Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 - 5) (Silo series)

It was strange to talk like this with someone his senior, someone who knew so much more, was so much wiser. He imagined this was the sort of conversation a man had with his father—only not about the planned and carried out destruction of the entire world.

Jahns pressed on, skipping the tour and lunch she’d planned, thinking only briefly of the small rabbit that somehow had escaped from another farm, made it twenty floors up without being spotted, and ate its fill for three weeks while it confounded half a silo.

Elise danced up the steps of the down deep, her breath trailing in long curls of steam behind her, the clumsy feet of youth making a racket with their heavy boots on the wet steel.

“They didn’t give us a chance. That’s not what this is.” He waved at the room around him. “These are prisons. Cages, not homes. Not meant to protect us, but meant to force us, by pain of death, to bring about their vision.”

And she knew she was right about the cost of sending wires, that they didn’t want people talking. Thinking was fine; they would bury you with your thoughts. But no collaboration, no groups coordinating together, no exchange of ideas.

The idea that Juliette may still be in the silo had slipped away, but the news that she hadn’t cleaned, that she had made it over the hills—this filled him with something else. It touched the part of him that yearned to map the stars. It meant no one would ever have to watch her waste away—

“Good luck getting IT to power down shit,” Juliette said. She wiped her chin with the back of her wrist, then wiped this on her coveralls. She looked down at the grease transferred to the denim. “Pardon my language, Mayor.” Jahns wanted to tell her it was quite all right, but the woman’s attitude, her power, reminded her too much of a former self t

But no, there were appearances to keep, illusions to maintain. He wasn’t sure why, but it was what his wife had done, what all the other cleaners before him had done.

“It could happen right now. It could happen a hundred years from now. The point is: it’s going to happen, and it’s entirely preventable. The goal shouldn’t be to keep this place humming along for our lifetimes—” She looked pointedly at Jahns. “—or our current term. If the goal ain’t forever, we should pack our bags right now.”