The girl was crouched behind the door, fingers over her face. As she saw Kroll she screamed and backed away from him, almost tripping over the recumbent figure of Andrew Symington, half conscious on the floor by the sofa.
Kroll jerked the.45 back into his jacket, then stepped over to Deborah, cornering her behind the desk.
"Where is he?" she shouted at him. "Simon? What have you-"
Kroll knocked her against the wall with the back of his hand, forced her to the floor.
"Shut up!" he snarled. "Crazy yapping!"
He listened carefully to the sounds shifting around the bunker, kicking the girl sharply with his boot when her blubbering interrupted him, then picked up the phone.
As he waited he looked down at Deborah, and his right hand edged back toward the.45. His fingers flexed around the heavy butt, drawing it out.
He searched for the back of Deborah's neck, then noticed the auburn curls tipping forward over her head. They were soft and wispy, more delicate than anything Kroll had ever seen. Like a huge bull entranced by a butterfly, he watched them, fascinated, feeling his blood thicken, ignoring the voice on the phone.
His hand relaxed and withdrew from his jacket.
"All set," he said slowly into the phone. "Just one of them." He glanced down at Deborah. "I'll be about ten minutes."
Lurching painfully, Marshall dragged himself into the darkened communications room, heaved up onto his feet and then slumped into a chair in front of the radio transmitter. For a few minutes he coughed uncontrollably, fighting for air, his body drowning in the enormous lake of ice which filled his chest. As he rolled helplessly from side to side his eyes stared at the blood eddying across the floor below the chair. The trail led back into the corridor, past the two bodies to the stairway. How many hours had elapsed since he had first set out for the transmitter he could no longer remember, but the sight of the bodies revived him momentarily, making him realize that his great strength was ebbing rapidly, and he leaned forward on his elbows and began to switch on the set.
Around him the bunker was silent. The ventilator system had been turned off and the air was stale and motionless, still stained by the acrid fumes of the cordite. Along the wall behind him the teletypes were at last quiet, the sole sounds provided by the iow hum of the TV sets. Only two of the screens showed a picture,their reflections swinging left and right across the dark ceiling.
Fumbling helplessly, Marshall paused to steady himself, trying to conserve what little air he could force into his lungs. The wound through his chest wall felt as wide as a lance blade, each breath turning it between his shattered ribs.
Half an hour later, when he had almost gone, the set came alive between his fingers. Seizing the microphone with both hands, he rammed it to his lips, began to speak into it carefully, doggedly repeating his message over and over again, heedless of the replies interrupting him from the other end, until its meaning had gone and it became an insane gabble.
When he had finally finished, his voice a whisper, he let the microphone fall through his fingers to the floor, then jerked his chair slightly and faced the TV screens. Only one picture was being transmitted now, a white blur of flickering dust that crossed the screen from left to right, unvarying in its speed and direction.
The focus of his eyes fading, Marshall lay back, watching it blindly. His gray handsome face was almost in repose, the skin hollowing around his eyes and temples, draining his lips. Unaware of his own breathing, he felt himself sink down toward the bottom of the ice lake. Around him the stale air grew steadily colder. A few sounds shifted somewhere above in the empty bunker, echoing down the silent ventilator shafts and through the deserted corridors of his end.
7 The Gateways of the Whirlwind
"How is he?"
"Not too bad. Mild concussion, hairline fracture above the right ear. Second-degree burns to the palms and soles."
"He'll pull through, though?"
"Oh, yes. If we do, he will."
The voices drifted away. Donald Maitland stirred pleasantly, half asleep, almost enjoying the sensation of drowsy warmth coupled with a slight nausea. Now and then the voices would return. Sometimes he could only hear the rise and fall of their tones as they moved among the patients; at other times, when they discussed his own case, standing over him, he could hear them plainly.
He was on the mend, atleast. Turning lazily, he tried to make himself comfortable, tried to feel the stiff caress of crisp sheets against his face.
Yet he could never find them. Whenever he searched, the bed and pillow were hard and unyielding as he realized his hands were in plaster casts.
He wished he could wake. Then sleep would come again, numbing the pain in his head and across his shoulders, dulling the nausea that made him want to vomit.
"Looks a lot better. Don't you agree?"
"No doubt about it. But those burns are a little worrying. How the hell did he get them?"
"Forget exactly. I think he was trapped in the boiler room at a generating station. They may be carbide burns…"
Their voices moved away as consciousness returned, paused and then faded. Maitland stretched and flexed his legs, pressed his feet against the foot of the bed.
_Burns?_
How? He remembered being trapped in the Underground station at Knightsbridge. Had he been transferred to another hospital center, perhaps had his identity confused?
The voices drifted beside him, murmuring over another patient. Maitland felt cold, his head pounded. He wanted to call them, tell them they were overconfident.
They moved off slowly, their voices lost in the sounds of some enormous fan.
_Burns?_
With an effort, he opened his eyes, slowly moved his head.
He was blind!
He sat up and groped at the bed around him, half expecting them to come back, to feel restraining hands press him back onto the pillow, hear the first words of consolation.
He picked up something large and angular, heavy in his hand.'
A brick!
He nestled it between his knees. What was this doing in bed with him? His fingers groped at its rough surface, pulling away pieces of fine mortar.
He looked around, hoping to attract their attention, but their voices had vanished: the ward was silent.
Exhausted suddenly, he dropped the brick, lay back limply.
Instantly the voices returned.
"How did the grafts come along?"
"Very well, all in all. We'll take his arms out of the cradle tomorrow…"
Maitland smiled to himself. Perhaps they were in darkness, unable to see that his hands were under the sheet.
He flexed his fingers, picked another object off the bed. A torch.
Instinctively, he switched it on.
The beam filled his tiny cubicle, illuminating piles of shattered bricks on either side of him, a concrete beam two feet broad running across his knees, supporting a large sign.
Huge letters ran along it. They read: CLEARANCE SALE.
For a moment Maitland stared at it, sitting upright, tracing the letters with his fingers.
Then, abruptly assembling his mind again, he shone the torch around himself.
So he was not in a hospital as he had imagined, but still trapped in the tunnel. The voices, the diagnoses, the warm bed, had all been products of fantasy, wish fulfillments summoned by his ex hausted body.
His head throbbed. Maitland shone the torch at his hands, kneading the broken skin. He was half surprised to see that they were not badly burned, and wondered why his mind should have produced this curious piece of circumstantial detail. Perhaps he bad remembered a case history of one of his former patients.