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"I sleep with this woman. Nobody harms her."
He helped the woman to her feet with unexpected tenderness and put a protective arm around her. The entire area froze. Lloyd-Ransom, with his bodyguards and dog handler had walked into the area at exactly the right moment to see the whole incident. It was, however, a very different Lloyd-Ransom. His white uniform was creased and dirty. His collar was unbuttoned and he looked sallow and ill. His appearance was something of a shock. Not as much of a shock, though, as Yabu's next move. Yabu glared and walked slowly toward him, still supporting the woman. His expression was one of undisguised disgust.
"You've made a very bad mistake, Lloyd-Ransom. You have left these people with no hope."
Yabu continued walking, right out of the area. Nobody, not even Lloyd-Ransom, made an attempt to stop him.
There was a deep, uneasy silence in the security club room. The people in there drank with a quiet determination. There was far too much to blot out. It had been just about possible to keep the butcher squad and the individual assassinations out of sight and mind. The rationale was fairly easy. Life in the bunker was lived at a fairly drastic level and, from time to time, drastic solutions were required. The mass destruction of an entire living area was something else entirely. It left no room for moral maneuvering. A feeling hung in the air of the club room, almost as the smell of fire and death still lingered on the second level. The bunker was starting to tear itselt apart. The death toll was ninety-three and that was too much to be dismissed as a "solution." It was a massacre. No omelette could be worth that many eggs.
The public address didn't help lighten the weight of gloom. Wolfjohn had taken it into his head to read the full list of names in a slow, doleful rasp. Inside the club room, guilt was driving a wedge between those who had taken part in the killing and those who hadn't. Yabu's stand, even though it was a matter of self-interest, had made it hard to use the excuse of blind obedience. The whole bunker was wondering what would happen next. For the moment, there seemed little danger that Lloyd-Ransom would lose control of the bunker. The military and its officers were still solidly behind him while security seemed to be sullenly turning in on itself. Some of those without uniforms were coming in for a good deal of hostility. Yabu had been the one who'd actually made the protest but it had also been noticed that Parkwood, Vickers, and Debbie had virtually sat out the action well to the rear. Even some of their own kind seemed about to turn against them. A
The gloomy quiet that surrounded Wolfjohn's dirgelike recitation of the names of the dead was broken by the ringing of one of the wall phones. A uniform picked it up and looked around.
"Rainer."
Carmen Rainer looked up from whispering quiet, deviant suggestions to a petite, doe-eyed blonde.
"Yo."
"It's for you."
Rainer stood up. The day's creation of tight black vinyl and leather straps were particularly bizarre. She took the handset, listened for a few moments, nodded, hung up and sauntered back to the blonde. She pinched her cheek.
"Got to go to work, sweetie."
Fenton overheard the remark and raised his head.
"Got someone to kill, dear?"
"I guess I have to do it all now nobody can count on you or Vickers or the rest of your little pacifist clique."
Vickers, who was already quite drunk, threw back the remainder of his shot.
"One of these day's I'm going to have to do something about that mouth of yours."
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 Joha