Ralph advanced quickly on Sam and grabbed him by the front of his overalls. "You're babbling to a fucking stiff!"
Sam's face was still bright red, but as soon as Ralph took hold of him the flush seemed to take on a different meaning. Ralph was about to make a crack on the lines of Sam getting like Artie when he abruptly changed his mind. An instant flash of drunken insight took in Sam's florid face and whitening knuckles. Ralph quickly let go of him and took a step back. Sam glowered at him. "I don't like for you to be touching me that way, Ralph."
Ralph took another pace backward and bit his lip. He didn't like the look of this transformed Sam. He wished he were still across the other side of the section, sucking on his bottle. He looked down at the cabinet Sam had been talking to.
"Jesus Christ." The exclamation came out before he could stop it.
Sam glared at him. "What?"
Ralph tried to keep his voice as even as possible. "That's the new stiff, Sam. The one they just brought in."
"So?"
"But why the hell are you talking to her?"
"I like her, Ralph. She's so beautiful, and I feel sorry for her.''
Ralph felt a pressure inside his head. It was his turn to make frustrated gestures. "Listen, Sam…"
"I don't want to listen, Ralph."
"But she's a stiff."
"I like her, Ralph."
"But she doesn't even know she's here. In her brain she's somewhere else totally."
"I think I'm in love with her, Ralph."
Ralph opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He was about to tell Sam that he was crazy. Instead, he decided to keep quiet. In Sam's present mood, he was just as likely to tear Ralph's head off.
Sam was still looking at him belligerently. "Don't you have nothing to say about that, Ralph?"
Ralph shook his head. "Nothing. Except…"
"Except what, Ralph?"
"It's nothing."
"Except what, Ralph?"
Ralph edged away a little more. "I don't want you to get me wrong, Sam."
"Say it, Ralph."
"Well… I mean, you wouldn't do anything dumb, would you, Sam?"
"Dumb?"
"You wouldn't do nothing like opening up the cabinet? You wouldn't do nothing like that, would you, Sam?"
Sam gave him a long, hard look. "I think I'd kill anyone who tried to open her up, Ralph. I'm telling you. I think I'd kill anyone who tried to do that."
Ralph dropped his gaze to the floor. He took a deep breath. It required a good deal of effort to keep his voice calm and steady. "Sam."
"What?"
"Sam, I'm going to take myself off."
"Yeah?"
"I'm going to go away across to the other side of the section and go on drinking. I'm going to leave you to get on with whatever you're doing."
Sam nodded. "Okay, Ralph."
Ralph walked slowly away. Now and again he glanced back; Sam was once again talking to the girl in the cabinet, although his gestures were a lot less agitated. Ralph wondered if he had maybe taken a couple of Serenax.
Ralph reached the spot where his bottle was stashed. He sank down on the floor and unscrewed the cap. He took a liberal hit. The heat of the cheap whiskey hit his gut and his brain staggered slightly. He began to feel resentful. There was no doubt about it. He was getting a bum deal. Who needed to be stuck in a situation like the one he was in? First there was a fucking pervert like Artie shulking about, never showing his face and more than likely messing around with the stiffs. Ralph was sure that sooner or later trouble would come down on account of Artie. When it did, he knew the shit wouldn't just stop at him. Some of it would be sure to rub off on Ralph.
Then there was Sam. Sam may have been a pain in the ass, but he was at least reliable, in his own dumb way. He was always there when he was needed. That, however, was before he had decided to fall in love with the girl stiff. Bitterness, resentment, and disgust knotted in Ralph's throat. He compulsively took another drink. He needed it to stop himself choking. He looked across the orderly, silent rows of the feelie cabinets, each one with its scarcely living stiff.
The bitterness grew stronger and stronger inside Ralph. Those bastards had the right idea-they had gotten the hell out of the whole stinking world. The dirty rich bastards had the whole thing sewn up. They could escape. Ralph and people like him would have to stick with the entire filthy real world until they died and rotted. Ralph was strongly tempted to give it all up: leave the vault, leave the stiffs, and, above all, leave his two crazy partners before he got to be just like them. He ought to just up and quit, go on welfare. He would be just as well off being a wino.
The voices that lurked in the vaults seemed to laugh back at him. Ralph staggered to his feet. He swung around brandishing his bottle as though he was going to take on the whole of the vault.
"Fuck you all! Fuck every one of you!"
Tears sprang into the corners of his eyes. His hands went limp, the bottle fell to the floor. It bounced on the concrete but didn't break. Ralph was stooping to pick it up when the phone went. Ralph ignored it. He carefully set the bottle upright. The phone went on ringing. Ralph checked his bottle from all three sides. The phone still went on ringing. Ralph finally relented. He lurched to the pillar and picked it up.
"Yeah?"
"You took your time."
"So?"
"You all asleep down there?"
"We ain't asleep. What do you want?"
"Just a routine check. Everything okay down there?"
For an instant, Ralph was tempted to tell them all about Sam and Artie and how they were both stone crazy. The instant didn't last too long, though. Ralph suddenly thought, what the hell, they would only send two more mutants. They could be even worse.
"Sure everything's alright. What's with this routine check shit? We never had no routine checks before."
Ralph's belligerence got a mirror response from the other end of the phone.
"Don't take an attitude with me, Mac. It's a new policy order."
"Yeah, sure."
Ralph hung up.
"PLEASE TELL ME YOUR NAME."
"Frank Zola."
"Please sit down, Frank."
It was one of those intimate HAL 9000 voices, soft, dependable, and reassuring, but, at the same time, strangely dead. Frank sat down. There was just one chair in the viewing pod.
"Relax, Frank."
Frank slid down in the chair a little, but he could not relax. The viewing pods in the basement of the CM building were like tiny individual spaceships, or maybe coffins. Once the airtight door had sighed closed behind him he was alone with just the high-backed contour chair with the speakers built into the headrest and the sixty-inch, high-resolution screen. Although they were used by executives to look at the roughcuts of commercials, view normal tapes, and watch electronic presentations, their unique design was primarily for experiencing audio-visual-chemical mock-ups of feelie software that were complete apart from the Direct Neural Interface itself. They were also used for indoctrination of the newly hired.
"You have joined the family of Combined Media, Frank, and we all hope that you'll be very happy here. Before you commence your duties as a trainee project manager in the public relations department, you and I are going to have a little chat while I show you a short film. You should look on this as a part of the process of your getting acquainted with the corporation."
The screen was a friendly neutral blue. Frank Zola's nose twitched as though a sneeze were starting to build. Frank might have been the new kid in the corporation, the lowliest of the lowly and at the absolute bottom of the ladder, but he wasn't completely innocent. He knew that the corporate ethical philosophy allowed any trick that might be applicable. If CM believed that raining him with a fine mist of chemical softeners pumped in through the air-conditioning vents would aid the induction process, then it would be done. If he was going to get on in the corporation, he knew that he was expected to give them not only his time and service but also his mind. Frank Zola intended to do just that. He wasn't going to complain. He would take whatever they handed out, and he would go on taking it until he was finally in a sufficiently elevated position to be the one who dished it out, and then the poor bastards underneath him would have to watch out.