Страница 34 из 68
"All the handlers live like that?"
Deakin nodded. "And the facers and the domestics, the blue and the brown, they have it pretty minimal."
"No shit?" Eggy was thoughtful. "There ain't too much of all people being created equal, is there?"
Debbie had also been thinking.
"What's the ratio of women to men?"
"Five to one."
"Five women to every man?"
"Jesus Christ."
"Who thought that one up?"
"There'll be an entire planet to repopulate if this place is ever used."
"It does make a certain kind of sense."
"It's fucking insanity. I want out of this place."
Debbie was glaring angrily at Deakin. He, in turn, regarded her coldly.
"You're signed on to the end of your tour."
Debbie looked bitter.
"Don't I know it."
"So where are we off to now? I thought we got through with the tour of the air plant."
Although they hadn't seen the sun for ten days, the group of five maintained the solar day and even took their meals at the traditional times; the final one was a communal supper and it was unusual that Deakin should appear in their quarters after the evening meal. It had come to be considered free time and thus it was something of an unwelcome surprise when he came into their quarters just as they were settling down to some after di
"I thought I'd treat you to a night off."
By his own standards. Deakin was almost amiable. Fenton scowled.
"There's got to be a catch in this."
"No catch. I thought you could use a trip out for a couple of drinks and a chance to meet some of your colleagues."
"We're getting out of the bunker?"
"Of course not. Don't be ridiculous."
"So what about these drinks? Are you telling us there's a bar in this place?"
"There's a security club room that you'll be able to use once you're out of quarantine."
Eggy sucked on his beer.
"Do the handlers have a club room?"
"They have their own facilities."
"I'll bet they do."
"Who are these colleagues?"
Four other five-person groups like yourselves. Shall we go?"
As bars went it was cramped. Spartan and drab. The lights were too bright. The barroom decorations, the neon signs, the helix machines, the risque holograms were totally absent. The walls, ceiling and fittings were all made from some off-white industrial plastic. It was like going to a party in the emergency room. The whole place appeared to have been designed so it could be hosed down after a rough night. By the standards of the parts of the bunker they'd seen so far, it was close to idyllic luxury. It was already fairly full. The other groups, each with their own equivalent of Deakin, were already there. This caused Eggy to wink at Vickers.
"At least we get to make an entrance."
Vickers was equally amused by the fact that, of the four groups in the club room, two had been persuaded to wear the yellow uniforms with INDUCTEE stenciled across the front.
"It looks like we're in the top ten around here."
Fenton was also glancing around. There was a good deal of tension in the room.
"Top ten of what, I ask myself. Have you taken a look at that other bunch that refused uniforms'?"
The rival five were nothing short of spectacular. There were three men and two women. The taller of the two women was a drama all on her own. From neck to toe, she was decked out in skintight black leather. She was a masochist's dream. She wore no less than three studded belts, matching wrist bands and a collar of long chromium spikes. Her head was shaved except for a long, cossack-style braided topknot.
"You can see why she turned down a set of coveralls."
"Maybe she'd make a companion for Eggy." Eggy grimaced. "Too fucking freaky for me." The second woman made up in breadth what she lacked in height. She was a muscle builder and had the muscle builder's preference for wearing next to nothing and letting definition speak for itself. She had arms like a lumberjack but, as though in compensation, she also had truly enormous breasts and a high-piled confection of white-blonde hair. Vickers suspected that a great deal of her development was steroid growth. If she ever stopped exercising, she'd balloon up to four hundred pounds. She wasn't the only one in the group who appeared to be using steroids. Yabu was built like a sumo wrestler. Vickers knew it had to be Yabu. Both his reputation and physical description were too totally unique. The legend of Yabu was repeated in every corporation across the Free World. He delighted in a particularly artistic and often Zen violence. It was claimed that he'd devised a stomach-turning method of crushing a man's skull between his two hands so the eyes first popped and then brainstuff hosed out from the empty sockets. The second man was the basic nonentity of the bunch. He was short, slight and beyond demonstrating that, in a certain conservative way, he was something of a snappy dresser. Nothing registered. Vickers wondered if he were another cold but deadly fish like Parkwood. The real piece de resistance in the group was the seven foot black man with the long ringletted hair who was, at that moment, baring his very white teeth at Eggy. Vickers glanced at Eggy with some alarm. "You know him?"
"Big motherfucker. Calls himself Eight-Man." The club room had fallen silent; Eight-Man actually started to growl. It was a sound that Vickers would have preferred to have missed. Eggy also let out a long animal snarl. He rushed at Eight-Man and punched him as hard as he could in the stomach. Eight-Man gasped, took a step back but recovered himself. He swung at Eggy, smashing him in the side of the head with a piledriver punch that should have felled a mule. Eggy stumbled, he staggered. For a moment it seemed as though he was going to fall into Yabu but Yabu stepped neatly out of the way. Eggy appeared poised to go down like a felled tree. Then he shook his head. It was a remarkable recovery. Everyone waited for the next escalating move. And then suddenly they were in each other's arms, slapping, pounding, hugging, shouting and heehooing. The room split between relief and revulsion. There was something disturbing about the fact that there was a deep bond between these two extreme individuals.
"I didn't know Eggy had friends."
The group moved forward to the bar as a mass and began demanding drinks from a rather agitated handler who seemed a little out of her depth as a bartender. A little of the tension in the room had eased and there was a more normal buzz of conversation, albeit punctuated by the occasional hollers and bellows from Eggy and Eight-Man. Vickers had only just started his first scotch when a young woman positioned herself very deliberately in front of him. She bore an uncomfortable simularity to Ilsa van Doren except that, where Ilsa gave the impression of even coming out of the shower with perfect makeup and hair, this woman wore no makeup and had her hair in a utilitarian bun.
"Welcome to Phoenix. The way they have things set up around here, a girl can't stand still and wait for an introduction."
Vickers looked across the room. This aspect of the situation hadn't occurred to him previously. Five women to each man could produce some very competitive women.
"There seem to be plenty of men here in security."
"There's still a thousand or more eager, predatory bimbos over in handler country."
Vickers nodded.
"It's got to be a weird situation."
"Weird isn't the word."
"Talking of weird, who are the leather goddess and the lady muscle builder?"
"Isn't it always the same? Everyone wants to know who those two bitches are. The musclebound broad is A