Vickers (Corp.s.e.)

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 co

Yoko smiled and winked as she let Vickers in through the outer door. Vickers smiled back.

"Where's the boss?"

"In his i

"Will he see me?"

"Sure."

The i

"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 gri

"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."

Vickers sipped the Medoc appreciatively.

"You know you can say what you like around me. I don't give a damn. As it happens, I've been hearing stories that someone has been going outside."

Cattermole's eyes twinkled.

"The Lloyd-Ransom story. He doesn't know how to get out. I thought that at least you in security would know why Lloyd-Ransom regularly vanishes."

"I haven't heard a thing."

"My god, you people are impossible. You mean you really didn't know that our glorious leader has become an opium addict?"

"Say what?"

"Our leader has taken to hiding himself away and smoking considerable amounts of opium. It probably holds back the heart of his own particular darkness. He must have a considerable burden on his soul. He's not the only one, either. Opium has become quite a clandestine little trend among the superpersons."

"Where in hell are they getting opium from?"

"There's about a ton of it. Nuclear survival people were always very keen on stockpiling opium. It's a holdover from the twentieth century. They seemed to think it could provide a basis for some ma

"How do you know all this?"

"Me? I'm technically in charge of the ton of opium. It's supposed to be part of the medical archive. I have to tactfully look the other way when our leader comes down to cut himself off a slice."

Vickers grunted. Not only were a few thousand people being kept under the ground at one man's whim but now the one man turned out to be a dope fiend.

"What about Lutesinger? Is he going the same route?"

Cattermole took off his glasses.

"Now there's the real mystery. Nobody's seen him in months. He's locked himself away in his quarters and refuses to see anyone. He has his food sent in but he never emerges."

"Goddamn it. It just gets weirder and weirder." Something occurred to Vickers. "Wait just a minute. When you said earlier that Lloyd-Ransom didn't know his way out of the bunker, you made it sound as though there are people who do."

Cattermole nodded. "Well, I do. I don't know about anyone else."

Vickers could hardly believe what he was hearing.

"Why are you doing this to me, Lance? Why in hell didn't you tell anybody?"

"Would you believe that nobody asked me?"

"No."

"How about the fact that I considered the information something of a liability."

"More like it. You want to tell me about it?"

Cattermole thoughtfully poured more Medoc.

"I don't know. What would you do with this information?"

Vickers raised his eyes until they met Cattermole's.

"I'd try and get out, see what it's really like on the surface."

"Would you tell anyone else?"

"Maybe. I'd probably tell one or two others. People I can trust."

"I thought a few times I might try and get out but, when it came down to it, I didn't do anything." He patted his gnome's pot belly. "I decided I didn't have the figure for being intrepid."

There was a long pause. Finally Vickers put down his glass.

"So are you going to show me the way out?"

Cattermole thought. It took him almost a minute to decide.

"Yes. It's about time someone had a look at the surface." Cattermole hunted along the stacks until he found the card he was looking for. He dropped it into one of his computers. The monitor showed a detail of an architectural drawing. "These are the original drawings for the bunker. What many people don't realize is that parts of it were never properly finished. All over there are nooks and small corners where the heat or the lighting was never installed, the air conditioning was never piped through or the surveillance cameras were never put in. The largest of these is up on the first level way over in the back right away from the main elevators."

He spoke to the computer. "Level one, quadrant twelve… okay… left six… up seven… enlarge two hundred."