“Turn around, dear. Through here.”
“Through here” was a heavy steel door, high above the floor, low down from the ceiling; we got through it by sitting on the doorsill and swinging our feet over. Janet pulled it closed behind us and it whuffed like a vault door. “Overpressure door,” she explained. “If a bomb hit near here, the concussion wave would push the water right through the little tunnel. This stops it. Of course, for a direct hit- Well, we wouldn’t notice it so I didn’t plan for it.” She added, “Look around, make yourself at home. I’ll find a towel.”
We were in a long, narrow room with an arched ceiling. There were bunk beds along the right wall, a table with chairs and a terminal beyond, and, at the far end, a petite galley on the right and a door that evidently led to a ‘fresher or bath, as Janet went in there, came out at once with a big towel.
“Hold still and let Mama dry you,” she said. “No blowdry here.
Everything is as simple and unautomated as I could make it and still have things work.”
She rubbed me to a glow, then I took the towel from her and worked her over-a pleasure, as Janet is a lavish stack of beauty. Finally she said, “Enough, luv. Now let me give you the five-dollar tour in a hurry as you are not likely to be in here again unless you have to use it as a refuge. . . and you might be alone-oh, yes, that could happen-and your life might depend on knowing all about the place.
“First, see that book chained to the wall above the table? That’s the instruction book and inventory and the chain is no joke. With that book you don’t need the five-dollar tour; everything is in that book. Aspirin, ammo, or apple sauce, it’s all listed there.”
But she did give me, quickly, at least a three-ninety-five tour: food supplies, freezer, reserve air, hand pump for water if pressure fails, clothing, medicines, etc. “I planned it,” she said, “for three people for three months.”
“How do you resupply it?” “How would you do it?”
I thought about it. “I would pump the water out of the plunge.”
“Yes, exactly. There is a holding tank, concealed and not on the house plans-none of this is. Of course many items can take getting wet or can be fetched through in waterproof coverings. By the bye, did your money pouch come through all right?”
“I think so. I pressed all of the air out of it before I sealed it. Jan, this place is not just a bomb shelter or you would not have gone to so much trouble and expense to conceal its very existence.”
Her face clouded. “Dear, you are very perceptive. No, I would never have bothered to build this were it just a bomb shelter. If we ever get H-bombed, I am not especially eager to live through it. I designed primarily to protect us from what is so quaintly called ‘civil disorder.’
She went on, “My grandparents used to tell me about a time when people were polite and nobody hesitated to be outdoors at night and people often didn’t even lock their doors-much less surround their homes with fences and walls and barbed wire and lasers. Maybe so; I’m not old enough to remember it. It seems to me that, all my life, things have grown worse and worse. My first job, right out of school, was designing concealed defenses into older buildings being remodeled. But the dodges used then-and that wasn’t so many years ago!-are obsolete. Then the idea was to stop him and frighten him off. Now it’s a two-layer defense. If the first layer doesn’t stop him, the second layer is designed to kill him. Strictly illegal and anyone who can afford it does it that way. Marj, what haven’t I shown you? Don’t look in the book; you would spot it. Look inside your head. What major feature of the Hole did I not show you?”
(Did she really want me to tell her?) “Looks complete to me, once you showed me the main and auxiliary Shipstones of your power supply.”