andwrenches, the walls of drawers full of every socket ¹⁹ and driver imaginable. If she was going to fixanything, even herself, it would be there in that room. The only other place she’d felt at home in siloseventeen was in the two jail cells she sometimes slept in on trips up and down. There, and sittingbehind that empty server, talking to Lukas.,I idly picked up a magazine and flicked through it. 我漫不经心地拿起一本杂志翻看着
。,He writes on both sides of the sheet to conserve paper.他在纸张的两面都写字以节省用纸。