"A brand new, clean-slate world is some serious temptation."
Vickers had been unable to sleep. Huge, pink-fleshed steroid women stalked his dreams, reaching for him with their huge, slab-of-meat hands. Bent reptile men with black eyes advanced. They clutched bright chrome spears, like giant needles, in green arthritic hands. They lunged at the steroid women, who burst in explosions of blood and flesh. He fled through the darkness of a huge decaying building. His legs were heavy and his breathing labored. The building was coming apart and he was on a very high floor. The walls decomposed and ran down their steel supports like they were formed of some organic material that was suddenly putrefying. The ceilings also rotted and rained down on him while expanding gaps in the floor threatened to pitch him headlong into a hundred-story abyss. A steroid woman appeared from nowhere. She was all over him, smothering him. He couldn't breathe. He was going to suffocate. Then the floor gave way and they fell together. At that point, he decided that it was a very good time to wake up.
He found that he was sweating. It was probably the damn chemicals they'd pumped into the room while Lutesinger was doing his act. All the molecular persuaders had some kind of unpleasant after effect. God knows, he didn't need chemicals to kick off a cycle of bad dreams. In its own, there was enough in his subconscious just waiting to be dredged up to make him sweat. He decided that there were two possible antidotes. One was vitamin C and the other was alcohol. A series of screwdrivers might be an ideal solution. When, however, he stepped into the common room he found that he was not the only one who was awake and drinking. Parkwood sat in the deepest, most comfortable chair reading a novel by Celine and nursing a large scotch. He glanced up as Vickers came out of his cubicle.
"Sleepless night?"
"I hope a couple of drinks will put me out."
Vickers poured himself the first in the proposed series. Parkwood put down his book.
"It's probably whatever cloud they were floating us on for Lutesinger."
"You noticed that?"
"It could hardly be missed."
The two men sat in silence for a while, guarding their thoughts. This accidental moment so obviously lent itself to some sort of intimacy but neither seemed willing to be the first to drop his guard. It was hard to do without seeming less than professionally correct. Finally Parkwood sipped his scotch and smiled dryly.
"Doctor Lutesinger provided quite a spectacle."
"Didn't he just."
"He seemed particularly anxious to sell us the official philosophy."
"Anxious enough to dose us down the microdelics to help him get across."
Parkwood raised an eyebrow. "You thought microdelics?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I'd had much the same thought myself."
Again there was silence. Parkwood got up and poured himself another scotch. When he sat down again, he seemed to have made a decision. He fixed Vickers with a candidly even stare.
"You realize there's a madness down here."
"You realize that more than likely someone or something is listening into this conversation?"
Parkwood was surprisingly matter of fact.
"It doesn't really worry me very much. I've given this some thought. If they're paranoid enough to have the whole place wired for surveillance-and they probably are-it would have to be hooked into an artificial intelligence that's programmed to hear a range of concepts, actions and direction of conversations that have been deemed by someone to be treasonous, subversive or whatever. I tried to hack toward it by that route but the whole subject is monkeyblocked ever whichway, a fact that, in itself, proves they have something to hide. I figure they've probably given up on us ideologically. We're the hired guns. We've already proved we're subversive by going along with the programs only extremely grudgingly. We can cuss and spit on the sidewalk. Nobody's going to worry, we're a lost cause. If they come and cart Eggy away, I'll start to worry but until then… I'm not boring you, am I?"
Vickers blinked. It was the longest speech he had ever heard Parkwood make. He suspected that the cold, reserved corpse was fairly well advanced into the scotch.
"And what's this madness you started talking about?"
"Don't be coy with me, Mort. You've been aware that there's something weird about this whole setup since you had your first run-ins with Streicher. I've seen you looking at all those Ruritanian uniforms and the rest of the nonsense. You feel the same way I do."
"And how do you feel?"
"We're living in the middle of an adolescent fantasy. The huge surplus of women, all the fake pomp and circumstance. It's a wet dream, a teen-acne power trip. It's so bloody simpleminded. I presume you're familiar with the Charlie Manson story?"
"Everybody's familiar with the Charlie Manson story. They've made four movies about it."
"Remember when Charlie was at the peak of his megalomania and getting ready for Helter Skelter? According to Charlie there was this huge bottomless cave way out in the desert. When Armageddon came and the blacks start wiping out the whites, Charlie was going to take his people down into the cave where they could hole up until the devastation was complete and then come out and take over. The troglodytes inherit the earth."
"You think that's what's going on here?"
"The end of the world's a cheap shot in the mad prophet business."
"And you think Lutesinger a mad prophet?"
"Sure. He's so computerized that he may not know it yet, but yeah, he's one for sure. Plus, it's no secret that Lloyd-Ransom's been crazy as a loon for years."
"So what do you know about Lloyd-Ransom?" Parkwood's eyes slitted.
"I'm a little drunk but I'm not going to stand still for this cross examination much longer."
"I know that."
"This conversation's supposed to be a two-way street, a mutual exchange of confidence."
"So tell me what you know about Lloyd-Ransom and then it'll be my turn."
"I doubt I know anything you don't know. Regular British Army, the kind of psychopath who can survive in the military as long as he keeps on heading out for the edge. Lloyd-Ransom eventually wound up in command of one of those SAS Twilight groups. The kind that they feed on raw meat and vodka and keep in cages when they're not on a mission. He notched up quite a body count during the withdrawal from Ulster and a bigger one in Namibia. He vanished for a while after the London coup crisis, resurfaced in Africa and freelanced for a couple of years before he came to the US via Singapore and hooked his way into corporate security. I haven't come across him in five years, but the last time I had dealings with him, he was a real teeth grinder."
"The more I learn about this place the more depressed I get."
"It's early days yet. Wait until we finally get shut in for real down here. That's when it's going to get hairy."
Vickers was surprised.
"Isn't that a little fatalistic?"
Parkwood looked a little shocked. "Did you hear what I just said?"
"Sure."
"All through that damned lecture I knew they were hosing us down with something. For no real reason I kept feeling this absolute gut certainty that the end was right at hand. Didn't you feel it?"
"All I felt was the sweats and a headache. I've got a really high tolerance to suggestion. I just get psychosomatic fever."
"You're lucky."
"Maybe."
"But why should they go to so much trouble to convince us that the end is at hand?"
Vickers stood up and went to get himself another drink.
"I would have thought that it was obvious. It's straight back to your mad prophet theory. Lutesinger and Lloyd-Ransom can't wait for Armageddon. It would make them kings of the world."
Parkwood pursed his lips.
"Of course. You're right. I was simply holding off from the ultimate."