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Lloyd-Ransom was neither a psychologist nor blessed with the common touch. He approached trouble like a surgeon. If, in his opinion, a cell or group of cells ceased to conform and so endangered the total being, the only answer was to cut it out. As soon as the bunker was sealed, he had started organizing the hard cases among his now largely idle military into viciously efficient execution groups, the "butcher squads" as they were dubbed. They became his first resort, his instrument of terror.
People, particularly people in the lower echelons, who talked or acted out of turn were likely to simply vanish or, if examples needed to be made, a changing shift might come across their horribly mutilated bodies. Surveillance and informing became endemic. Friends ratted on neighbors, jealous lovers turned in their rivals and all the time the computerized cameras watched everybody.
Lloyd-Ransom wasn't so stupid, however, as to just let his death squads run amok. Indeed, there had been a period when the butchers had actually started competing, squad against squad, in how sadistically grisly they could make their handiwork. At that point, there had had to be some judicious pruning. Seventeen of the more pathological butcher squad officers had been liquidated in a single evening. This was where Vickers' squad and the other ununiformed security execs were brought in. They were Lloyd-Ransom's ace in the hole. If he believed that one of the superpeople in the bottoms was working to seize power, or that a group of his officers were plotting a coup, Vickers or one or more of the others would be called upon to act. They performed the fine tuning on his machine. He trusted them in the same way that he trusted his dogs. They were his ultimate hired guns, totally amoral and owing their only basic allegiance to the man who had purchased their services and enabled them to survive the holocaust.
This position as Lloyd-Ransom's line of last resort also placed the two security groups in an odd relationship with the rest of the people. Where almost everyone, particularly the facers and handlers and the others who thought of themselves as rank and file, hated and feared the military and the uniformed security with a finely honed venom that was reinforced by every murder and atrocity, the ten without uniforms enjoyed a perverse popularity. They rarely did any harm to the rank and file and when they did kill, they did it quietly and cleanly and usually the victim was someone who the upper tiers regarded as deserving of what they got. On two occasions, when butcher squads had run wild among the women on the second level, the ten had been moved in to neutralize them. These incidents had made them celebrities, heroes even. They had been unable to resist the temptation to swagger. Already-fanciful clothing had become even more flamboyant. Eggy seemed to be doing his best to resemble a big wheel among the in-crowd of Attila the Hun while even Parkwood had affected a certain swashbuckling air with silk scarves, a Panama hat and an automag hanging from his belt.
Although Lloyd-Ransom had quite obviously gone to considerable pains to cover all the details when designing the machine that maintained his power, he also insisted on supporting some very basic policies that seemed destined to create division and unrest. A perfect example was the rigid caste system that operated level to level. Set and unchanging, with menial workers on the top levels and the privileged in the bottoms, it was one of the absolutes on which the bunker was built. When the bunker was first sealed most had been prepared to rough it. They'd been spared nuclear destruction and they'd tolerate anything within reason. As the months passed, though, the stoic attitude weakened and reason gave way to resentment. How come a certain few were having it so much better than the many? Why were the favored few living in the marble halls of the bottoms, dining on peacock and vintage wine while the majority existed on concentrates and bad gin? It seemed to Vickers that it was a set of circumstances tailor-made for revolt. During an unguarded, supposedly informal moment, Vickers had voiced this to Lloyd-Ransom. Lloyd-Ransom had stared coldly at him.
"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 tu
There was the ringing clacks of high heels from the entrance to one of the tu
"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."