As if the middle of summer in New Babylon was not bad enough, God, it seemed, had turned up the gas on the sun, frying everything that wasn't in extremely sheltered conditions to a little pile of cinders. And so, the surviving staff at the GC complex were all crammed into a tiny little basement far beneath the earth's surface, all apart from their leader. Jostled around by the uneasy crowd, David Hassid found himself rubbing shoulders with Carpathia's right-hand man, Leon Fortunato, and decided to share some gossip.
"Did you hear?" David asked in a furtive whisper.
"What?" Leon asked, sounding more than a little cramped and uncomfortable.
"The Supreme Potentate is out there, sunbathing, in this death-ray heat!"
"Really? What's he wearing?" Leon sounded a little too eager to find out. If David thought that that was an odd question, he didn't show it.
"Er ... trousers and a vest? He's taken his shirt and jacket off I'm sure."
Almost before David had finished speaking, Leon rose onto his tiptoes to gauge the best path to the door, and, having found it, began to make his way through the packed crowd in the opposite direction that everyone else was trying to move.
"Where are you going?" David called back to him. He saw the look on Leon's face as a million possible lies ran through his head, then he affected an innocent expression, and David knew something was up.
"Outside."
"You'll kill yourself!" David pointed out, rather obviously.
"Yeah, but it'll be worth it, though." Leon grinned, and then turned back, plunging into the surging crowd.