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Lamas was inordinately pleased with himself.
"A whole battery of them to be precise. Why, do you object?"
"We're getting a little tired of the process. We feel we're entitled to some answers."
Lamas nodded amiably. "Indeed you are. Indeed you are, and very soon you'll be getting more than you really want."
"What were you testing for?"
"For? Oh, reaction to authority, evolution of group identity, group cooperation…" He glanced directly at Eggy. "… individual levels of aggression. Tours down here are not easy and you're going to need a great deal of preconditioning. You'll find we're full of surprises."
Vickers tried to locate the corridor down which they were walking on his whatbox. The pocket data terminal was his tourist guide for the bunker. He was trying to make sense of its labyrinth of tu
While they attempted to adapt to their new surroundings and figure out the possible implications of what they were seeing, the group was provided with, if not everything they desired, at least everything they could expect from a middle range Holiday I
Back in the corridor, Vickers had finally located where they were on his whatbox. Unless he'd made an error, the five of them plus Deakin, who was acting as guide, mentor and instructor on this particular day, were walking north on corridor DD175 on the second level. The bunker was proving so complex that it took Vickers most of his time to keep up with the orientation lessons. So far, even with the help of the whatbox, he had only the haziest of outlines of the place's subterranean geography. His strongest general impression was that things got better as you went down. The ultra-privileged had their quarters on the seventh level-down in the bottoms. The group had yet to be taken down there but the rumors talked of almost offensive luxury. His mission to hit Lloyd-Ransom and Lutesinger was completely on hold. He didn't even know if they were actually in the Phoenix bunker. There had been no mention of either of them, which seemed a little strange if they had indeed taken over the bunker. Vickers' train of thought was cut short as Deakin halted and indicated that they should all make a turn to the right.
"We're going to make a small detour here to enable you to see a typical general living area."
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 u