"It's simply safety precaution. We must always look to the future. When we finally emerge onto the surface, it will require a strong hierarchical society to ensure that we survive. I didn't go to all this trouble just to let loose the infection of socialism all over again."
Vickers had accepted that there was a certain grotesque logic to this. An area in which he could find no logic at all was in the way that Lloyd-Ransom handled the matter of when exactly they would unseal the bunker and start to investigate the surface. For about the first nine months things had remained fairly stable. The preoccupying paranoia had been with Red spies and saboteurs. As it came up to the first year, things began to change. All through the levels, people were getting itchy. They wanted to know what was going on above their heads. Officially, no one knew anything. The probes and sensors that were supposed to measure temperature and radiation, the satellite dishes that listened in to the world's communication and the cameras that showed what was happening in the immediate, surrounding desert had all gone dead. Lutesinger had been wheeled out to explain how it was likely that there'd been a surface burst almost on top of the bunker. He hadn't explained why even the Russians should be directing missiles to the middle of the Nevada desert.
As they moved into the second year, the itch turned into an open demand. Why not at least send up an exploratory team to check out surface conditions? Maybe things weren't as bad as the predictions said. Maybe the worst of the radiation had cooled off. Maybe the dust had settled and the nuclear winter was over. Lloyd-Ransom flatly refused to entertain any of these suggestions. As far as he was concerned, the only way out was to fully unseal the bunker and unsealing the bunker was a complicated process that involved tunneling up the blocked elevator shafts. Questions were asked. Surely there must be some other way out. Lloyd-Ransom said there wasn't and was not widely believed. How could they have designed such a complex structure as the bunker without some kind of bolt hole exits? The strange behavior began. Graffiti appeared. The Wantouts, as they became dubbed, became an active underground opposition and replaced the Reds as the primary targets for both Lloyd-Ransom's paranoia and his death squads.
There was the ringing clacks of high heels from the entrance to one of the tunnels that led away to the superpeople's private quarters. The steps sounded halting and uneven. Vickers glanced up. Almost unconsciously, his hand moved to the Yasha that he now carried slung from one shoulder, Doc Holliday style, by a leather strap. The woman was a tall, attractive redhead. She was tottering and very drunk. The high heels were a bright, flame red. She was dressed in a black, full-length mink, which she hugged tightly to herself as though uncertain as to whether it really belonged to her. Maybe it didn't. Perhaps she'd stolen it. It was quite likely that she was actually from one of the other levels, brought down as partyfodder and now going back with an expensive souvenir. She halted every few steps and stood, swaying. Vickers wasn't sure if she was crying or giggling to herself. She saw him and Fenton for the first time. She started and tightened her grip on the coat. Fenton, who'd also been watching her, laughed.
"Don't be frightened. I'm not going to hurt you. Neither's my good buddy here." He glanced at Vickers. "You're not going to hurt her, are you?"
Vickers shook his head. "Not me."
The woman moved unsteadily toward the table.
'Is there anything to drink?"
'You're pretty far gone."
'I know that but I still want a drink."
"There's plenty left over but you're going to have to look for it. '
The woman leaned heavily on the table and began to rummage through the mess. She found a bottle of champagne and put it to her mouth. Vickers noticed that she had green eyes.
"It's flat."
"What did you expect?"
As she drank, her coat fell open. She was naked beneath it. Her body was white and liberally freckled. There were a number of angry red welts across her torso as though she'd been recently flogged.
"What have they been doing to you?"
"Having their fun."
By the standards of the superpeople the ill treatment was comparatively mild. There had been rumors of snuff parties although Vickers had never seen any solid evidence. The woman had found a bottle of scotch with some left in it. She closed her coat, hugging the bottle to her like a baby.
"I've… got to be going. I think I've had enough for tonight."
She pushed herself away from the table. The clicks of her heels zigzagged across the black and white marble of the piazza in the direction of the elevators. Wolfjohn was playing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Vickers and Fenton lapsed into an almost-drunk silence. Even after eighteen months, it was all to easy to slip back into the trauma, back to thinking of all the people and all the places that had been wiped away like they had never been, all the faces and all the names and the locations that were gone forever. The more you tried to accept it, the more overwhelming the horror became. Vickers was quite relieved when he heard Eggy's voice booming from one of the tunnels.
"Hey, what's going on?"
Eggy had been drinking but he wasn't drunk. He was swaggering rather than staggering. His faced was covered in smeared, warrior-style red and purple war paint. War paint was a comparatively new addition to Eggy's repetoire and one that Vickers found a little disturbing. Eggy jerked his thumb back down the corridor.
"You want to see the horrorshow back there?"
Fenton looked up. "Horrowshow? That's a quaint, old fashioned word."
"It's pretty quaint and old fashioned back there. It's like something out of the Marquis de Sade."
"The superpeople are cutting up?"
Eggy dropped into a chair.
"Cutting up, slicing up, flogging and hogging it up. They've even got them chained by the feet from the ceiling. You've never seen so many people getting distorted at once. Eight-Man's going around boasting how he fucked Thane Ride in Lloyd-Ransom's four-poster."
"You're kidding."
"The hell I am. I believe him."
"I thought Thane Ride only fucked girls these days."
"According to Eight-Man she was so stoned she was past knowing."
"And where was Lloyd-Ransom at the time?"
"Who knows where he goes when he vanishes."
Vickers' eyes abruptly focused.
"Vanishes? Lloyd-Ransom vanishes?"
"That's what they're saying. Sometimes for as long as a couple of days. You two didn't hear about it?"
Both Fenton and Vickers shook their heads.
"Not a damn thing."
"Me neither."
Eggy shrugged. "There isn't really that much to tell. It's just that the word among the superpeople is that our glorious leader regularly disappears."
"So where does he go?"
"Who knows? There are some that say he goes outside."
"Outside?"
"That's what some of them are saying. It's probably just bullshit. I mean, how the hell would he get outside?"