"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."