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been laid out in their places, and maroon napkins still held their original,
sharp folds.
"Should have brought our food in here," Ryan said. "Touch of class."
Krysty stood in the middle of the vast circular room, where a space had been
left clear, showing patterned wooden tiles, overlaid with a thin covering of
dust.
"Dance floor, I guess. Shame there's no music. We could have shared a last
waltz together."
Ryan shook his head. "Can't dance. Don't ask me. Let's recce some more."
There were several snack and soft-drink vending machines at the bottom of the
stairs that led to the second floor, all raided and gutted.
On the second floor there was more evidence of either a rapid evacuation at
the time of the holocaust, or of selective raiding at some later date. But
some of the rooms were completely untouched, and Ryan and Krysty went into one
of them, gazing around like children in a toy store.
"People really lived like this?"
Krysty nodded. "So I heard."
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"Ordinary people? Norms?"
"Yeah."
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"Not barons?"
Krysty laughed, quickly checking herself at the loudness of the sound in the
utter stillness. "Right, lover. Just look at the luxury of it."
"The size of those two beds. Would they have slept two in each? There's plenty
of space for six in each bed."
"I reckon each bed was just for one person."
"No!" Shock registered on his face, mingled with disbelief and the suspicion
that the woman was teasing him. "Could put up the whole crew of a war wag in
this one room. Would have made Trader laugh to see it."
The two king-size beds stood side by side, with a painting at the head of
each.
One showed a vermilion marlin leaping clear of the sea, and the other a dark
blue right whale with a calf, basking on the surface.
There was a kind of desk with a TV standing on it, and a round table with two
padded chairs. A light hung from a chain above the table. Farther back was a
huge washbasin with a speckled mirror behind it and a bathroom and crapper.
"Towels!" Krysty exclaimed. "All different sizes." She picked up one of the
piles of white fluffiness. "Oh, Gaia!" The cloth disintegrated into grains of
powdery dust as soon as she touched it.
"Probably the blankets and stuff are the same," Ryan warned. "They won't have
lasted."
Krysty opened the drawers of the desk, pulling out a frail bag of transparent
plastic. "What's this for?"
"Put over your head if you didn't have enough jack to pay the check."
"No. Says it was for laundry. Look. A postcard for the hotel. And there's a
Bible
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in here as well."
Ryan joined her. "What's that?"
It was a card, with five little cartoon faces drawn on it: one smiling
broadly, one smiling less, one not smiling at all, one frowning a bit and one
really scowling.
He read the line of type above the faces.
" 'It will help us to provide an even better service for our guests if we know
how you feel we've succeeded with you. Please tick the box beneath the faces
that most corresponds to your reaction to staying with us.' Think it's
probably the sort of smiling one, Krysty?"
"No. The one that's scowling a bit. Those towels just fell apart on me. And
there's a massive dead spider in the tub. Sorry, but could do better."
Ryan disagreed. "When you reckon it's a hundred years since anyone checked in
here, I think it's in good shape. Big smiley smile face for me."
BALCONIES IN SEVERAL of the rooms looked out over a central enclosed atrium,
with games machines and a small, empty pool. There were some black-
and-yellow plastic loungers and what Ryan guessed was a kind of well.
They walked along the carpeted corridors to a fire door. Ryan reached out to
open it and jumped back with a loud exclamation of shock.
"What is it?" Krysty's blaster was already half-drawn from its leather
holster.
"Nothing." He rubbed his fingers. "Just that I got a shot of static from the
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brass handle. Sorry. Let's go down and look at that courtyard."
It wasn't a well. Krysty recognized it from the flickering scraps of old vids
that she'd seen. "Named after a blaster, like J.B. carries. A Jack Uzi, I
think. Got filled with hot water and loads of bubbles."
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Ryan peered into it suspiciously. "Don't see what that's got to do with a
blaster, do you?"
Krysty didn't answer him. She turned her head, her green eyes narrowing.
"Thought I heard something, and I felt a slight draft, like a door's been
opened.
And& " She paused.
"What?"
"Sounds stupid, lover. I thought I heard that dolphin inside my head, trying
to warn us about something."
They both stood still, weighing up the silence that washed around them.
Somewhere out in the deserted hotel they both heard the noise of a door
slamming.
Chapter Thirty
The atrium of the hotel had been built with an elegantly domed glass roof, but
the passing years had covered it with a delicate patina of moss and algae. The
light that came through was filtered into a dark muted green, and it was like
being in the depths of some primeval rain forest.
Ryan and Krysty stood together, back to back, with their handblasters drawn,
looking around them.
There were at least four doors into the open space, each of them closed. What
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