"Drunks or dykes?"
"Either, probably both."
Vickers was beginning to suspect that after six months of this overcrowding they'd probably be climbing the walls and eating each other like rats in an experiment, but he kept the thought to himself. Johanna was making her move on him. She'd slipped in beside him and was leaning close enough for him to feel her breast against his arm. She finished her drink with a definite finality. Vickers pretended not to read the gesture and smiled.
"You want another?"
"I'd rather get out of here and go somewhere marginally quieter."
"I figure we should have one more each."
"You want to put a bit of distance between us?"
"I was thinking more about putting a bit of distance between us and the environment."
Johanna looked around at the raucous crowd. "You may be right at that."
They called up two more shots and finished them quickly. Vickers turned to see what was going on with his companions. Eggy had vanished and Parkwood was kissing Yvonne. As far as Vickers could remember, it was the first time that he had ever seen him make physical contact with another human. Clearly he had no more need of Vickers' moral support. Vickers glanced at Johanna and she nodded. They slipped through the crowd heading for the nearest exit. They emerged into a service corridor.
"You know where we are?"
"Sure. This is my neighborhood." She slipped her arm through his. "I know I should be grateful that I've got a place down here and I'm safe and everything but sometimes I think this living is going to drive me crazy."
"What did you do before?"
"I was doing public relations at the Global office in LA. I profiled out when they ran the first shortlist program. They offered me a place down here and I took it. Everything looked so bad. Of course, it was a hell of a wrench going from buying drinks for TV producers to riding a bunch of robots on the loading dock but anything has to be worth it to survive." She gave a slight shudder. "There are times when it gets to me, though."
"So you worked for Global?"
"Right. It seems like another life now."
"You heard what happened to Herbie Mossman?"
"It doesn't bother me. I used to hear stories from the girls in the Vegas tower. By all accounts he was a disgusting, fat freak." She tightened her grip on his arm. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. I just want to feel and not think. I don't even know your name."
"Mort Vickers."
"Are you really one of Lloyd-Ransom's top hired guns?"
"I guess so."
"Hmm." She snuggled up against him.
After walking for about three minutes, they turned into the entrance of a handlers' dormitory. The sign over the doorway read General Living Area 30.
"GLA 30. Home sweet home. You can believe me that the living here is pretty general."
The living area was a very different place, during the down period, from the bright, cramped regimentation that Vickers had seen previously. The main overhead lights had been turned off but, while the majority of bunk tiers were in complete darkness, here and there some of the women had rigged candles or small bulbs shaded by colored scarves inside their bunk spaces. The daytime effect of gray metal uniformity was softened and hidden, made feminine even. Brute reality was held at bay and there was an almost magical quality. Each lighted space was like a cell of muted color in some giant, shadowy honeycomb. There was a trace of musky scent in the air, a mingling of incense and perfume, and low murmured conversations combined with the normal background sounds of the bunker. A few tiers away, someone was quietly playing something Spanish on a guitar. Dark moving figures in some of the bunks made it clear that others had come back to the area with intentions similar to those of Vickers and Johanna.
Johanna squeezed his hand and led them between the tiers.
"It's lucky that I was assigned a bottom bunk. Any kind of athletics in an upper bunk can be quiet dangerous."
Johanna had strung Christmas tree lights throughout the steel mesh in back of her bunk. The bunk itself was covered in a black silk shawl with a red and gold dragon embroidered on it that was obviously not official issue. She sat down on the edge of the bunk and drew Vickers down beside her.
"I have really horrible wine if you want some. It even came in a plastic container; or some of that scotch from the messhall."
"You are… very… weird."
Her breath came in scarcely muffled, vocal gasps. Vickers was still conscious of the potential audience in the shadows but Johanna seemed to have shut it out.
"Very… weird… indeed."
Vickers grinned in the glow of the fairy lights.
"I'll… stop if you… don't… like it."
Johanna squirmed against him with an extra added thrust.
"I didn't… say I… didn't like it… quite the… reverse… I like it very much!"
Her breath came in a final shout, her back arched in a prolonged, teeth-clenching spasm. By then even Vickers had forgotten about the people all around them.
A little later she was kissing his shoulder. "You're a terrible pervert, Mort Vickers. You know that?"
"People have told me."
"Will you take these things off me now?"
"Why don't we wait a little bit."
He had to admit, she really did look magnificent. She formed her lips into a small pout.
"Please, if we do it again, I'd rather do it the usual way."
Vickers smiled. "Whatever you say."
As he fumbled with the fastening, she lay back with her eyes closed.
"Will you come and see me again, Mort Vickers?"
"Sure will."
He meant every word of it. Her eyes opened.
"You're a damned liar."
"Why do you say that?"
"You're too slick to be anything but a damned liar."
The single bunk was too narrow to allow them to lie comfortably side by side. Vickers swung his feet to the floor.
"You're wrong you know. I like you. I'll come and see you again. That's what you really want to know, isn't it? Whether I like you or not?"
Johanna laughed. "Don't flatter yourself. What I really want is to corral myself a nice reliable fuck so I can relax a bit in this rat race. I somehow don't think you're it. You've probably got something going with at least three women down where you live."
Vickers reached around for the wine.
"As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've got myself laid since I got here."
Johanna took the wine from him.
"I don't believe you."
"It's true, I swear."
"Then you're weirder than I thought you were."
Vickers leaned back against her body. There was something comforting in the feel of someone else's warmth. If the bunk had been a little wider he would have lain down and gone to sleep. He drank some more wine and let himself drift. He must have actually been slipping away. Johanna's voice startled him.
"You'd better think about going."
Vickers sat up. "Oh yeah?"
"They turn a blind eye to these visits as long as the visitors don't stay all night."
"Maybe next time you should come down to my quarters."
"That's not allowed. If anyone in a blue or brown uniform is caught below the second level without legitimate authority, they're arrested. You can be thrown out of the bunker or worse."
"Worse?"
"Worse is only implied. I've never really wanted to know the details."
Vickers wasn't quite convinced.
"There must be a way to swing it." Johanna shook her head. "If there were, Eggy would have found it by now. He's using storerooms and machine pods for his twosomes and threesomes."
"It all sounds a bit un-American."
Johanna's voice was bitter. "This isn't America. It isn't any place but the bunker and we live by the bunker's rules. If you want the bunker's protection you have to go with the program. It's like the saying goes, survivors can't be choosers."