Vickers (Corp.s.e.)

SEVEN

The public address was playing "Frosty the Snowman" by the Ronettes. Fenton hacked at what was left of the Virginia ham with his hunting knife. Vickers poured himself a glass of port and wearily lowered himself into what had been Lloyd-Ransom's chair at the head of the long banquet table.

"They sure treat themselves well down here."

"We don't do so bad."

Fenton spoke through a mouthful of ham. Vickers scowled. The whole idea of Christmas in the bunker had put him in a particularly foul mood. The previous year had been bad enough, but this one was approaching obscene. All around them was the debris of the huge banquet that Lloyd-Ransom had thrown for his superpeople. The long main table had been set out on the piazza with the head of the table just in front of the black obelisk. The eternal flame hadn't worked in over a year. Five months in, something had gone wrong with the gas feed. The eternal flame was fueled with methane from the sewage plant, a feature that had proved far from successful. After it had flickered, abruptly died and stubbornly refused to be rekindled, there had been a few days of superstitious fear until the butcher squads had gone to work on the second level and replaced the unfocused fear with a very definite mortal dread.

"We're eating their fucking leftovers." Fenton was ladling dressing onto a plate. He covered it with cold gravy. Vickers picked up a bottle of Remy Martin that had been lying on its side. There was about three-quarters of an inch left in it. He rummaged for a clean glass.

"At least there's plenty of them."

"You're too much of a fucking pragmatist. Don't you ever get mad?"

"Now and again. I tell myself firmly that there's no percentage in it."

Vickers tried the brandy and was pleased to find that no one had flicked cigar ash into it. Sure he could get mad at the superpeople's psychotic consumption; sure it could make him crazy living in and off their garbage. On the other hand, he was drinking good brandy while most of the rest up on the other levels were numbing their minds on the bunker's rotgut gin.

"You'll get mad one day."

"Maybe."

"I'm going to be in the front row for that."

After this Christmas celebration, garbage was everywhere. The superpeople routinely partied like pigs but on this particular occassion they'd really excelled themselves. Crap was spread over half the piazza. There were cups and cartons, empty bottles and beer cans, forgotten plates and spilled food, there were even discarded pieces of clothing. A torn ballgown was draped over the statue titled Fidelity. When the drinking had reached a peak a few hours earlier, some of the celebrants had become extremely physical. A few were still scattered around, asleep, unconscious or maybe even dead. You never could tell and Vickers didn't particularly care. One of the fountains that was still working was making an unhappy, strained gurgle. It was undoubtedly clogged with party garbage. Vickers wondered if anyone would bother to fix it before it totally broke down. Water was already starting to spill out of its lower basin and run across the grimy black and white marble in a dirty brown river. In the middle of the mess was the incongruous, twelve-feet-high, silver fibreglass Christmas tree, lavishly garnished with red and green mirror balls. There was something a little disgusting about the tree. It was an insult to the real trees that had died so quickly after the sealing of the bunker but whose dead trunks still stood like black reminders. The peacocks and the other birds had also failed to survive the first year. Some said that the peacocks had been eaten at some superperson's banquet.

The music had changed. The PA was playing Roddy Reegan's "Christmas on Mars." There had to be a psycho loose in the booth. When the song was finished, the psycho identified himself. A deep, throaty voice purred through every level of the bunker like a combination of gravel and honey.

"Christmas night in the bunker, friends and babies, Christmas Two in the big hole. I guess there aren't too many of us asleep tonight. Maybe a lot of thinking going on, just laying there in your bunk and thinking. Thinking about the snow, the silent snow falling on white fields that go on and on, all the way to where the horizon meets the black starlit sky. Now isn't that a hell of a thing to think about on a night like this?" He let the thought sink in. "This is Bing Crosby with 'White Christmas.' If that don't get to you, nothing will."

"Wolfjohn is going to wake up one morning with an icepick in the back of his skull. He's pushing a whole lot too hard."

Vickers was looking at a bottle of Mouton Cadet. There was something unidentifiable floating in the wine.

"He's real popular with the women."

"Sure he's popular. He gets more pussy than Eggy but that won't save him if Lloyd-Ransom takes it into his head that he's dangerous. Disc jocks are infinitely expendable."

Vickers leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the table.

"He's just pleasing the customers. Shit, everybody dreams about outside. You'd be crazy if you didn't."

"There are days when he don't do nothing but Wantout propaganda. He's out to stir up trouble."

"Everybody's talking Wantout. Christ, you want to get out yourself."

"But I don't go around shouting about it."

Vickers was getting bored with the whole subject. That was all anyone talked about these days, what was going on outside.

"So Wolfjohn finds a butcher squad turned on him. That's his lookout, not mine."

Fenton tossed his hunting knife. It stuck in the table six feet in front of him, vibrating from side to side.

"I'll tell you one thing, if Lloyd-Ransom decides to grease Wolfjohn, it won't be a regular butcher squad, it'll be one of us."

"That won't do anything for our popularity level on Level Two."

"Maybe he'll get Debbie to do it. She won't mind. All she wants to do these days is snuff men."

The two men shook their heads in unison. In the year and a half since the bunker had been sealed, the position of the security execs had become stranger and stranger. As Vickers had always predicted, Lloyd-Ransom's regime had run on a combination of brutality and fear. The main problem that had to be tackled was that, beyond feeding and keeping themselves clean, there was really very little for the population of the bunker to do except sit and wait until the outside world was ready for them to emerge from their self-made caves. It was like Lutesinger had told them, they were seeds waiting for the moment to sprout, they were in a dormant period. Unfortunately the population wasn't dormant. They were alive and kicking, claustrophobic and subject to a stress-loaded sexual imbalance. They had plenty of time on their hands to become neurotic and hysterical, to gossip and complain, to plot and intrigue. There had been riots, and bizarre rumors had sparked equally bizarre days of panic. Crowd madness recurred like a cyclical epidemic, while other behavior defied all categorizing. There had been the weird secret society called the Convocation of Witches and their seemingly random stoning ceremonies. There had been the spontaneous blindness and the hunger sacrifices. An obscure group of women had sat in front of the doors on the first level, doused themselves with gasoline and burned to death. While the bunker waited, it also became an emotional powderkeg.

Lloyd-Ransom was neither a psychologist nor blessed with the common touch. He approached trouble like a surgeon. If, in his opinion, a cell or group of cells ceased to conform and so endangered the total being, the only answer was to cut it out. As soon as the bunker was sealed, he had started organizing the hard cases among his now largely idle military into viciously efficient execution groups, the "butcher squads" as they were dubbed. They became his first resort, his instrument of terror.

People, particularly people in the lower echelons, who talked or acted out of turn were likely to simply vanish or, if examples needed to be made, a changing shift might come across their horribly mutilated bodies. Surveillance and informing became endemic. Friends ratted on neighbors, jealous lovers turned in their rivals and all the time the computerized cameras watched everybody.

Lloyd-Ransom wasn't so stupid, however, as to just let his death squads run amok. Indeed, there had been a period when the butchers had actually started competing, squad against squad, in how sadistically grisly they could make their handiwork. At that point, there had had to be some judicious pruning. Seventeen of the more pathological butcher squad officers had been liquidated in a single evening. This was where Vickers' squad and the other ununiformed security execs were brought in. They were Lloyd-Ransom's ace in the hole. If he believed that one of the superpeople in the bottoms was working to seize power, or that a group of his officers were plotting a coup, Vickers or one or more of the others would be called upon to act. They performed the fine tuning on his machine. He trusted them in the same way that he trusted his dogs. They were his ultimate hired guns, totally amoral and owing their only basic allegiance to the man who had purchased their services and enabled them to survive the holocaust.

This position as Lloyd-Ransom's line of last resort also placed the two security groups in an odd relationship with the rest of the people. Where almost everyone, particularly the facers and handlers and the others who thought of themselves as rank and file, hated and feared the military and the uniformed security with a finely honed venom that was reinforced by every murder and atrocity, the ten without uniforms enjoyed a perverse popularity. They rarely did any harm to the rank and file and when they did kill, they did it quietly and cleanly and usually the victim was someone who the upper tiers regarded as deserving of what they got. On two occasions, when butcher squads had run wild among the women on the second level, the ten had been moved in to neutralize them. These incidents had made them celebrities, heroes even. They had been unable to resist the temptation to swagger. Already-fanciful clothing had become even more flamboyant. Eggy seemed to be doing his best to resemble a big wheel among the in-crowd of Attila the Hun while even Parkwood had affected a certain swashbuckling air with silk scarves, a Panama hat and an automag hanging from his belt.

Although Lloyd-Ransom had quite obviously gone to considerable pains to cover all the details when designing the machine that maintained his power, he also insisted on supporting some very basic policies that seemed destined to create division and unrest. A perfect example was the rigid caste system that operated level to level. Set and unchanging, with menial workers on the top levels and the privileged in the bottoms, it was one of the absolutes on which the bunker was built. When the bunker was first sealed most had been prepared to rough it. They'd been spared nuclear destruction and they'd tolerate anything within reason. As the months passed, though, the stoic attitude weakened and reason gave way to resentment. How come a certain few were having it so much better than the many? Why were the favored few living in the marble halls of the bottoms, dining on peacock and vintage wine while the majority existed on concentrates and bad gin? It seemed to Vickers that it was a set of circumstances tailor-made for revolt. During an unguarded, supposedly informal moment, Vickers had voiced this to Lloyd-Ransom. Lloyd-Ransom had stared coldly at him.

"It's simply safety precaution. We must always look to the future. When we finally emerge onto the surface, it will require a strong hierarchical society to ensure that we survive. I didn't go to all this trouble just to let loose the infection of socialism all over again."

Vickers had accepted that there was a certain grotesque logic to this. An area in which he could find no logic at all was in the way that Lloyd-Ransom handled the matter of when exactly they would unseal the bunker and start to investigate the surface. For about the first nine months things had remained fairly stable. The preoccupying paranoia had been with Red spies and saboteurs. As it came up to the first year, things began to change. All through the levels, people were getting itchy. They wanted to know what was going on above their heads. Officially, no one knew anything. The probes and sensors that were supposed to measure temperature and radiation, the satellite dishes that listened in to the world's communication and the cameras that showed what was happening in the immediate, surrounding desert had all gone dead. Lutesinger had been wheeled out to explain how it was likely that there'd been a surface burst almost on top of the bunker. He hadn't explained why even the Russians should be directing missiles to the middle of the Nevada desert.

As they moved into the second year, the itch turned into an open demand. Why not at least send up an exploratory team to check out surface conditions? Maybe things weren't as bad as the predictions said. Maybe the worst of the radiation had cooled off. Maybe the dust had settled and the nuclear winter was over. Lloyd-Ransom flatly refused to entertain any of these suggestions. As far as he was concerned, the only way out was to fully unseal the bunker and unsealing the bunker was a complicated process that involved tunneling up the blocked elevator shafts. Questions were asked. Surely there must be some other way out. Lloyd-Ransom said there wasn't and was not widely believed. How could they have designed such a complex structure as the bunker without some kind of bolt hole exits? The strange behavior began. Graffiti appeared. The Wantouts, as they became dubbed, became an active underground opposition and replaced the Reds as the primary targets for both Lloyd-Ransom's paranoia and his death squads.

There was the ringing clacks of high heels from the entrance to one of the tunnels that led away to the superpeople's private quarters. The steps sounded halting and uneven. Vickers glanced up. Almost unconsciously, his hand moved to the Yasha that he now carried slung from one shoulder, Doc Holliday style, by a leather strap. The woman was a tall, attractive redhead. She was tottering and very drunk. The high heels were a bright, flame red. She was dressed in a black, full-length mink, which she hugged tightly to herself as though uncertain as to whether it really belonged to her. Maybe it didn't. Perhaps she'd stolen it. It was quite likely that she was actually from one of the other levels, brought down as partyfodder and now going back with an expensive souvenir. She halted every few steps and stood, swaying. Vickers wasn't sure if she was crying or giggling to herself. She saw him and Fenton for the first time. She started and tightened her grip on the coat. Fenton, who'd also been watching her, laughed.

"Don't be frightened. I'm not going to hurt you. Neither's my good buddy here." He glanced at Vickers. "You're not going to hurt her, are you?"

Vickers shook his head. "Not me."

The woman moved unsteadily toward the table.

'Is there anything to drink?"

'You're pretty far gone."

'I know that but I still want a drink."

"There's plenty left over but you're going to have to look for it. '

The woman leaned heavily on the table and began to rummage through the mess. She found a bottle of champagne and put it to her mouth. Vickers noticed that she had green eyes.

"It's flat."

"What did you expect?"

As she drank, her coat fell open. She was naked beneath it. Her body was white and liberally freckled. There were a number of angry red welts across her torso as though she'd been recently flogged.

"What have they been doing to you?"

"Having their fun."

By the standards of the superpeople the ill treatment was comparatively mild. There had been rumors of snuff parties although Vickers had never seen any solid evidence. The woman had found a bottle of scotch with some left in it. She closed her coat, hugging the bottle to her like a baby.

"I've… got to be going. I think I've had enough for tonight."

She pushed herself away from the table. The clicks of her heels zigzagged across the black and white marble of the piazza in the direction of the elevators. Wolfjohn was playing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Vickers and Fenton lapsed into an almost-drunk silence. Even after eighteen months, it was all to easy to slip back into the trauma, back to thinking of all the people and all the places that had been wiped away like they had never been, all the faces and all the names and the locations that were gone forever. The more you tried to accept it, the more overwhelming the horror became. Vickers was quite relieved when he heard Eggy's voice booming from one of the tunnels.

"Hey, what's going on?"

Eggy had been drinking but he wasn't drunk. He was swaggering rather than staggering. His faced was covered in smeared, warrior-style red and purple war paint. War paint was a comparatively new addition to Eggy's repetoire and one that Vickers found a little disturbing. Eggy jerked his thumb back down the corridor.

"You want to see the horrorshow back there?"

Fenton looked up. "Horrowshow? That's a quaint, old fashioned word."

"It's pretty quaint and old fashioned back there. It's like something out of the Marquis de Sade."

"The superpeople are cutting up?"

Eggy dropped into a chair.

"Cutting up, slicing up, flogging and hogging it up. They've even got them chained by the feet from the ceiling. You've never seen so many people getting distorted at once. Eight-Man's going around boasting how he fucked Thane Ride in Lloyd-Ransom's four-poster."

"You're kidding."

"The hell I am. I believe him."

"I thought Thane Ride only fucked girls these days."

"According to Eight-Man she was so stoned she was past knowing."

"And where was Lloyd-Ransom at the time?"

"Who knows where he goes when he vanishes."

Vickers' eyes abruptly focused.

"Vanishes? Lloyd-Ransom vanishes?"

"That's what they're saying. Sometimes for as long as a couple of days. You two didn't hear about it?"

Both Fenton and Vickers shook their heads.

"Not a damn thing."

"Me neither."

Eggy shrugged. "There isn't really that much to tell. It's just that the word among the superpeople is that our glorious leader regularly disappears."

"So where does he go?"

"Who knows? There are some that say he goes outside."

"Outside?"

"That's what some of them are saying. It's probably just bullshit. I mean, how the hell would he get outside?"

The PA was playing Elvis Presley singing "Blue Christmas."

Alarms were suddenly howling.

"Shit!"

Vickers quickened his pace. He hurried down the corridor to the nearest wall phone. A handler was talking into it. When she saw Vickers coming toward her, her face took on a look of pure terror. A hand flew to her mouth. She backed away to the full length of the cord. She held out the phone to him. "Please…"

Vickers neither had the time nor the disposition to be nice. He simply took the handset and let the frightened woman fluster away down the corridor. On the other end of the line, someone was wanting to know what was going on. "Hang up."

Vickers must have hit exactly the right note of authority since the other end of the line did exactly what it was told. Vickers punched in the code for Security Coordination. "This is Vickers. What's going on?"

"There's a riot started on the second level. A bunch of handlers refused to go on shift. Something about a cut in their water allocation. A Code D squad went in but they must have come on a bit too rough because fighting started and they were driven out of the GLA."

"What GLA is it?"

"Twenty-six."

"Women's area, right?" Vickers was relieved. At least Johanna, his on and off lover in GLA30, would not be directly involved. "Right."

"I'd better go up there, see if I can do anything. Are any more of my group headed up there?"

"Parkwood and Debbie are on their way."

"I'll find them."

He hung up and jogged to the elevators. About the only consolation in being a bunker corpse was that you were virtually your own boss. As he stepped out onto the second level, he found himself in the middle of a firefight. There was smoke in the corridor and the acrid smell that comes with gunfire. It was the kind of shock he could have done without. The handlers had guns. They must have disarmed some of the first Code D squad that went in. He threw himself back, but he wasn't quite fast enough. The elevator doors closed behind him. He pressed back against them, taking advantage of the minimal cover provided by the entrance. A shotgun blast tore up a piece of wall that was uncomfortably close. He slid down into a crouch. The second level was a mess but this was nothing new. At the best of times, its corridors were ugly with garbage, graffiti and broken light panels. Even across the elevator door, where Vickers crouched, someone had scrawled the angry but all too common slogan, "WE WANT OUT!"

Four security people in yellow uniforms were slowly moving up, pushing a golf cart in front of them, using it as cover. Further back a second squad was unreeling a steam hose. Further back still, Vickers spotted Parkwood and Debbie crouched behind another golf cart that had been overturned and thoroughly trashed. He looked in the other direction. The women had barricaded the entrance to the living area and were firing from behind an effective wall of stacked bunks and lockers. At least temporarily, they had the advantage. Another shotgun blast chewed up the wall beside him and Vickers decided that he'd be a great deal better off back with Parkwood and Debbie. The only problem was how to get there.

The group pushing the golf cart was almost level with him. It looked like the best chance that he was going to get. He tensed. He treated the barricade to a fast burst from his Yasha and jumped. As he rolled into cover behind the golf cart there was a burst of firing from the barricade. He estimated there were at least five weapons up there. Autoload shotguns and maybe one M90. It would be far from easy to get them out. He left the uniformed security to their slow progress and worked his way back to where the other two corpses were still crouched. It was with some relief that he ducked in beside them.

"Is it as much of a mess as it looks?"

"It's probably worse. The uniforms seem to have fucked things up about as bad as they could. That first Code D team that went in must have been a total bunch of clowns. They started manhandling the women. They even, by all accounts, put down their weapons. The women just grabbed their guns. They blew away two of them on the spot and they've got two more in there as hostages."

Parkwood sniffed. "I don't know what good they think hostages are going to do them. Lloyd-Ransom isn't going to deal. As far as he's concerned, everyone's expendable."

All three ducked as the M90 cut loose in a long, wild burst. Debris rained down from the ceiling.

"Have they made any demands? Do they want anything?"

"Not really. They're saying they want out but that's nothing new. I figure they've just been pushed too far."

"They must know that they'll be killed in the end. Nobody up here can have any illusions."

"That's less reason for them to give up easy."

There was another burst of firing. It was deafening in the closed space of the corridor. One of the uniforms trying to set up the steam hose was hit. He lay exposed, bleeding badly from a head wound. Parkwood turned so his back was against the upended golf cart.

"About the only piece of good luck in this whole mess is that it hasn't spread to the other living areas. It should be shift change right about now, but everyone's being held at their work stations. The other GLAs on this level are bottled up by the military. Lamas has taken charge and he seems to have some idea of what he's doing."

"What about Lloyd-Ransom?"

"Nobody's seen him."

"That's weird."

Parkwood's eyes were bleak.

"What isn't?"

Vickers glanced back. Behind them a mixed force of military grew and security yellow were moving up.

"I guess that's it for those women inside. It can only be a matter of time.

Debbie checked the clip on her machine pistol.

"It could be a lot of time and it may well cost dearly. It depends how much ammunition they have."

Vickers raised an eyebrow.

"You sound like you're on their side."

Debbie's head turned. She gave Vickers a long, cold stare.

"That's right. I probably am. At least they've got the courage to say enough after eighteen months in this stinking hole. Who wouldn't be on their side?"

"It might not be such a good idea to say so out loud!"

"Big Brother's still watching us?"

"Did it ever stop?"

"That, in itself, is reason to say enough."

Parkwood eased himself into a more comfortable position.

"Do you feel the remains of any collective sanity are right now slipping away?"

For some reason Debbie took this personally.

"I'm starting to dislike you."

"You're starting to dislike everybody. It's one of the symptoms."

Before the argument could escalate, there was another burst of gunfire from the barricade and a flurry of movement behind them. Yabu and a captain in the military slid into their patch of cover. There wasn't quite room for five of them behind the golf cart and the captain had to scrunch up to avoid her left side being exposed. She seemed wild-eyed, as if the experience of being shot at was a little too much for her.

"Who's in charge up here?"

Parkwood regarded her with a perfectly straight face.

"I thought you were."

The captain's eyes widened as if she'd been slapped. Vickers looked away. He didn't want to see any more people come unhinged. Up ahead the squad with the steam hose had it in position and were looking back for some kind of instruction. Debbie glanced contemptuously at the captain.

"Don't you think you ought to give them some sort of order? You seem to be the highest rank around here."

The captain stood straight up, seemingly without stopping to think. Vickers reached to pull her down but he was too late. She opened her mouth and suddenly a section of her face, just above the left eye, was missing. She toppled backward.

"Oh Christ."

Vickers looked quickly over the top of the golf cart and yelled to the crew on the steam hose.

"Okay, goddammit, let them have it."

The valve opened with a roar. There were screams from the other side of the barricade. The crew let it run for about thirty seconds and then shut it off again. The steam drifted back past where the four corpses were crouched. Yabu ran a hand over his bald head.

"That probably wasn't too much of a good idea. We may have cooked a couple of them but the rest will pull back inside. They'll still have their weapons. Steam won't hurt them. They may even build a second barricade."

"I just wanted to stop them shooting at us."

Yabu's stone face cracked the faintest of smiles.

"Always a laudable motivation, but perhaps we should have tried to negotiate first."

"How in hell could anyone negotiate? Those women know they're all going to be killed."

"Some would have forced themselves to believe it. Individuals will become exceedingly credulous when the matter in hand is their own deaths. It might seem a cruel deception but it might have also saved a number of lives. As it is, they will fight with the knowledge that they are already doomed. You know the saying."

"The best killers have already died."

"Also the most frenzied have already died."

"Did the Japanese make that up?"

"I heard it was the Irish."

As Debbie had predicted, it did indeed take a good deal of time and a number of lives before the barricades were cleared and the uniforms fought their way into the living area. For almost two hours both security and military had held off from the final assault. Nobody in the corridor wanted to take the responsibility for giving the order. It was quite likely that, when all was said and done, Lloyd-Ransom would simply look at the casualty lists and, in a fit of pique, order the execution of whoever had assumed command. In the end, Lamas had arrived in the corridor with apparently enough authority to start something. Quite in character, he had decided that it would be done the hard way. More golf carts were moved up to provide a certain amount of cover. The barricades were hosed down with high pressure steam, pounded with ultrasonics and finished with frag grenades. One grim little major had suggested also using gas but this had been vetoed as far too likely to contaminate the air system of the whole bunker. Grappling hooks were shot into the tangle of metal and as much as possible was dragged away. Only then did the very reluctant troops move in.

The handlers fought like furies. When their ammunition at last ran out they used homemade fire bombs, they threw corrosive cleaning fluid into the faces of the attackers and they went for them with knives and steel bars. When the area had been all but secured, the butcher squads, who had effectively kept themselves out of the costly first assault, moved in to finish off the wounded and probably a number of women who had had no part in the fighting at all. The butchers swept through the living area killing everyone that so much as twitched. Their simplest technique was a fast bullet in the back of the head from a sidearm but others did fancier, more disgusting work with garroting wires and bayonets. Lamas made no effort to stop them. Apparently General Living Area 26 was to be used as a terrible example of the penalty for rebellion.

Vickers, Yabu, Debbie and Parkwood walked slowly into the scene of carnage. Bunks had been overturned and the walls were pitted with bullet holes and spattered with blood. A half-dozen small fires were still smoking. There were bodies strewn all over, both soldiers and handlers. A uniformed corporal had a handler down on her knees. She was bleeding from a gash on her forehead and the top of her uniform had been torn away. He held a pistol but he seemed in no hurry to fire. He seemed to be savoring her terror. Suddenly and inexplicably, Yabu erupted.

"Leave her alone!"

The corporal looked up and made a fatally stupid mistake. He told Yabu to go fuck himself. Yabu was on the man before anyone could stop him. The action was too fast for Vickers to see exactly what he did. In one fluid movement, seemingly impossible for one of Yabu's size and bulk, he ripped off the corporal's helmet. He grasped the back of the man's head like a basketball. His other hand came down, a clubbing fist. Blood spurted out the man's eyes, ears and nose. Yabu let the body drop to the ground. He looked defiantly around the room.

"I sleep with this woman. Nobody harms her."

He helped the woman to her feet with unexpected tenderness and put a protective arm around her. The entire area froze. Lloyd-Ransom, with his bodyguards and dog handler had walked into the area at exactly the right moment to see the whole incident. It was, however, a very different Lloyd-Ransom. His white uniform was creased and dirty. His collar was unbuttoned and he looked sallow and ill. His appearance was something of a shock. Not as much of a shock, though, as Yabu's next move. Yabu glared and walked slowly toward him, still supporting the woman. His expression was one of undisguised disgust.

"You've made a very bad mistake, Lloyd-Ransom. You have left these people with no hope."

Yabu continued walking, right out of the area. Nobody, not even Lloyd-Ransom, made an attempt to stop him.

There was a deep, uneasy silence in the security club room. The people in there drank with a quiet determination. There was far too much to blot out. It had been just about possible to keep the butcher squad and the individual assassinations out of sight and mind. The rationale was fairly easy. Life in the bunker was lived at a fairly drastic level and, from time to time, drastic solutions were required. The mass destruction of an entire living area was something else entirely. It left no room for moral maneuvering. A feeling hung in the air of the club room, almost as the smell of fire and death still lingered on the second level. The bunker was starting to tear itselt apart. The death toll was ninety-three and that was too much to be dismissed as a "solution." It was a massacre. No omelette could be worth that many eggs.

The public address didn't help lighten the weight of gloom. Wolfjohn had taken it into his head to read the full list of names in a slow, doleful rasp. Inside the club room, guilt was driving a wedge between those who had taken part in the killing and those who hadn't. Yabu's stand, even though it was a matter of self-interest, had made it hard to use the excuse of blind obedience. The whole bunker was wondering what would happen next. For the moment, there seemed little danger that Lloyd-Ransom would lose control of the bunker. The military and its officers were still solidly behind him while security seemed to be sullenly turning in on itself. Some of those without uniforms were coming in for a good deal of hostility. Yabu had been the one who'd actually made the protest but it had also been noticed that Parkwood, Vickers, and Debbie had virtually sat out the action well to the rear. Even some of their own kind seemed about to turn against them. Annie Flagg, Carmen Rainer and John Walker all appeared to side with the uniforms. There had been some snide remarks but it had yet to go any further.

The gloomy quiet that surrounded Wolfjohn's dirgelike recitation of the names of the dead was broken by the ringing of one of the wall phones. A uniform picked it up and looked around.

"Rainer."

Carmen Rainer looked up from whispering quiet, deviant suggestions to a petite, doe-eyed blonde.

"Yo."

"It's for you."

Rainer stood up. The day's creation of tight black vinyl and leather straps were particularly bizarre. She took the handset, listened for a few moments, nodded, hung up and sauntered back to the blonde. She pinched her cheek.

"Got to go to work, sweetie."

Fenton overheard the remark and raised his head.

"Got someone to kill, dear?"

"I guess I have to do it all now nobody can count on you or Vickers or the rest of your little pacifist clique."

Vickers, who was already quite drunk, threw back the remainder of his shot.

"One of these day's I'm going to have to do something about that mouth of yours."

Carmen Rainer's lip curled.

"Are you capable? You were supposed to be a good corpse, but as far as I can see, you've lost it."

Vickers shrugged.

"Time will tell."

The sneer increased.

"Sure."

Rainer turned and walked to the door with an exaggerated sway. As the door hissed shut Fenton grunted.

"One of these days we really are going to do something about that bitch."

The doe-eyed blonde pouted. "I'm going to tell her you said that."

Wolfjohn finally finished the list of the dead. Mercifully, he didn't decide to go through it all again. Vickers hoped that he'd stop sticking his neck out and put on some music. Instead, he launched into a gravel-voiced monologue.

"It's a dark day in this hole in the ground, friends and babies, a dark, dark day. Ninety-three of us dead today at our own hands. This is madness, friends and babies. It's a black, black madness that's got a grip on us here. When you consider that we may be all of humanity there is left, you gotta know that we shouldn't be doing this to each other. We are the history of the new world down here. We shouldn't have to include this dreadful Black Thursday!!"

"I didn't know that it was Thursday."

"Honest?"

"I lost count months ago."

"… in that history. We are down in this hole, friends and babies, and we are killing each other. Ninety-three of us died this afternoon and I, for one, don't see the reason for it. Ninety-fucking-three of us, friends and babies. Ninety-fucking-three of us when there's only a few thousand of us left."

"Is he drunk or what?"

The strain was starting to show in Wolfjohn's voice. The velvet of the rasp was starting to fray.

"What I want to know is why? Why did ninety-three of us have to die? Huh? I heard it was because they didn't want to go to work. Am I expected to believe that ninety-three people had to die because a bunch of women got pissed off and didn't want to go to work? So who decides that? Somebody want to explain that to me? Hey, Lloyd-Ransom, maybe you'd like to come on this mike up here and tell us all why those people had to…"

There was a pause. Something seemed to be going on in the background. Suddenly everyone in the club room was paying attention.

"… What? What's the matter, honey? Lloyd-Ransom sent you up here to explain for him?" Wolfjohn's voice abruptly changed. "So it's my turn is it? Well fuck you! I'm not going to beg…"

There was a short, ugly sound of scarcely human pain and a booming thud as if the microphone had been knocked over. There was a long silence in the club room. Fenton slowly put down his drink.

"So they even greased Wolfjohn. The bitch Rainer was sent up there to finish him."

"He stuck it out too far."

"Jesus Christ, what harm did he do?"

Vickers stood up to get himself another scotch.

"He wanted to get the fuck out of this hole."

Eggy hurled a chair at the wall. One of the legs broke off. On the way down it knocked over a lamp that also smashed to the floor.

"They're calling it a fucking boyc'ott! Me! Can you believe that? The women on the second level have decided they won't sleep with anyone in either security or the military. Even me!"

Debbie didn't seem impressed.

"It'll do you good not to have things your own way."

"After all I've done for them."

"What you've done for them is probably reason enough on its own for a boycott."

"There's going to be trouble."

"This is trouble. There's military all over the place, all of them looking for a chance to shoot someone."

"I've been damn good to those women on the second level. I figured there had to be a couple that'd weaken but they're all watching each other. If one breaks the rules the others'll shave her head. It's ridiculous."

"You'd probably enjoy that."

"I've been damn good to those women."

Vickers wondered if Johanna in GLA30 would be part of the boycott. She almost certainly would. He realized guiltily that it was the first time he'd thought of her since the start of the trouble.

On impulse, Vickers stepped off the elevator on level five. He had decided to go and see Lance Cattermole. Cattermole was the curator of the bunker's considerable archive. The archive was supposed to be the surviving record of human culture but, like so many things connected with the bunker, its planning was a little uneven. As Cattermole put it, "Too much of the damned Beatles and hardly anything on Pascal. The people who put this place together were obsessed with twentieth century junk culture." The attraction of Cattermole's dim, quiet, warren-like domain was that, down among the dark stacks that held the tapes and discs, the cards and books and artifacts, in the soft greenglow of the computer terminals, there was an illusion of peace and permanancy that was quite unlike anywhere else in the bunker. Cattermole's kingdom was a backwater, bypassed and largely untroubled by the madness that gripped most of the rest of the installation. It was a place where Vickers could hide for a few hours. There were a couple of additional attractions. One was that Cattermole kept a fine collection of vintage wines and was the kind of host who was more than willing to share a bottle or two with anyone who stopped by. The other was a tall, witty brunette called Yoko who had incredibly sensitive breasts and who was usually willing to treat Vickers to very skillful and inventive, standing sex back in the depths of the stacks. Yoko was one of the reasons he'd been neglecting Johanna.

Yoko smiled and winked as she let Vickers in through the outer door. Vickers smiled back.

"Where's the boss?"

"In his inner sanctum."

"Will he see me?"

"Sure."

The inner sanctum was an electronic cocoon of computer equipment. As Vickers ducked inside, Cattermole peered over the top of his rimless half-glasses.

"Have you come to kill me?"

Vickers laughed. "No, not this time."

"Well, that's a relief."

"Who'd want to kill you?"

"It gets hard to tell these days."

Yoko brushed against him carrying an armful of files and whispered something obscene in his ear. Vickers grinned.

"I've got to talk to your boss first."

Yoko flashed him a backward pout and vanished in among the stacks. Vickers turned his attention to Cattermole. There was something gnomelike about the curator of the archive. Given a green hat and pointed ears, he could have been one of Santa's little helpers. He was completely suited to his dim, cluttered environment from which he rarely emerged. On the few occasions when he did, he gave the impression of blinking at the light like a dazzled mole.

"Have you come down here with a specific purpose or do you just want to waste my time, drink my wine and maul my assistant?"

"I was thinking more of the latter."

Cattermole put down the whatbox he was using. He didn't seem particularly put out by the interruption. He smiled.

"I suppose I have to keep in with security. I have what ought be a rather fine Medoc; it should suit our purpose."

Cattermole disappeared into the confusion. He returned a couple of minutes later carrying a bottle, two glasses and a corkscrew.

"It'll need to breathe for a little while."

Nobody knew exactly where Cattermole kept his wine. It was one of the lesser of the bunker's mysteries. He let it stand uncorked for five minutes and then poured it. Vickers held his wine up to the light.

"You live pretty well down here."

"We do our best, but that's not to say that I won't be extremely glad to get out of here. I'm sure we've been down here long enough. If the surface hasn't returned to some approximation of normality by now, it probably never will."

He gave Vickers a sharp look. "Of course, I really shouldn't voice these things around you, should I? Isn't it some kind of official heresy?" He glanced up at an imaginary concealed microphone. "I hope you're getting all that."

Vickers sipped the Medoc appreciatively.

"You know you can say what you like around me. I don't give a damn. As it happens, I've been hearing stories that someone has been going outside."

Cattermole's eyes twinkled.

"The Lloyd-Ransom story. He doesn't know how to get out. I thought that at least you in security would know why Lloyd-Ransom regularly vanishes."

"I haven't heard a thing."

"My god, you people are impossible. You mean you really didn't know that our glorious leader has become an opium addict?"

"Say what?"

"Our leader has taken to hiding himself away and smoking considerable amounts of opium. It probably holds back the heart of his own particular darkness. He must have a considerable burden on his soul. He's not the only one, either. Opium has become quite a clandestine little trend among the superpersons."

"Where in hell are they getting opium from?"

"There's about a ton of it. Nuclear survival people were always very keen on stockpiling opium. It's a holdover from the twentieth century. They seemed to think it could provide a basis for some manner of ad hoc pharmacopeia. I've never been quite clear how that would be done but they kept on stashing it away."

"How do you know all this?"

"Me? I'm technically in charge of the ton of opium. It's supposed to be part of the medical archive. I have to tactfully look the other way when our leader comes down to cut himself off a slice."

Vickers grunted. Not only were a few thousand people being kept under the ground at one man's whim but now the one man turned out to be a dope fiend.

"What about Lutesinger? Is he going the same route?"

Cattermole took off his glasses.

"Now there's the real mystery. Nobody's seen him in months. He's locked himself away in his quarters and refuses to see anyone. He has his food sent in but he never emerges."

"Goddamn it. It just gets weirder and weirder." Something occurred to Vickers. "Wait just a minute. When you said earlier that Lloyd-Ransom didn't know his way out of the bunker, you made it sound as though there are people who do."

Cattermole nodded. "Well, I do. I don't know about anyone else."

Vickers could hardly believe what he was hearing.

"Why are you doing this to me, Lance? Why in hell didn't you tell anybody?"

"Would you believe that nobody asked me?"

"No."

"How about the fact that I considered the information something of a liability."

"More like it. You want to tell me about it?"

Cattermole thoughtfully poured more Medoc.

"I don't know. What would you do with this information?"

Vickers raised his eyes until they met Cattermole's.

"I'd try and get out, see what it's really like on the surface."

"Would you tell anyone else?"

"Maybe. I'd probably tell one or two others. People I can trust."

"I thought a few times I might try and get out but, when it came down to it, I didn't do anything." He patted his gnome's pot belly. "I decided I didn't have the figure for being intrepid."

There was a long pause. Finally Vickers put down his glass.

"So are you going to show me the way out?"

Cattermole thought. It took him almost a minute to decide.

"Yes. It's about time someone had a look at the surface." Cattermole hunted along the stacks until he found the card he was looking for. He dropped it into one of his computers. The monitor showed a detail of an architectural drawing. "These are the original drawings for the bunker. What many people don't realize is that parts of it were never properly finished. All over there are nooks and small corners where the heat or the lighting was never installed, the air conditioning was never piped through or the surveillance cameras were never put in. The largest of these is up on the first level way over in the back right away from the main elevators."

He spoke to the computer. "Level one, quadrant twelve… okay… left six… up seven… enlarge two hundred."

The screen filled with a honeycomb of small rooms against the outer wall of the first level. Cattermole tapped it with his finger.

"This was never built. It's like a cave. The support pillars are in and there's a floor but that's it. Nothing else was ever built. It was supposed to be some kind of store for vehicle spares but I guess they never got around to finishing it. There's no light in there but it's warm enough. There're a few oddities living in there. Now and again they send some soldiers up there to frighten them but for the most part they're left alone."

"Oddities?"

"Winos, crazies, maybe a couple of dozen of various individuals who crawled away because they couldn't stay afloat in the bunker population."

"And they live there?"

"Sure. They've got to live somewhere but they're not what we're concerned with. See this?"

Cattermole pointed to a pair of parallel lines that ran out from the complex of rooms, through the wall of the bunker and out for some distance beyond.

"You know what this is?"

"What?"

"It's a tunnel. It runs for about two hundred yards angling out and up until it comes out on the surface."

"It's a way out, damn it!"

Cattermole grinned. He was clearly warming to the conspiracy.

"That's right."

"But isn't it sealed or at least alarmed?"

"No, that's the beauty of it. Since the wiring was never put in, there are no cameras. It only appears on their scans as a dead area. The tunnel wouldn't appear at all. Surveillance runs the bunker and they never refer back to the original plans."

"How do we know that the tunnel was actually built? Maybe they never got around to that either."

Cattermole shook his head.

"No, it's there. It has to be. It goes through the bunker wall, it's an integral part. It stands to reason that it would have to be constructed at the same time as the wall."

"But how come it's the only one?"

"They must have thought that one was enough."

"And then it got lost in the shuffle?"

"You'd be surprised what got lost in the shuffle when this place was being put together."

"It's certainly worth checking out."

Vickers could feel an excitement. He could feel the breeze and see the open space and sky. The idea of being outside again was almost frightening. Cattermole poured out the last of the wine. He raised his glass in a toast.

"Out."

Vickers also raised his glass.

"Yeah, out."

"What will you do?"

"I need to think about this for a couple of days. I'll try and set up a situation where I won't be missed if I slip out for a while." He looked around the ceiling, again at imaginary microphones. "And talking of setups, I take it you have some way to neutralize the eavesdroppers."

"Sure. I've had the system patched in to my computers. When I think a conversation is going to get them excited, I have my computer send a nice relaxing simulation."

Vickers finished his wine.

"I'll let you know what I'm going to do before I do it."

Cattermole ushered him to the door of the inner sanctum.

"This should prove particularly interesting."

Yoko was waiting for him by the outer door to Cattermole's kingdom.

"I thought you'd forgotten about me."

"I must confess that I had."

The idea of there being a way out had put everything else to the back of his mind. Yoko, however, was enough to bring a few things hopping forward as she stood smouldering at him.

"That's not particularly flattering."

Vickers did his best to look contrite.

"If I stuck around and flattered you for a half hour or so would it make it up to you?"

"Just a half-hour?"

"An hour?"

Yoko glanced around. Cattermole had vanished back inside his nest of computers. She took hold of Vickers' hand.

"Let's see how flattering you can get."

It looked like they were heading into another confrontation with the military. Vickers and Fenton mingled with the crowd of workers going on shift. They were on the third level and moving toward the heavily guarded entrance to the power plant. Security around the plant was some of the tightest in the bunker. The power plant was, without a doubt, the most vulnerable spot in the underground installation. If the fusion reactor went out of control, it would vaporize the bunker and the land for miles around. Through its life it had specifically been guarded from saboteurs, Reds, anarchists and now Wantouts. Any second, Fenton and Vickers would discover how well it was defended against them. On the plus side, there was their reputation, on the minus side, there was the fact that they had absolutely no authority. The power plant was the only place that Vickers was going to get a radiation suit, though, and he didn't intend to venture outside without one. He wanted to see the sky again but he definitely didn't want to set himself up for cancer, radiation sickness or worse.

It had only been after a good deal of deliberation that Vickers had told Fenton about the tunnel. At first he had considered Parkwood. If anything, Parkwood was the more reliable of the two but Fenton had a streak of craziness that would be invaluable on such an extreme adventure. At first Fenton had wanted them to go out together, but after two hours and most of a bottle of whiskey, Vickers had persuaded him that the best idea was for one to go out first for a short exposure, nothing more than a two-hour look around. After faking the coin toss, the task fell to Vickers while Fenton would stay behind and cover for his absence. Vickers' only stipulation was that they should steal a radiation suit so he wasn't completely vulnerable to anything the outside might throw at him. When they'd sobered up, the idea of stealing a radiation suit from the power plant seemed a good deal more hazardous than it had in the light of the whiskey bottle. About the only thing they had on their side was that most people would have a hard time imagining why they would want to steal a radiation suit in the first place. It was the basis of their bluff.

The first test of this bluff was rapidly coming up. The regular power workers had to use a thumbprint check to pass through a combined body scan and ID gate. Each gate was manned by a human guard as a second line of security. There was no other way in. Vickers and Fenton joined the line that led up to one gate. They'd decided to go in together, claiming it was a line-of-duty visit. Their guard was blonde, cute apart from a pair of hard, calculating eyes. Vickers doubted that they could put anything over on her. As they approached, she coldly looked them up and down.

"What do you two want?"

"There's something we have to check out in the jumpers' locker room."

"You got passes?"

"We don't need passes."

The guard's face hardened. "I never heard that."

"You know who we are."

"Sure I know who you are but I still never heard that I should let you into the plant without passes."

Fenton glanced back at the line of plant workers who were backed up behind them.

"Why don't you let us just step inside and we'll talk about it. We're holding up the line here."

The woman put a hand on the strap of the M90 slung over her shoulder.

"I can't let you do that."

"Suppose you called the officer who can talk to us."

The guard thought about it.

"I suppose I could do that."

She pushed a button beside the thumbprint scanner. The officer, a rather vapid captain, appeared much more of a pushover than the guard. He was far more in awe of the two corpses than his subordinate.

"What seems to be going on here?"

The guard looked at the captain with scarcely veiled contempt.

"These two want to get in without passes."

"But you know who they are?"

"I don't have authority to let anyone through without a pass."

Fenton tried to take control of the situation.

"Listen, Captain, if we could just step through and explain the situation we'll stop holding up the line and I'm sure when you hear what we have to say you'll see it our way. And if you don't, we'll leave. Okay?"

The captain seemed uncertain. He looked like he wanted to ask someone what to do but was afraid of losing face. Fenton leaned in to his indecision.

"Well?"

The captain was tipped over.

"Yes, I suppose you'd better step inside."

Fenton and Vickers made to pass through but the guard didn't get out of the way. She looked enquiringly at the captain.

"Sir?"

The captain covered himself with impatient bluster.

"Yes, yes, let them through."

"On your authority sir?"

"Yes, damn it, on my authority. Now start this line moving." He waved Vickers and Fenton to where he was standing on the other side of the barrier. "So what is all this about?"

Fenton put an arm around the captain's shoulder and steered him away from the guards and the lines at the gates. Vickers followed them.

"It's like this, see. We think we might have a problem with one of your jumpers and all we wanted to do was to go down to the jumpers' locker room and discreetly go through his stuff."

The captain was looking nervous again.

"A jumper? One of the ones who actually go inside the reactor?"

"One of those. One of those exactly. That's why we have to be so very careful. I mean, those people don't have very long lifespans, do they?"

"It's not as bad as it was on the outside, we take better care…"

"Yeah, but what with contamination and their hair falling out and everything, they've still got plenty of room to get mean. Am I right?"

"I guess so."

"And if one of them went rogue they could do an untold amount of damage."

"That's right."

"We only had the faintest of whispers that one of these people might be up to something but there was no way that we could ignore it."

"What was this whisper?"

"That someone was stashing explosives inside the fusion loop."

The captain actually turned a little pale.

"You have to be joking. Do you know what even the smallest explosion in the fusion loop could do?"

"And that's why we have to go in and check things out."

The captain shook his head.

"If you want to go in and search why didn't you go through channels?"

Fenton removed his arm from around the captain's shoulder with a look of exasperation.

"Are you back on that again? You know what it's like around here. If we'd gone through channels everyone in the plant would have known about it inside half an hour. The whole point here is to keep it quiet. Quiet, you understand? If there's nothing to it we don't want to give the bastards any ideas, do we?"

"I guess not."

"So are you going to take us down there or do I have to get someone with some real clout?"

It was Vickers' moment to interrupt. "Do we have to fuck around with this jerk any longer? Let's just find his superior and explain how he's fucking us over."

Fenton became the calming influence.

"Hey, give him a break, will you? He wants to cooperate, he's just nervous. They go by the book down here, that's all." He turned to the captain. "You're going to help us out, aren't you?"

The captain caved in. "Okay, but I'm going to have to come down there with you.

Fenton beamed. "Sure. Let's go to it."

With the captain completely buffaloed, the rest was easy. They went through to the jumpers' locker room and opened the locker of one Jose Torres. The computer had selected him as being the same size as Vickers, so his radiation suit would fit. He was also off-shift so the suit would be hanging in his locker. While the captain watched, they searched every inch of the suit. Finally they delivered the verdict.

"There're no secret pockets or gimmicks in the suit that we can find. We're going to have to take it in for some lab tests."

Vickers had an apparent thought.

"We really ought to put another suit in its place so Torres won't suspect anything." He looked at the captain. "Can you fix that for us? Can you get us another suit?"

The captain was now a hundred percent anxious to please. He practically skipped to the nearest wall phone. Inside of ten minutes, a mystified orderly had brought down a second orange radiation suit. Vickers folded Torres' original suit under his arm and let the increasingly relieved captain lead them back the way they'd come. As they walked out through the security check, Vickers couldn't resist a parting shot. He wagged a cautionary finger at the captain.

"Not a word now, right? Nothing to anyone?"

The captain was as eager as a terrier. "You can trust me."

"I sure hope we can."

Vickers and Fenton walked slowly between two lines of parked vehicles to the first level, doing their best to look like it was just a routine patrol. Over the past two days they'd conducted a lot of random, unauthorized patrols and no one had challenged them or even asked a question. This, however, was the big one. It was their first shot at the outside. Vickers had Jose Torres' radiation suit slung over his shoulder in a canvas tote bag and, in addition to the usual Yasha, he also carried a big 12 gauge Churchill autoload. As far as hardware went, Vickers was ready for the outside. Emotionally, he wasn't so sure. The dry metallic taste was in his mouth and the acid knot in his stomach. It was different, though, from preparing for combat. This was something completely unknown. He knew that he was scared of what he might find out there. All he could do was lean back on his nerves and carefully put one foot in front of the other.

They came to the end of the line of vehicles. They turned and walked up another. Without being too obvious about it, they were gradually working their way away from the sealed elevator door toward the far back of the level. After sauntering casually for another five minutes, they were between two rows of tall armored personnel carriers. As far as either of them could tell there were no cameras watching them in the darkness.

"This looks like as good a place as any." Vickers dropped the tote bag on the ground. They stood still for a few seconds, waiting for any possible challenge. When none came, Vickers bent down and dragged out the suit. He unrolled it and laid it flat.

"You want to help me with this?"

"Sure."

Fenton held up the bulky orange suit while Vickers struggled into it. Finally he pulled on the headpiece but left the faceplate open.

"Christ, you could sweat to death in one of these."

They both glanced around at the black, silent lines of armor. Nothing seemed to be moving. Vickers took a deep breath.

"I guess I'd better get going."

Fenton glanced at his watch. Vickers did the same. Fenton had one more look round.

"You want to give me five minutes to get out of here?"

"Yeah, okay."

"Take it easy, right? Just two hours and then right back inside."

Vickers nodded. "If I'm not back in three, you've never heard of me."

Fenton briefly gripped Vickers' arm and then he walked away. Vickers watched him go. His diminishing footsteps were measured and even, as though he didn't have a care in the world. The old familiar feeling of wanting to be somewhere else crept over Vickers. He did his best to focus his attention on the passage of time, staring at the digits on his watch, willing them to change. He gave Fenton his full five minutes, then he shouldered the Churchill and started determinedly into the darkness.

It was like another world. At first the things that scuttled out of the way of his flashlight beam were rats and lizards and small desert rodents. As he got further in though, they sounded bigger and a lot more timid. People? Mad enough to live out here in the dark? No flooring had ever been put in and the ground underfoot was covered with building debris. He had to take care not to stumble on rocks, chunks of masonry and discarded boards. Stacks of unused building material and heaps of garbage gave the unfinished area a set of contours that provided natural cover for whoever and whatever lurked. At regular intervals there were small smokey fires with dark figures crouched among them. Vickers didn't approach any. He figured that those who had elected to live in this place had sufficient troubles without the addition of being scared witless by a monsterous, armed figure in an orange suit. At some point, someone had clearly tried to marginally improve the unfinished area. Loops of electrical cable hung down from the ceiling like black jungle vines. Vickers had seen a handful of jury-rigged lights off in the distance but they were quickly extinguished when he threatened to come anywhere near them. The oddities who hid out in the place were skittish and extremely watchful.

It took Vickers over thirty-five minutes to locate the door. He'd crossed the unfinished area by dead reckoning and then worked his way along the wall. He'd missed the start of the tunnel on the first pass. He hadn't been expecting it to be concealed behind anything as mundane as a sheet of corrugated tin. Vickers moved the tin to one side and shone his light into the black space. The tunnel was nothing special. It was narrow and the curved roof was just high enough to allow a man of normal height to walk without stooping. Any group of people coming down the tunnel would have to do it in single file. It was clearly intended to be easily defensible. Instinctively, Vickers ducked as he stepped inside.

Vickers saw something on the floor of the tunnel up ahead. It looked as though someone had dumped some untidily coiled electrical cable. He was sufficiently keyed up to stop and regard it suspiciously before going forward. The mess seemed harmless enough, an untidy confusion of cable ends, but Vickers couldn't quite figure out why cable off-cuts should be dumped some two hundred yards down a tunnel that had no electric wiring. It wasn't anything to make him turn back, though. Then one of the cables moved.

"Sweet Jesus Christ!"

The cables were snakes. Vickers detested snakes and knew nothing about them. He could only assume that they were nasty and probably poisonous. Vickers had no idea why they were there but he only had the haziest idea of what snakes might be capable. Presumably they had somehow gotten in from the desert. His first impulse was to unhitch the Churchill and blow the whole squirm of them away. He realized in time, though, that if he started blazing away with an autoload in such a confined space, he might, with luck, kill all the snakes and avoid being hit by ricocheting pellets but the noise would certainly destroy his hearing. His second impulse was to turn back but that would totally destroy his self-respect. What was he going to tell Fenton? There were snakes in the tunnel and he'd chickened out? He walked gingerly forward. As far as he could tell, the radiation suit was probably thick enough to stop a snakebite but he didn't want to bank his life on it.

There were just enough foot-sized spaces in among the snakes for him to walk through the living minefield without actually treading directly on one of the reptiles. This wasn't to say that one might not still take offense and sink its fangs into his ankle. He tried his first step. One snake slithered lethargically but nothing threatened him. He paused on one foot. His heart was pounding. He put his foot down for a second time. At first it seemed okay, then a snake rattled at him. Vickers wanted to jump, possibly to scream as well. Instead, he bit down on his tongue. The snake coiled back but then, instead of striking, it slipped harmlessly across his boot. One more step and he'd be past the snakes. He wanted to shut his eyes but that would hardly be very bright. He raised his foot and moved it forward. Very slowly, he put it down. Three rattlers came up. One snake struck at his boot. Its teeth sank in. Vickers felt nothing but he still leapt. The snake's teeth were hooked into the outer fabric of his boot. It jerked with him. It was only shaken free when Vickers hit the ground. To his infinite relief, it wriggled quickly away back to its companions. Vickers leaned against the wall, sweating and gasping for breath. He didn't move for a few moments, partly to let his heart stop racing and partly to see that nothing had happened to his ankle. When two minutes had passed and there was no sign of swelling or anything else amiss, he straightened up and walked on.

The tunnel ended in a steel, submarine-style bulkhead door with a large locking wheel at its center. Vickers knew that this was about as close to the moment of truth as he was going to get. He closed the faceplate of his suit and turned on the air supply. He gripped the wheel and twisted. Nothing happened. Vickers bit his lip. He couldn't believe that he could have come all this way to be stopped by a simple lock. He twisted again. There was a little give. He threw all of his strength against the wheel and grudgingly it started to turn. It was simply stiff from lack of use. After three turns the wheel refused to turn any further. Vickers pushed against the door. At first it resisted but, when Vickers put his shoulder to it, it slowly swung open. As far as he could tell he was on the underside of a small bridge or large culvert. The door was built directly into the wall. Presumably the whole structure had been designed to conceal the secret exit. The light at either end of the tunnel was blinding. His first thought was how he wished he'd brought some dark glasses. Then something caught at his throat. It was eighteen months since he'd seen the sun. He looked at the radiation counter on his wrist. It still showed green. That meant, if the thing could be trusted, that the radiation level was negligible. He wasn't quite ready, however, to open his faceplate. His watch told him, what with the snakes and the other delays, he had already used up fifty minutes of his two hours. He checked the Yasha, slung the Churchill over his shoulder and started out into the world.