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"What do you mean? A silo in a silo?"

He nodded "Of course," he said "Sorry I’ I know" He winked at her, and Juliette realized he meant himself "You don’t knohat a silo is"

"Of course I do," she said "I was born and raised in a place just like this Only, I guess you could say that we’re still having good days and not giving ourselves credit for thee defiance bubbling to the surface

"It’s--" Juliette searched for the words "It’s our horound The silo is the part of the world you can live in The inside," she said, realizing it was harder to define than she thought

Solo laughed

"That’s what the word means to you But we use words all the ti them" He pointed toward the shelf with all thethat ever happened" He shot her a look "You’ve heard the ter ‘bull-headed?’"

She nodded "Of course"

"But what’s a bull?" he asked

"Sohed "So ernails "A silo isn’t the world It’s nothing The terrew in the outside farther than you could see--" He waved his hand over the floor like it was some vast terrain "--back when there were more people than you could count, back when everyone had lots of kids--" He glanced up at her His hands caether and kneaded one another, al of kids around a worew so much food," he continued, "that even for all these people they couldn’t eat it all, not at once So they stored it away in case tirain than you could count and they would pour theround," Juliette said "Silos" She felt as though hethis up, some delusion he’d concocted over the lonely decades

"I can show you pictures," he said petulantly, as if upset by her doubt He got up and hurried to the shelf with the metal canisters He read the sers across theht it to her The clasp on the side released the lid, revealing a thick object inside

"Let h she hadn’t moved a muscle to help He tilted the box and let the heavy object fall onto his palm, where it balanced expertly It was the size of a children’s book, but ten or twenty ties of miraculously fine-cut paper

"I’ll find it," he said He flipped pages in large chunks, each flap a fortune in pressed paper clapping solidly against more fortunes Then he whittled his search down e at a time

"Here" He pointed

Juliette , but so exact as to al at the view of the outside from the cafeteria, or the picture of someone’s face on an ID, but in color She wondered if this book had batteries in it

"It’s so real," she whispered, rubbing it with her fingers

"It is real," he said "It’s a picture A photograph"

Julietteher of the lie she had seen in her visor’s false video She wondered if this was false as well It looked nothing like the rough and ss," he pointed to what looked like large white cans sitting on the ground "These are silos They hold seed for during the bad tiain"

He looked up at her They were just a few feet apart, Juliette and him She could see the wrinkles around his eyes, could see how e

"I’ to say," she told him

He pointed at her Pointed at his own chest "We are the seeds," he said "This is a silo They put us here for the bad tiged "But it won’t work" He shook his head, then sat back on the floor and peered at the pictures in the ," he said "Not in the dark like this Nope"

He glanced up fro up in his eyes "Seeds don’t go crazy," he told her "They don’t They have bad days and lots of good ones, but it doesn’t matter You leave them and leave them, however many you bury, and they do what seeds do when they’re left alone too long--"

He stopped Closed the book and held it to his chest Juliette watched as he rocked back and forth, ever so slightly

"What do seeds do when they’re left too long?" she asked hio bad down here, and we rot so deep that on’t grow anyain"

18

"If you had the strength of twentybeyond the stacks of Supply was the worst Those who could, napped Most engaged in nervous banter Knox kept checking the tihout the silo Now that his people were armed, all he could hope for was a set their answers, find out what’s been going on in IT--those secretive bastards--and s could happen