Carmen Rainer's lip curled.
"Are you capable? You were supposed to be a good corpse, but as far as I can see, you've lost it."
Vickers shrugged.
"Time will tell."
The sneer increased.
"Sure."
Rainer turned and walked to the door with an exaggerated sway. As the door hissed shut Fenton grunted.
"One of these days we really are going to do something about that bitch."
The doe-eyed blonde pouted. "I'm going to tell her you said that."
Wolfjohn finally finished the list of the dead. Mercifully, he didn't decide to go through it all again. Vickers hoped that he'd stop sticking his neck out and put on some music. Instead, he launched into a gravel-voiced monologue.
"It's a dark day in this hole in the ground, friends and babies, a dark, dark day. Ninety-three of us dead today at our own hands. This is madness, friends and babies. It's a black, black madness that's got a grip on us here. When you consider that we may be all of humanity there is left, you gotta know that we shouldn't be doing this to each other. We are the history of the new world down here. We shouldn't have to include this dreadful Black Thursday!!"
"I didn't know that it was Thursday."
"Honest?"
"I lost count months ago."
"… in that history. We are down in this hole, friends and babies, and we are killing each other. Ninety-three of us died this afternoon and I, for one, don't see the reason for it. Ninety-fucking-three of us, friends and babies. Ninety-fucking-three of us when there's only a few thousand of us left."
"Is he drunk or what?"
The strain was starting to show in Wolfjohn's voice. The velvet of the rasp was starting to fray.
"What I want to know is why? Why did ninety-three of us have to die? Huh? I heard it was because they didn't want to go to work. Am I expected to believe that ninety-three people had to die because a bunch of women got pissed off and didn't want to go to work? So who decides that? Somebody want to explain that to me? Hey, Lloyd-Ransom, maybe you'd like to come on this mike up here and tell us all why those people had to…"
There was a pause. Something seemed to be going on in the background. Suddenly everyone in the club room was paying attention.
"… What? What's the matter, honey? Lloyd-Ransom sent you up here to explain for him?" Wolfjohn's voice abruptly changed. "So it's my turn is it? Well fuck you! I'm not going to beg…"
There was a short, ugly sound of scarcely human pain and a booming thud as if the microphone had been knocked over. There was a long silence in the club room. Fenton slowly put down his drink.
"So they even greased Wolfjohn. The bitch Rainer was sent up there to finish him."
"He stuck it out too far."
"Jesus Christ, what harm did he do?"
Vickers stood up to get himself another scotch.
"He wanted to get the fuck out of this hole."
Eggy hurled a chair at the wall. One of the legs broke off. On the way down it knocked over a lamp that also smashed to the floor.
"They're calling it a fucking boyc'ott! Me! Can you believe that? The women on the second level have decided they won't sleep with anyone in either security or the military. Even me!"
Debbie didn't seem impressed.
"It'll do you good not to have things your own way."
"After all I've done for them."
"What you've done for them is probably reason enough on its own for a boycott."
"There's going to be trouble."
"This is trouble. There's military all over the place, all of them looking for a chance to shoot someone."
"I've been damn good to those women on the second level. I figured there had to be a couple that'd weaken but they're all watching each other. If one breaks the rules the others'll shave her head. It's ridiculous."
"You'd probably enjoy that."
"I've been damn good to those women."
Vickers wondered if Johanna in GLA30 would be part of the boycott. She almost certainly would. He realized guiltily that it was the first time he'd thought of her since the start of the trouble.
On impulse, Vickers stepped off the elevator on level five. He had decided to go and see Lance Cattermole. Cattermole was the curator of the bunker's considerable archive. The archive was supposed to be the surviving record of human culture but, like so many things connected with the bunker, its planning was a little uneven. As Cattermole put it, "Too much of the damned Beatles and hardly anything on Pascal. The people who put this place together were obsessed with twentieth century junk culture." The attraction of Cattermole's dim, quiet, warren-like domain was that, down among the dark stacks that held the tapes and discs, the cards and books and artifacts, in the soft greenglow of the computer terminals, there was an illusion of peace and permanancy that was quite unlike anywhere else in the bunker. Cattermole's kingdom was a backwater, bypassed and largely untroubled by the madness that gripped most of the rest of the installation. It was a place where Vickers could hide for a few hours. There were a couple of additional attractions. One was that Cattermole kept a fine collection of vintage wines and was the kind of host who was more than willing to share a bottle or two with anyone who stopped by. The other was a tall, witty brunette called Yoko who had incredibly sensitive breasts and who was usually willing to treat Vickers to very skillful and inventive, standing sex back in the depths of the stacks. Yoko was one of the reasons he'd been neglecting Johanna.
Yoko smiled and winked as she let Vickers in through the outer door. Vickers smiled back.
"Where's the boss?"
"In his inner sanctum."
"Will he see me?"
"Sure."
The inner sanctum was an electronic cocoon of computer equipment. As Vickers ducked inside, Cattermole peered over the top of his rimless half-glasses.
"Have you come to kill me?"
Vickers laughed. "No, not this time."
"Well, that's a relief."
"Who'd want to kill you?"
"It gets hard to tell these days."
Yoko brushed against him carrying an armful of files and whispered something obscene in his ear. Vickers grinned.
"I've got to talk to your boss first."
Yoko flashed him a backward pout and vanished in among the stacks. Vickers turned his attention to Cattermole. There was something gnomelike about the curator of the archive. Given a green hat and pointed ears, he could have been one of Santa's little helpers. He was completely suited to his dim, cluttered environment from which he rarely emerged. On the few occasions when he did, he gave the impression of blinking at the light like a dazzled mole.
"Have you come down here with a specific purpose or do you just want to waste my time, drink my wine and maul my assistant?"
"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."