"Now, we came to help you," I said in as smooth and calm a voice as I could muster. Considering.
She backed away from us.
"I won't give him up! He's not dead long's I stay with him, tend to him."
"So much dyin'," I said, and moved to touch her shoulder. "It's up under our skins, yes, we understand that. But you have to look beyond it, child."
"I won't!"
"I'm simply asking you to help us with the DataComm people. I want to go there and seek their help."
"Then go!"
"They will not open up for the likes of us, surely."
"Leave me!"
The poor thing cowered back in her horrible stinking rathole, bedding sour and musty, open tin cans strewn about and reeking of gamy, half-rotten meals.
"We need the access codes. We'd counted on our cousin Arthur, and are grieved to hear he is dead. But you surely know where the proper codes and things are."
"I…don't…"
"Arthur told me once how the various National Defense Installations were insulated from each other so that system failures would not bring them all down at once?"
"I…"
The others behind me muttered to themselves, already restive at coming so far and finding so little.
"Arthur spoke of you many times, I recall. What a bright woman you were. Surely there was a procedure whereby each staff member could, in an emergency, communicate with the other installations?"
The eyes ceased to jerk and swerve, the mouth lost its rictus of addled fright. "That was for…drills…"
"But surely you can remember?"
"Drills."
"They issued a manual to you?"
"I'm a nurse!"
"Still, you know where we might look?"
"I…know."
"You'll let us have the…codes?" I smiled reassuringly, but for some reason the girl backed away, eyes cunning.
"No."
Angel pushed forward and shouted, "How can you say that to honest people after all that's-"
"Quiet!"
Angel shouted, "You can't make me be-"
Susan backed away from Angel, not me, and squeaked, "No no no I can't-I can't-"
"Now, I'll handle this," I said, holding up my hands between the two of them.
Susan's face knotted at the compressed rage in Angel's face and turned to me for shelter. "I…I will, yes, but you have to help me."
"We all must help each other, dear," I said, knowing the worst was past.
"I'll have to go with you."
I nodded. Small wonder that a woman, even deranged as this, would want to leave a warren littered with bloated corpses, thick with stench. The smell itself was enough to provoke madness.
Yet to have survived here, she had to have stretches of sanity, some rationality. I tried to appeal to it.
"Of course, I'll have someone take you back to-"
"No. To DataComm."
Bud said slowly, "No damn sense in that."
"The T-Isolate," she said, gesturing to the bulky unit. "Its reserve cells."
"Yes?"
"Nearly gone. There'll be more at DataComm."
I said gently, "Well, then, we'll be sure to bring some back with us. You just write down for us what they are, the numbers and all, and we'll-"
"No-no-no!" Her sudden ferocity returned.
"I assure you-"
"There'll be people there. Somebody'll help! Save him!"
"That thing is so heavy, I doubt-"
"It's only a chest wound! A lung removal is all! Then start his heart again!"
"Sister, there's been so much dyin', I don't see as-"
Her face hardened. "Then you all can go without me. And the codes!"
"Goddern," Bud drawled. "Dern biggest fool sit'ation I ever did-"
Susan gave him a squinty, mean-eyed look and spat out, "Try to get in there! When they're sealed up!" and started a dry, brittle kind of laugh that went on and on, rattling the room.
"Stop," I yelled.
Silence, and the stench.
"We'll never make it wi' 'at thing," Bud said.
"Gene's worth ten of you!"
"Now," I put in, seeing the effect Bud was having on her, "now, now. We'll work something out. Let's all just hope this DataComm still exists."