They walked through an arch and into what might have been an open-plan prison or the crewdeck of an aircraft carrier. Tall, steel, four-tier combination bunk-and-locker units served as homes for maybe a hundred or more. This was the second level. There was no luxury here, just a hard functionality. The only semblance of privacy came from mesh screens that sectioned the area into a series of twelve-person cubes. A minimal softening of the cold metal was produced by a scattering of photos and trinkets hung on the mesh. Not even the long-bladed overhead fans could minimalize the unmistakable stench of too tightly packed humanity, the combination of sweat, soiled clothing and boiled vegetables.
"Who lives here?"
"Handlers."
The five looked around, shocked both by the Spartan wretchedness and also a little surprised at their own comparative good fortune. Debbie noticed something and glanced at Deakin.
"Is it all women in this area?"
Deakin nodded. "This is a female handlers' living area."
Vickers looked around with interest. Debbie was right. All the off-duty people laying in their bunks or hanging out by the vending machines on the far side of the area were women.
"Sexual segregation?"
"Pairing is frowned upon unless the bunker is actually sealed. Heaven forbid."
"If the bunker was sealed they'd have to live this way for months, maybe years."
Deakin seemed unconcerned.
"Nobody said survival was going to be easy."
This answer wasn't quite good enough for Eggy.
"How come we live so good?"
Deakin looked at him coldly.
"As you've told me so often, you're big-time security operatives. You're supposed to be valuable."
Eggy shook his head. "It don't seem right."
"What are you, a communist or something?"
Vickers noticed that not only was everyone in the area a woman, but also that everyone in the area was a passably attractive woman. It was starting to look as though there were no ugly people in the bunker. Vickers had been checking on this. The few grotesques that he'd seen were, in some way, like Eggy. They at least had something very particular going for them, and they were in an extreme minority.
It was hot in the living area and many of the women wore nothing more than skimpy, if very plain, underwear. Despite the shadow of an idea that he was somehow intruding, Vickers felt something stir inside him. Sex was something else that had been put on hold since he'd arrived in the bunker. The affair with Debbie that had only just begun at El Rancho Mars hadn't exactly been terminated. They had agreed, when it became clear the five of them were to be thrown together in a closed group, that it would be a bad idea, in a situation of one woman and four men, for the one woman to be sleeping with one of the men. It would create unnecessary tensions within the group. After a week, though, he was having to cope with some unnecessary tensions of his own. It didn't help that a pretty, almost naked handler winked at him as Deakin hurried them on through. As they came out of the living area and turned into yet another corridor, Eggy still seemed disturbed by the conditions.
"All the handlers live like that?"
Deakin nodded. "And the facers and the domestics, the blue and the brown, they have it pretty minimal."
"No shit?" Eggy was thoughtful. "There ain't too much of all people being created equal, is there?"
Debbie had also been thinking.
"What's the ratio of women to men?"
"Five to one."
"Five women to every man?"
"Jesus Christ."
"Who thought that one up?"
"There'll be an entire planet to repopulate if this place is ever used."
"It does make a certain kind of sense."
"It's fucking insanity. I want out of this place."
Debbie was glaring angrily at Deakin. He, in turn, regarded her coldly.
"You're signed on to the end of your tour."
Debbie looked bitter.
"Don't I know it."
"So where are we off to now? I thought we got through with the tour of the air plant."
Although they hadn't seen the sun for ten days, the group of five maintained the solar day and even took their meals at the traditional times; the final one was a communal supper and it was unusual that Deakin should appear in their quarters after the evening meal. It had come to be considered free time and thus it was something of an unwelcome surprise when he came into their quarters just as they were settling down to some after dinner drinking. It was their tenth day quarantined in the orientation process and tempers were beginning to fray a little.
"I thought I'd treat you to a night off."
By his own standards. Deakin was almost amiable. Fenton scowled.
"There's got to be a catch in this."
"No catch. I thought you could use a trip out for a couple of drinks and a chance to meet some of your colleagues."
"We're getting out of the bunker?"
"Of course not. Don't be ridiculous."
"So what about these drinks? Are you telling us there's a bar in this place?"
"There's a security club room that you'll be able to use once you're out of quarantine."
Eggy sucked on his beer.
"Do the handlers have a club room?"
"They have their own facilities."
"I'll bet they do."
"Who are these colleagues?"
Four other five-person groups like yourselves. Shall we go?"
As bars went it was cramped. Spartan and drab. The lights were too bright. The barroom decorations, the neon signs, the helix machines, the risque holograms were totally absent. The walls, ceiling and fittings were all made from some off-white industrial plastic. It was like going to a party in the emergency room. The whole place appeared to have been designed so it could be hosed down after a rough night. By the standards of the parts of the bunker they'd seen so far, it was close to idyllic luxury. It was already fairly full. The other groups, each with their own equivalent of Deakin, were already there. This caused Eggy to wink at Vickers.
"At least we get to make an entrance."
Vickers was equally amused by the fact that, of the four groups in the club room, two had been persuaded to wear the yellow uniforms with INDUCTEE stenciled across the front.
"It looks like we're in the top ten around here."
Fenton was also glancing around. There was a good deal of tension in the room.
"Top ten of what, I ask myself. Have you taken a look at that other bunch that refused uniforms'?"
The rival five were nothing short of spectacular. There were three men and two women. The taller of the two women was a drama all on her own. From neck to toe, she was decked out in skintight black leather. She was a masochist's dream. She wore no less than three studded belts, matching wrist bands and a collar of long chromium spikes. Her head was shaved except for a long, cossack-style braided topknot.
"You can see why she turned down a set of coveralls."
"Maybe she'd make a companion for Eggy." Eggy grimaced. "Too fucking freaky for me." The second woman made up in breadth what she lacked in height. She was a muscle builder and had the muscle builder's preference for wearing next to nothing and letting definition speak for itself. She had arms like a lumberjack but, as though in compensation, she also had truly enormous breasts and a high-piled confection of white-blonde hair. Vickers suspected that a great deal of her development was steroid growth. If she ever stopped exercising, she'd balloon up to four hundred pounds. She wasn't the only one in the group who appeared to be using steroids. Yabu was built like a sumo wrestler. Vickers knew it had to be Yabu. Both his reputation and physical description were too totally unique. The legend of Yabu was repeated in every corporation across the Free World. He delighted in a particularly artistic and often Zen violence. It was claimed that he'd devised a stomach-turning method of crushing a man's skull between his two hands so the eyes first popped and then brainstuff hosed out from the empty sockets. The second man was the basic nonentity of the bunch. He was short, slight and beyond demonstrating that, in a certain conservative way, he was something of a snappy dresser. Nothing registered. Vickers wondered if he were another cold but deadly fish like Parkwood. The real piece de resistance in the group was the seven foot black man with the long ringletted hair who was, at that moment, baring his very white teeth at Eggy. Vickers glanced at Eggy with some alarm. "You know him?"