Abbie singer glanced at the ceiling.
"There are times when it seems a million miles away. It's all so locked in down here, it's another world."
"How long have you been down here?"
"Two months."
"When do you rotate out?"
"We don't know, nobody's been told."
"Nobody seems to be told anything in this place."
"They say it's security. You don't hear that you're getting out until literally a few hours before you go."
"Doesn't that make you crazy?"
As though to confirm that it did indeed make her crazy, she finished her drink in a single belt and moved to the bar for another.
"Sure it does, but you have to figure that it's going to be worth it in the long run."
Debbie was also at the bar. She eyed Vickers and Abbie and smiled nastily.
"Getting acquainted over there?"
Vickers spread his hands.
"Isn't this the get acquainted party?" He turned back to Abbie. "What do you mean you figure that it's got to be worth it in the long run? What's got to be worth it in the long run? Is this something else I don't know?"
Abbie looked at him as though he was an idiot who'd missed the obvious.
"We get to survive. If we're lucky enough to be down here when it happens."
"When it happens? I'd always hoped it was a matter of if."
"Not the way things are going lately. It's really starting to look grim."
Vickers was genuinely surprised. "You get news from outside?"
"Oh yeah, once you're out of quarantine, you get the internal news system piped in. These days, it's pretty much bad."
"I've been out of circulation for a while. What's been going on?"
"Basically the Soviets are finally and totally coming apart." She glanced around as though looking for some kind of confrontation. "I suppose it's all right to tell you. If we weren't supposed to talk they wouldn't have put us all here together."
"But the Soviets have been falling apart for decades."
"Yeah, but this seems to be it. It's really the last days. There's apparently been a whole string of military coups in Moscow and some of the regional centers. It's starting to look as though it's only a matter of time before bombs get loose one way or the other."
"Jesus Christ."
"The only consolation is that those of us who survive will inherit a new and cleansed world."
There was something in her eyes, a gleam that wasn't quite that of the brainwashed but was certainly some way down the road.
"Where are you recruited from?"
"The San Francisco Police Department; I was a Lieutenant of Detectives. Why do you ask?"
"No reason."
She put a hand on his arm. "Listen, I know this place can be confusing at first but you'll be thinking straighter tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? Why tomorrow?"
"They really don't tell you anything. I guess that's what happens when you pull Deakin. He's the kind of bastard who can turn a coffee break into a conspiracy. Believe me, I had to deal with plenty of his kind in the police force."
"What's going to happen tomorrow?"
"I'm sorry, I'm just running off at the mouth. Doctor Lutesinger is what's happening tomorrow. All four of us security squads are going down to the main lecture hall on the fifth level. He's coming up from the lowers to address us. It'll be the first time you'll have heard him speak. He's pretty impressive."
"Lutesinger is coming here? To speak to us?"
Again there was the slightest trace of fervor. "He's really something, you'll see. He's able to get things across so they make complete sense."
It was turning out to be a highly interesting evening. Vickers tried not to show the keenness of his interest.
"Lutesinger is in actual residence here? He lives in the bunker?"
"Sure he lives here. He rarely strays from the bottoms, though. That's why this lecture is quite an honor."
"Is Lloyd-Ransom here as well?"
Abbie Singer laughed. There was an edge of bitterness to it.
"Oh sure, Lloyd-Ransom's here. Once you get out of quarantine, you can't miss him, what with the smile and the gold braid and the pencil moustache. He's always parading around with his guards and his damn dogs." There was none of the same awe. That seemed to be reserved exclusively for Lutesinger. "They say he had a knack for turning up exactly where he's not wanted. He's also supposed to be the one behind all these Ruritanian uniforms."
"You sound like you don't like him."
"Yeah, but I know enough to be scared of him." Vickers signalled for another drink. There was suddenly a hell of a lot to think about. He wasn't sure that he was ready to see Lutesinger in the morning. Suddenly he realized it was the usual trepidation he experienced when he was about to look over a target for the first time. He hadn't given up the mission. Deep inside, he was still a Contec corpse on a mission to kill Lutesinger and Lloyd-Ransom. He'd never known that he possessed such illogical reserves of loyalty. Over on the other side of the room, Eggy was imitating Marlon Brando. "Charlie, I could have been a contender. Charlie."
"You all know the story of the ant and the grasshopper. How all summer the ant toiled ceaselessly storing up food for the winter while the grasshopper merely sang and sunned himself. You remember how, as the nights drew in and the winter turned cold, the grasshopper knew that he was going to starve. How, too late, he saw the error of his ways. Then he whipped out a gun, shot the ant stone dead and stole all his food."
There was a ripple of polite laughter from the small crowd. Doctor Lutesinger permitted himself a narrow acid smile and then returned to the business at hand.
"This poor fragment of humor in fact sums up the entire function of security in this complex. We have labored through a long summer to build this place and we must now guard that no grasshopper with a gun takes it away from us."
The term lecture hall was an extreme understatement. It was a spectacular multi-purpose theater down on the fifth level, where it seemed that few expenses were spared. It was a steep banking of some two hundred seats set into a high arching, acoustically perfect sound shell. The style was lavishly neo-deco complete with smoke mirrors and soft-light diffusion panels. Vickers found it more suited to a symphony concert than to an address by an elderly academic madman. Not that the elderly madman was doing all that badly. Just as the term lecture hall had been a major understatement, so was the title lecture. It was a full-scale theatrical production. White light fell on Lutesinger like the approval of God. Behind him, in the shadows at the rear of the stage was the forbidding, grim dark line of his dozen-strong bodyguard. Even the dumbest of the audience couldn't help but perceive that everything had been done to invest Lutesinger with every last wringing of authority. When Vickers and his companions had arrived, a hidden sound system had been playing Mahler.
"Some of those among you are newcomers, and for your benefit I shall first try to define the nature of this terrible winter that is so close upon us."
Lutesinger paused, as if for dramatic effect. In contrast to the pomp and circumstance of his surrounding, Lutesinger was a stooped, spindly, fragile figure. He seemed to lean heavily on the lucite column that served him as a lecturn. His long skeletal hands clung to it and he only removed them long enough to briefly emphasize a point. His suit was very plain and about twenty years out of date, charcoal gray in a style favored by conservative tax analysts. His voice was equally unimpressive. It could have been of an elderly teutonic speech synthesiser. There was, however, something hypnotic about the slow, almost reptilian way that he swayed slightly as he spoke. The overhead lights turned his eye sockets into black holes of certainty. He was a paradox. He seemed so ancient and frail and yet there was an energy and menace that was more than just stage effects.