Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [15]
The little man was watching her, aware that something was up. Sensitive to what was going on in her head. Jerome had been that way, knowing her moods like a dog that could sniff the weather, knowing when a storm was approaching. Maria kept the anger out of her voice when she spoke.
‘You said you were an intruder?’
‘At the very least,’ said the man.
‘Then I’d better tell you about the security in this place. It’s pretty tight. You can do whatever you like, but I’d advise you to just sit back and relax. If you make a run for it they’re happy to use what they call ultimate force. That’s what the security is like around here. And I’m going to call them now.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’ The man was watching the screen again.
‘I think I do.’
The little man was impatient now, speaking as if to a child. ‘You do not have to call the security guards.’ He’d stood up and switched off the screen. Now he was putting on a hat. ‘You don’t have to call them because they’re already on their way.’
* * *
Christian was in the elevator. Like Mulwray, he was still armed from the night’s work. They’d got the policeman secured in the medical section on 51 and by rights they should now be having a beer and taking it easy.
It was Mulwray’s last week working in the biostock section. He’d been promoted, effective as of Monday. Working in Social Acquisition with that bitch Stephanie. This was the standard promotion route in the Butler Institute. You started out doing the crap work in Bio. If you survived that and they liked you, the next step was Social. Christian had found that Bio could be a pain in the ass if you worked with the wrong people. He was going to miss Mulwray. Christian had known people like him when he was in Mexico. They were always the best ones, the most fun to be with.
Christian had spent two years in Mexico during the war, with Airforce Technical Support. His job had mostly been sorting out any problems with the neural computers on the missiles. When the missiles weren’t having nervous breakdowns, they were great. They had cameras fitted on the nose cones so that you could watch their flight, streaking over the villages and forests until they caught up with the columns of Mexican armour. Whenever the Mexes tried to set up a defensive position around a reservoir, the smart missiles would drop from the sky.
It was only in black and white but it was still great. Christian and the others liked to replay the missile transmissions on their VCR with a few beers in the evenings in the mess tent.
The elevator was slowing up now. Mulwray grinned at him and he grinned back. He liked the man’s attitude. When the door whispered open, Mulwray was the first through. They moved down the corridor, watching for movement. There was faint screenlight coming from the open doors of the offices, like light reflected off snow. And light from some other source too. As they got closer they saw it was the cleaning woman’s trolley with the fluorescent bars on the side. There was a fluid container on it, open. No sign of the cleaning woman. For the first time Christian began to feel that the security alert might be something more than a hiccup in the building’s control system. He could hear a sound now, coming from the door of an office just beyond the trolley. Christian was damned if he’d let Mulwray go through first this time. But Mulwray was already moving. Christian dodged ahead of him, jigging to the left as he went through the door,