to us, it was packed with students. Two got off, but the rest explained in
dull voices that they had missed their floor and were staying on for the
return trip. Therefore the journalists and protesters found no room in the
compartment; only the four of us could squeeze in.
This chummy group rode to the Terrorist-controlled ninth floor, where everyone
else got off. As the doors slid shut, a burnout who had just disembarked
turned around to say, "Sweet dreams, S. S. Krupp."
We started up again. "Shit!" said Krupp. "We've got a problem. Everyone get on
the floor. Tex, you got your .44?"
Of course he did. Much to the concern of the SUB, Tex was massively armed at
all times, on the theory that you never knew when degens might come and shoot
up the clinic looking for purer highs. He was prepared to go out like a true
AM administrator. Dropping stiffly to the floor, he paused on his knees to
whip a humongous revolver out of his briefcase and hand it to Krupp.
"Hope we don't have to shoot it out on thirteen," he said. We agreed. Krupp
tore from Tex's briefcase a medicine bottle, struggled with the childproof
cap, yanked out the cotton wad, tore it in half and stuffed it into his ears.
At this point I began to experience terror, more of Krupp than of whatever he
was planning to dismember with that howitzer.
We passed the twelfth floor and the elevator crashed to a stop. Above us, from
the elevators still halted on thirteen, we heard excited yelling.
"I get it." Krupp cocked the revolver and we all plugged our ears as he
pointed it at the ceiling, The bullet vaporized the latch on the trap door
and flipped the door open as well. We saw light above us. Krupp's second shot
annihilated the light in our car. I felt as though my fingers had been driven
three inches deep into my ears; my eyelids fluttered in shock and my nose
complained of dense smoke. Krupp now stood up in the darkness and fired the
remaining three rounds through the trapdoor. With a sigh and a thump, a corpse
crashed into our roof.
At a great distance I heard Tex say, "Sep. Here's a speed loader." After some
clicking and cursing, Krupp fired two more rounds-- the natives were getting
restless-- and tugged at my shirt, "Leg up!" he shouted.
I stood and made a step of my hands, and he used it to propel himself through
the trap door. Once he had scrambled through, I jumped and dragged myself to
the roof after him. The only thing I was scared of was touching the corpse;
other than that, one place was as dangerous as another. Krupp, who did not
share my fear, retrieved a revolver from the body and handed it to me.
He began scaling the emergency ladder on the shaft wall. When he got to
thirteen, he pounded the wall switch and the doors slid open. Seeing him jump
through the aperture onto thirteen, I began to follow him up the ladder, not
really thinking about what I'd do when I arrived. The two adjacent elevators
began to head down, and as they passed, someone on a roof fired off a wild
shot in my direction.
A tremendous roar rang up and down the shaft. It came in three bursts, and
not until the third one did I realize it was machine-gun fire. I had been
dimly aware of it-- "Oh, that's a machine gun being fired"-- but it was not
for a few moments that I comprehended that machine guns were in use at my
institution of higher learning. There were also three WHAMs, and then silence.
Taking this as a good sign, I dove through onto thirteen and lay there dazed,
looking at an elevator lobby dotted with strings of machine-gun fire and blood
pools, tracked and smeared by hasty tennis-shoe footprints that converged on
the two elevators. I sat up timidly. Krupp went to the far side of a large
pillar and retrieved an assault rifle from a dead soldier. "See," he said,
pounding hollowly on the pillar with the butt of the rifle, "these pillars are
just for show. Just a little girder in the middle and the rest is plaster and
chicken wire. Don't want to hide behind them." Judging from the bullet holes
in the pillar and the unmoving legs and feet on the other side, someone had
recently been in dire need of Krupp's architectural knowledge. "Can't believe
they're handing out loaded Kalashnikovs to cretins like that, whoever it is
that's running this show," he grumbled. "These youths need ROTC training if
they're going to pack ordnance like this,"
"Maybe this is someone's ROTC program," I suggested, trying to lighten
the atmosphere. Krupp frowned. "Maybe this is someone's ROTC," I shouted,
remembering the cotton. He nodded in deep thought. "Very good. What's your
field again?"
"Remote sensing. Remote sensing. Involves geography, geology and electrical
engineering."
"I'm listening," Krupp assured me in the middle of my sentence, as he walked
to the two corners of the lobby to peer down the hallways. "But you'll have to
speak up," he added, squeezing off a half-second blast at something. There was
an answering blast, muffled by the fire doors between the combatants, but it
apparently went into the ceiling. Impressed, Krupp nodded.
"Well, we've got two basic tactical options here," he continued, ejecting
the old clip and inserting a fresh one taken from the dead SUBbie, "We
can seize the wing, or retreat. Based on what we've seen of these sandbox
insurrectionists, I don't doubt we can stage a takeover. The question is:
is this wing a worthwhile strategic goal in and of itself, or is my strong
inclination to seize it singlehandedly-- almost, excuse me-- just what we call
a macho complex these days? Not that I'm trying to draw us into psychobabble."
He glared at me, one eyebrow raised contemplatively.
"Depends on what kind of forces they have elsewhere."
"Well, you're saying it's easier to make tactical decisions when one has
more perfect information, a sort of strategic context from which to plan.
That's a predictable attitude for a remote-sensing man. The aereal point of
view comes naturally to a generalistic, left-handed type like you." He nodded
at my revolver, which I was holding, naturally, in my left hand. "But lacking
that background, we'll have to use a different method of attack-- using
'attack' in a figurative sense now-- and use the more linear way of thinking
that would suggest itself to, say, a right-handed low-level Catholic civil
engineer. Follow?"
"I suppose," I shouted, looking down the elevator shaft at Tex's face, barely
visible in the dim light.
"For example," continued Krupp, "our friends below, though we must be
concerned for them, are irrelevant now. Presumably, the students on this wing
will do the rational thing and not attack us, because to attack means coming
into the halls and exposing themselves to our fire. So we control entry and
exit. If we leave now, we'll just have to retake it later. Secondly, this
lobby fire stair here ensures our safety; we can always escape. Third, our
recent demonstration should delay a reinforcement action on their part. What I
figure is that if we move along room by room disarming the occupants, they'll
be too scared by what happened to that guy in the hall to try any funny stuff.
Christ on fishhooks!" Krupp dove back into the safety of the lobby as a
barrage of fire ripped down the hall, blowing with it the remains of the fire
doors. We made for the stairway and began skittering down the steps as quickly
as we could. By the time we had descended three flights, the angry shouts of
Terrorists and SUBbies were pursuing us. The shouters themselves prudently
remained on their own landing.
"We're okay unless they have something like a hand grenade or satchel charge
they can drop down this central well," said Krupp. "Hold it right there, son!
That's right! Keep those paws in the air! Say, I know you."
We had surprised Casimir Radon on a landing. He merely stared at S. S. Krupp's
AK-47, dumbfounded.
"Let's all hold onto our pants for a second and ask Casimir what he's up to,"
Krupp suggested.
"Well," said Casimir, taking off his glacier glasses to see us better in
the dim stairwell. "I was going to visit Sarah. Things are getting pretty
wild now, you know. I guess you do know," he concluded, looking again at
the assault rifle.
"Physics problem:" said Krupp, "how far does a hand grenade fall in the
seven seconds between handle release and boom?"
"Well, air resistance makes that a toughie. It's pretty asymmetrical, and it
would probably tumble, which makes the differential equation a son-of-a-bitch
to solve. You'd have to use a numerical method, like"
"Estimate, son! Estimate!"
"Eight hundred feet."
"No problem. But what if they counted to three? How far in four seconds?"
"Sixteen times four
two hundred fifty-six feet."
"If they count to five?"
"Two seconds
sixty-four feet."
"That's terrible. That's six stories. That would be about the sixth floor,
which is where we make the run into the lobby. Do you think they'd be dumb
enough to pull the pin and count to five?"
"Not with a Soviet grenade."
"Good point."
"If I'm not mistaken, sir," said Casimir, "they all have impact fuses on them
anyway. So it'd go off on six in any case."
"Oh. Well what the hell?" said Krupp, and started to run down the stairs
again.
"Wait!" I said. Krupp stopped on the next landing. "You don't want to go up
there," I told Casimir.
"Yeah. If you think it's wild down there, you should see thirteen. It's wilder
than a cat on fire, thirteen. Those people are irrational," said Krupp.
"Are you going to stop me by force?" asked Casimir.
"Well, anyone traveling with S. S. Krupp today is a prime target, so I
couldn't justify that," said Krupp.
"Then I'm going," said Casimir, and resumed his climb. "Let's get a move on.
Let's build up a good head of steam here so we can charge right through the
danger zone at the bottom. I think the twenty-third psalm is in order."
Reluctantly, I left Casimir to his own dreams and we began to charge down the
steps side by side, crossing paths at each turn, listening upward. I saw a 7
painted on the wall. We were practically diving down the last flight when I
heard someone yell "Five!" We were on the level now, sprinting for a door with
a small rectangular window and a sign reading E TOWER MAIN LOBBY.
"Did he say five, or fire?" Krupp wondered as we neared the door. We punched
it open together and were in the lobby. And there, waiting for us, were
three Crotobaltislavonians with UZIs. "Professionals, I see," said Krupp.
He had gone through on the hinged side of the door and now pushed it all
the way around so that it was flat against the lobby wall, where he leaned
against it. Back in the stairwell there was a series of metallic clanks, like
something heavy bouncing off an iron pipe. Having seen many TV shows involving
foreigners with submachine guns, I had already raised my hands; I now took the
opportunity to clap them over my ears.
Krump. Bits of fire shot out the door at incredible speed. The three janitors
just seemed to melt and soften, sagging to the floor quietly.
"It worked," said Krupp, sounding drunken and amazed. Trying to walk around, I
found that the concussion had scrambled my inner ear; stars shot around like
tracer bullets. I went to a wall phone, dialed Lucy and Hyacinth's number,
and listened to it ring. At each ring my head cleared a bit. They were not
answering. Had the Terrorists taken twelve? I redialed; no answer. After eight
rings I lost my mind, gripped the handset that had withstood untold vandalism
attempts and jerked it out by its roots. I grabbed its shattered wires and
swung it into the wall like a mace, ludicrously enraged, and began to stumble
back toward the stairway.
"Hate to bust in, but we've got to stop porch-setting here," shouted Krupp
from the lobby entryway. He lay on the floor with the AK-47 pointed down the
hall.
"What about these B-men?"
"They'll keep."
"I'm not leaving. My friends are up on twelve. Hey, look. These men are in
pain okay? I'm going to tell their friends upstairs they've got wounded down
here."
"Could do that," said Krupp, "but Casimir's in the stair well, If they come
down this way, he'll be like a hoppity toad in a snake stampede."
For the first time, we heard shouting and shooting from the main hallway which
led to the Cafeteria. "Don't look forward to fighting my way through whatever
that sounds like," said Krupp.
"Shit. Shit in a brown bag. Great fucking ghost of Rommel," I said. "That
thing is a tank." - Indeed, a small tank was approaching our location. We
retreated.
For Fred Fine too it was a hell of a day. He was physically burned out to
begin with. The Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome had stood at yellow alert
for two days, and he had worked like an android the whole time, directing the
stockpiling of supplies and material in the most secure regions of Plexor.
Klystron may have been a haughty swordsman who reveled in single combat, but
Chris the Systems Programmer was a master strategist who understood that,
in a long war, food was power. The recent Mixture of Klystron and Chris was
regrettable, but it did enable him to plan for the coming weeks with magical
intuition and technological knowledge, a combination that proved extremely
potent.
Finally Consuela and Chip Dixon had insisted that he sleep, and Klystron/Chris
had okayed the rec. He slept from the close of our expedition until 1200 hours
on April First, then rolled smartly out of the sack, called an aide for a
quick briefing and proceeded to the mess hall for some grub and a few cups of
joe. It was there, in the Cafeteria, just as he had predicted, that the war
began.
Many things contributed to its success. The MegaUnion finally found the secret
elevator used to smuggle scab workers into the Caf, resulting in fights
between the Haitian and Vietnamese cooks and the professors and clerical
workers who stood in their way. The outcome was predictable, and when the
battered progressives returned to the main picket outside the Caf entrance,
Yllas Freedperson exhorted them to hang tough, to further peace and freedom
in the Plex by finding the violent people who had hurt them and bashing their
brains out.
Mobs of hungry students broke through the picket lines empty-handed, obviously
bent on eating scab food. The unionists were still so pissed off from the
earlier fight that more scuffling and debris-throwing ensued. Twenty TUGgies
carrying anti-communist signs took advantage of the confusion to set up a
barrier around the SUB information table and erect their OM generator, a black
box with big speakers used to augment their own personal OMs, which they now
OMed through megaphones. A picket-sign duel broke out; it became clear that
the SUB had reinforced their picket signs to make them into dangerous weapons.
At a sign from their leader, Messiah #645, the TUGgies produced sawed-off pool
cues and displayed highly developed kendo abilities.
All the Terrorists then seemed to arrive together. Twenty Droogs, thirty-two
Blue Light Specials, nineteen Roy G Bivs, eight Ninja with Big Wheels on
their foreheads, four of the Flame Squad Brotherhood and forty-three of the
Plex Branch of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army (Unofficial)
marched in with their politically correct bag lunches and, shouting and waving
sticks in the air, demanded that a large area be cleared of scab sympathizers
and other scum so they could sit down. This section contained a table of
twenty-five athletic team standouts, heavily drunk, as well as a number
of people on ghetto scholarships who really knew how to handle unpleasant
situations. Much hand-to-hand violence took place and the Terrorists were
humiliated. There were more of them, though. A huge arena ring formed around
the brawl and tables were herded to the walls to make room. The SUB showed
up, decided that the brawl was ideologically impure, and began chanting and
throwing food. This triggered the Cafeteria's mass food fight emergency plan;
but as the enforcers began to emerge from the serving bays, they were met by
MegaUnion partisans who wanted to get them out in the open. Short on brawling
power because of the inexplicable absence of the Crotobaltislavonians, the
MegaUnion was bested here.
The Haitians and Vietnamese, who had built up fierce hatred for the
Terrorists, took this opportunity to rush into the central brawl. The SUB
tried to block them, without success. The TUGgies charged after the SUB to
make sure they didn't do anything illegal. The fight was frenzied now; a
flying wedge of cooks speared back toward the kitchen to obtain big knives.
Upstairs in the towers, SUB/Terrorist extremists who were apparently waiting
for something like this began to bombard the roof of the vast kitchen complex
with heavy projectiles. On cue, the administration's anti-terrorism guards,
stationed on Tar City and in some wings and on top of towers, responded by
blasting tear gas grenades into the SUB/Terrorist strongholds. Already there
were gaping holes in the roof; above the tumult, everyone in the Caf now heard
the booms of the grenade launchers-- every gun in the place was drawn for the
first time.
Shooting began, at first to scare and then to injure. People scrambled to
the walls, throwing furniture through the wide plate-glass wall sections to
escape. But some were unable to get out, and others were happy to stay and
fight. After a minute of incomprehensible noise and violence, battle lines
formed and things became organized.
Obviously SUB and TUG were prepared. Both groups hoped to capture the kitchen
by entering through the serving bays and vaulting the steam tables, Local
fights hence developed along the approaches to all twelve serving bays. Squads
from both groups made for the main serving bay, ducking sporadic fire. The SUB
got there first, shot the lock out and kicked the door; but there was a senior
TUGgie barricaded behind a steam table, with a heavy machine gun aimed at them
and a smiling protиgи holding the ammo belt. The gunner watched cheerfully
as the SUBbies jumped back and rolled away from the door, but held his fire
until the TUGgies behind them had jumped through the breach and scurried out
of the line of fire. He immediately opened fire on a strategic SUB salad bar
across the Cafeteria. This entailed shooting through several tables, but he
had plenty of ammo, and as soon as the furniture was conveniently dissolved, a
river of red tracer fire could swing around and demolish whatever it touched,
such as a milk machine, a number of people, and, of course, the flimsy salad
bar. The SUBbies retreated and joined their Terrorist allies in safer places.
Klystron/Chris knew as well as anyone that the kitchens were the strategic
linchpin of the Plex. He was the first person in the Cafeteria to decide that
war was breaking out, and so during the early stages of the great fistfight
he mobilized and girded his loins for the Apocalypse. Retreating to a corner,
he dumped the now-useless textbooks out of his briefcase and withdrew the
bayonet, which he stuck in his belt, and the flash gun, which he carried.
As the booms and thuds from the ceiling indicated that aerial bombardment
had begun, he flexed his fingers, then shoved his right hand into his left
armpit and snapped out a standard-issue .45 automatic pistol-- just to test
the shoulder holster one last time. After cocking the weapon he gingerly slid
it back under his houndstooth polyester blazer and turned toward the nearest
serving bay.
A burst from the flash gun got him through the door and over the steam tables
into the kitchen area. Here was chaos: scab workers running to and fro, some
with knives; Cafeteria administrators telling him to get the hell out of here,
an opinion his flash gun then modified; particularly bold SUBbies and TUGgies
making their first inroads; a man in a flannel shirt carrying a .50-caliber
machine gun-- that could be a problem-- all of this in an almost primeval
landscape littered with sections of roof, piano fragments, scattered food and
utensils, broken pipes spewing steam and water, sparks and flames breaking out
here and there.
The elevator he sought was at the dead-end of a hallway, hidden in the
nethermost parts of the kitchens, back by the strategic food warehouses.
Arriving safely, Klystron/Chris protected his rear by slitting open and
overturning several hundred-pound barrels of freeze-dried potatoes and
dehydrated eggs near the doorway, where hot water spewed from a broken
ceiling pipe. Without waiting to watch the results he jogged down and boarded
the elevator, held for him by a captain of the Grand Army of Shekondar the
Fearsome.
Below, in the Burrows, he emerged to find all in readiness: several officers
awaiting orders; his body armor and weapons; and in a nearby storage closet,
the APPASMU, or All-Purpose Plex Armed Strife Mobile Unit.
The APPASMU was a project begun three years ago by several MARS members.
Starting out as a joke-- a tank for use in the Plex, ha ha-- it became a
hobby, a thing to tinker with, and finally, this semester, an integral part
of the GASF defense posture. The tank was built on the chassis of an electric
golf cart, geared down so that its motor could haul additional weight. The
tires had been filled with dense foam to make them bulletproof, and a sturdy
frame of welded steel tubing built around the cart to support the rest of the
innovations, Hardened steel plates were welded to the frame to make a sloping,
pyramidal body in which as many as four people could sit or lie. Gun slits,
shielded peepholes and thick glass prisms enabled the occupants to see and
shoot anything in their vicinity, while a full complement of lights, radios,
sirens, loudspeakers and so forth gave the APPASMU eyes and ears and vocal
cords. The APPASMU had been designed to fit into any elevator in the Plex. It
could recharge its batteries at any wall outlet, and replacement battery packs
had already been stashed at several secret locations around the building.
From status reports provided by underlings as he pulled on his gear,
Klystron/Chris learned that S. S. Krupp was trapped in a hostile area of E
Tower. Such a mission was perfect to battle-test the APPASMU and toughen up
its crew, and so after barking some orders to his major officers he squeezed
into the tank along with three others and steered it backward into the
elevator.
The situation upstairs had begun to take on some texture. The dead-end outside
the elevator was blocked by a mountain of light-yellow potato-egg mixture. The
APPASMU plowed through with ease, and Klystron/Chris could now hear the rumble
of the heavy TUG machine gun. The APPASMU could not withstand such firepower,
so Klystron/Chris decided to outflank it by exiting the kitchens through a
back route. He aimed the APPASMU down an aisle lined with great pressure vats
and headed for the door.
Unfortunately a stray weapons burst had struck a pressure vat by the exit.
The top of the vat exploded off, blasting a neat hole through the ceiling,
and the vat, torn loose by the recoil, tumbled over and spilled thousands
of gallons of Cheezy Surprise Tetrazzini onto the floor. This mixture had
long, long overcooked in the fighting, causing the noodles to congeal into
a glutinous orange mass with an internal temperature over three hundred
degrees Fahrenheit, which had rolled out on impact and squatted sullenly
in the doorway, swathed in its nebula of live orange steam. Klystron/Chris
fired a few desultory rounds into it and concluded that this doorway was now
impassable. They would have to choose a serving bay, pass through the Caf and
hope to avoid the TUG machine gun-- exactly what the APPASMU was built for,
though to fire it now would be to use up their first and only surprise.
"Well have to make the most of it, men. We'll head for the lines of the
SUB/Terrorist Axis and pick up all the weaponry we can find. If you see
anything that looks like it's armor-piercing, sing out!" Without further
chitchat, and accompanied by a soft plopping of potato-egg, the minitank
was out of the kitchen and into a serving bay which was being disputed in
hand-to-hand combat. The astonished fighters could only stand in confusion,
and only two rounds glanced off the APPASMU's armor before they entered
the Caf. The tank's entrance occasioned a surprised lull in the fighting.
Klystron/Chris and Chip Dixon used the flat-trajectory indoor mortars to lob a
few stun grenades behind the line of overturned tables and main salad bar that
served as the SUB bunker. At this, the Axis forces turned and ran through the
shattered plate-glass walls behind them and scurried for F Tower. The poorly
armed wretches who had been pinned down by their presence emerged and sprinted
for the exits.
They got a fine haul from the stunned and demoralized soldiers in the Axis
bunker: a Kalashnikov, a twelve-gauge slug gun, ammo, knives, clubs and gas
masks, all plastered with smoldering lettuce and sprouts but functional.
After collecting the booty and using his intercom to dispatch a negotiator
to cut a deal with the TUGgies-- who were clearly winning in this theater--
Klystron/Chris sent the APPASMU crashing magnificently through a plate-glass
panel that had miraculously remained unbroken, and pointed it toward E Tower
and the endangered Septimius Severus Krupp.
There we met them, below E Tower. From a distance we could make out the
insignia: a stylized plan of the Plex (eight Swiss crosses within a square)
with a sword and phaser rifle crossed underneath and the word MARS above. "I
guess that would be Fred Fine," I said.
The top hatch flipped open and a helmeted, goggled head arose, speaking
through the PA system. "This is the Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome
Expeditionary Plex Purification Warfare Corps. Resistance is useless." The
tank pulled up next to us, and Fred Fine pulled back the mask to reveal (alas)
his face. He spoke with his usual grating humility.
"Mr. President. Professor Redfield. Sorry if we upset you. This is a little
something we've been developing as a career suitability demonstration project
during the recent years of decaying civilization. In fact, once we're on
secure ground, I'd like to discuss the possibility of receiving some academic
credit for it, Mr. President. The basic design principles are the same as for
any armored vehicle."
"I see that," said Krupp, nodding. "Heimlich would go nuts over this. But what
you need, I think, are more liberal arts courses." "Dr. Redfield will find the
infrared personnel sensing equipment very interesting. But sirs, we have heavy
fighting in the Cafeteria. My men have secured the other end of this hallway
while I came to get you."
Chip Dixon had clambered out to reconnoiter and inspect the APPASMU. Seeing
the three mangled B-men, he scurried over to them and slid his hand under
one's ear to check his pulse. A queer look came on his face and he stared
directly up at Fred Fine. "Jim, he's dead," he whispered.
"Sir to you," said Fred Fine, nonplussed, "and my name is not Jim, it's . .
. something else. Anyway, sirs, my men are now securing D Tower, with direct
elevator connections to the Burrows. We've arranged with your anti-terrorist
forces to courier you to C Tower, which they are securing. Chip will steer the
APPASMU, you'll sit in my place and I'll serve as point man. Dr. Redfield is
welcome to follow. But first we must retrieve those weapons!" He clomped over
to the remains of the Crotobaltislavonians.
Sarah slept until about noon, when a corpse burst through her window. Her
eyes were half open, so that it exploded out of a dream: a leathery female
cadaver from the Med College, wearing the wig Sarah had left behind in Tiny's
room, white clown makeup smeared on the face. This effigy had been placed in
a hangman's noose and thrown out the window above hers; it swung down and
crashed through her window, then swung out and in and out as Sarah struggled
between sleep and awakeness, disbelief and terror. At last she chose awakeness
and terror, and stared at the corpse, which grinned.
She tried to scream and gag at the same time, but did neither. Outside she
heard the excited whispers of the lurking Terrorists. She took three slow
breaths and pulled her .38 from under her pillow. As she was sliding her feet
into her running shoes, she found a big shard of window glass on one of them
and nearly panicked. She picked up her phone and punched out Hyacinth's number
(after the rape attempt she had bought a pushbutton phone so she could dial
silently). Hyacinth answered alertly. Sarah pushed the 1 button three times
and hung up, stood, slipped on the pack containing her emergency things and
padded to the door. Sleeping in her long johns was neither cool nor glamorous,
but proved useful nonetheless.
There was a long wait. The Terrorists were quietly getting impatient.
wondering whether she was in there, talking about shooting the door open--they
knew a police lock would be difficult to blow off. Sarah stood shivering, feet
on marked places on the floor, gun in right hand, doorlock in left. If only
there had been a way to practice this!
Hyacinth's gun sounded. Horribly slow, she snapped the lock, moved her hand to
the doorknob, grasped it, turned it, swung the door open and examined the five
men standing there. They were looking sideways toward Hyacinth. As they began
to turn their faces toward her, she finally picked out the one with the gun--
thanking God there was only one gun. For just a second now they were trapped
and helpless, caught in a double take, trying to process the new information.
For the first time Sarah understood how generals and terrorists made their
plans of attack.
The one with the shotgun had turned it toward Hyacinth and now seemed
indecisive. The other men were stepping back and dropping to the floor.
Sarah's finger twitched and she fired a round into the ceiling.
The rest happened in an instant. She pointed her gun at the head of the armed
man. One of the other four suddenly whipped a handgun from his belt. Sarah
wheeled and shot him in the stomach. The one with the shotgun tried to swing
around but scraped the end of his barrel on the wall; Sarah and Hyacinth fired
two shots apiece; three missed, and one of Sarah's hit the man in the arm and
dropped him. The other three had simply disappeared; looking down the ball,
Sarah saw them piling into the fire stairway.
There was less blood than she had expected. Before she could examine the two
wounded, Hyacinth floated past and Sarah followed. They ran to the elevator
lobby, where Lucy was waiting with an elevator and another gun. That was
what had taken so long-- an elevator! But many Terrorists were pouring into
the lobby as the doors began to creep shut. A Terrorist glided toward the
wall buttons, hoping to punch the doors open; Sarah made eye contact with
him; he kept going; she fired a shot whose effects she never saw. The doors
were closed, joining in front of them to form a Big Wheel mural. The car was
motionless for a sickeningly long time, and then shifted and began to sink.
Casimir Radon only came in at the end of it. He had gotten up earlier than any
of us that morning. Opening his curtains to let in the gray light, he had seen
the blind patches grow, and had put on his glacier glasses before allowing any
more light past his eyelids. He lay in bed until the blind spots had shifted
over to the right side of his vision, then read some physics and tinkered with
the railgun's electronics. Finally he went to lunch; but seeing the outbreak
of violence there, he headed back up the stairs to look for Sarah, meeting
me and Krupp. After we parted, he continued resolutely. placing his feet as
gently as possible on each tread and pressing carefully until he moved up
to the next step. As a result he moved with a smoothness that was not even
noticed by the little embryonic headache in his brain.
A few seconds after leaving us behind, something flashed by him down the
center of the stairwell, and a second later-- accompanied by a brief stabbing
light-- came a sharp awesome KABOOM that KABOOMed many times over as it
bounded up and down the height of the stairwell. To Casimir it was like being
bayoneted through the head, and when he dared to move again, the headache
struck so badly that he could only laugh at it. He proceeded toward the Castle
in the Air with a helpless moaning laugh, heels of hands buried in temples,
and heard other, less tremendous explosions.
The door to E12S was open and three Terrorists were running through in a
panic, headed for thirteen. Something white flashed by the door, heading for
the lobby. Casimir ran into the hall and was promptly knocked aside by a
migration of Terrorists, who emerged from several nearby rooms. Falling, he
glimpsed Sarah and Hyacinth, clad in white long johns, running with guns and
backpacks down the hall. He managed to trip a few of the Terrorists, more by
flailing away randomly than by craftiness, and stood up and began to head for
the elevators too. As he approached the lobby, there was another painful WHAM
and he felt a sharp pain in his chest. He had no idea what had happened. In
fact, Sarah's last bullet, after ricocheting off several walls and passing
through a fire door, had in mangled form dispersed its last bit of energy by
bouncing sharply off Casimir's T-shirt.
Something hard was against the back of his head-- the floor? The Terrorists
were standing above him. He stood up. Two wounded men were being carried
toward him, leaving uneven trails of blood on the shiny tile floor. He
followed these trails to their sources, and stepped through Sarah's open door.
A clown-cadaver was smiling at him through the window and he knew he was
hallucinating. Nothing he did could dissolve the ghastly sight. Noticing a
Terrorist looking at him from the doorway, he walked over, slammed the door
in his face and locked it. Then he wandered around the room, picking up and
examining random objects-- numerous mementos of Sarah's friends and family,
books he would never read, a little framed collection of snapshots. A family
portrait, graduation photos of several smiling good-looking earnest types--
which was her boyfriend?-- and various shots of Sarah and friends being happy
in different places, including some of Hyacinth. Tucked in one corner of the
frame was a folded piece of paper. Casimir felt filthy reading it; it was
obviously a love note. He had never gotten one himself, but he figured this
was one of them. Getting to the bottom, he read the name of the mysterious man
Sarah so obviously preferred to Casimir: Hyacinth.
He sat on her bed, elbows on knees, scarcely hearing the shouting outside. He
smiled a little, knowing Sarah and Hyacinth had made it out safely.
He knew why he'd come up here. Not to assist Sarah, or go with her, but to
save her. To create a debt of gratitude that could neither be erased nor
forgotten. She would have to love him then, right? This impossible secret hope
of his had made his thoughts so twisted and complicated that he no longer knew
why he was doing anything; he was never one to analyze his pipe dreams. But
now she was safe. His goal was accomplished. And if she had done it herself,
and not seen him, then that was his fault. She was safe, and now he had to be
happy whether he wanted to or not.
Most importantly, he had seen the proof he had needed for so long, the
undeniable proof that she would never be in love with him. All his wild
fantasies were impossible now. He could purge himself of his useless
infatuation. He could relax. It was wonderful. The Terrorists shot out the
lock, came in and grabbed his arms. In the hall he was thrown on his back and
straddled by a Terrorist while others sat on his arms and legs. Then they all
stared at him dully, lost and indecisive.
"Let's knock his teeth out," said a voice from behind Casimir. A hammer was
given to the man on his chest. Someone held Casimir by the hair. Casimir's
vision was sharp and bright without the glacier glasses; the hammerhead
was cold and luminous in the white light, finely scratched on its polished
striking face, red paint worn way from use. The Terrorist was examining
Casimir's face as though he could not find the mouth, neither excited nor
scared, just curiously resigned to what he was doing and, it seemed, at peace
with himself.
This is what I get, being heroic for the wrong reason, thought Casimir. He
could not take his eyes off the hammer. He began to struggle. His captors
clamped down harder. The torturer made a swing; but Casimir jerked his head
to one side and the blow slid down his cheek and crushed a fold of neck skin
against the floor.
Then he felt a light tingly feeling and sat up. The hammerer slid backward
onto the floor. Casimir's hands were free and he punched the man in the nuts,
then pulled his legs free and stood up. Everything he touched now snapped away
and started bleeding. Someone was coming with a shotgun, so Casimir re-entered
Sarah's room and bolted the door with her police lock.
He smashed the photo frame on her desk, removed a snapshot of Sarah and
Hyacinth, wrapped it in Kleenex and put it in his pocket. The only potential
weapon was a fencing saber, so he took that. He knocked over a set of
brick-and-board shelves, and using one brick as a hammer and another as an
anvil, snapped off the final inch of the blade to leave a clean, sharply
fractured edge.
When he opened the door again, all he had to do was push the barrel of the
shotgun out of the way and push his saber through one of the owner's lungs.
The gun came free in his hand and he hurled it backward out the window, where
it bounced off the cadaver and fell to Tar City. In the ensuing melee Casimir
slashed and whipped several Terrorists with the blade, or punched them with
the guard, and then they were all gone and he was walking down the stairs.
His destination was a room in a back hallway far beneath A Tower: University
Locksmithing. This was the most heavily fortified room in the Plex, as a
single breach in its security meant replacing thousands of locks. It had
just one outside window, gridded over by heavy steel tubes, and the door was
solid steel, locked by the toughest lock technology could devise. As Casimir
approached it, he found the nearby corridors empty. The security system was
still on the ball, he supposed. But the events of the day had unleashed in
Casimir's mind a kind of maniacal, animal cunning, accumulated through years
of craftily avoiding migraines and parties.
The corridors in this section were relatively narrow. He put his feet against
one wall and his hands against the other, pushed hard enough to hold himself
in the air, slowly "walked" up the walls until his back was against the pipes
on the ceiling, then "walked" around the corner and down the hall toward that
steel door. Usually the only beings found on the ceilings of the Plex were
bats, and so the little TV camera mounted above the door was aimed down toward
the floor. Eventually Casimir was able to rest his hands directly on the
camera's mounting bracket and wedge his feet into a crack between a ceiling
pipe and the ceiling across the hail. Not very comfortable, he used one hand
to undo his belt buckle. In five minutes, during which he frequently had to
rest both arms, he was able to get the belt over another pipe and rebuckle it
around his waist, giving himself an uncomfortable but stable harness.
Within half an hour, the TV camera, inches from his face, began to swivel back
and forth warily. Casimir loosened his belt buckle. The lock clicked open and
an old man emerged, holding a pistol. Casimir simply dropped, pulled the gun
free, flung it back into the room, then dragged the locksmith inside. While
the man was regaining his breath, Casimir went through his pockets and came up
with a heavily laden key-chain.
After a while the locksmith sat up. "Whose side are you on?" he said.
"No side. I'm on a quest."
The locksmith, apparently familiar with quests, nodded. "What do you want with
me?" he asked.
"The master keys, and a place for the night. It looks as though I've got
both." Casimir tossed the keys in his hand. "Where were you taking these
keys?"
The locksmith rose to his feet, looking suddenly fierce and righteous. "I was
getting them out of the Plex, young fella! Listen. I didn't spend thirty-five
years here so's I could sell the masters to the highest bidder soon as things
got hairy. I was taking those out of the Plex for safekeeping and damn you for
insulting me. Give 'em back."
"I have no right to take them, then," said Casimir, and dropped the keys into
the locksmith's hands. The man stepped back, first in fear, then in wonder.
There was a high crack and the locksmith fell. Casimir ran for the door, where
a loner with a bolt-action .22 was frantically trying to get a second round
into the chamber. Casimir nailed him with the saber, kicked him dead into the
hallway, grabbed the .22 and locked the door.
The locksmith was struggling to his feet, pulling something bright from his
sock. The big keychain was still on the floor where he'd dropped it. He now
held seven loose keys in his hands, and with a distant, dying look he gazed
through the crossbars of the window at the million lights of the city. Casimir
ran and stood before him, but seeing his shadow cross the man's face, fell to
his knees.
"Thirty-five years I looked for someone worthy to take my place," whispered
the Locksmith. "Thought I never would, thought it was all turning to shit.
And here in the last five minutes
here, lad, I pass my charge on to you." He
parted his hands, allowing the keys to fall into Casimir's. Then he dropped
his hands to his sides and died. Casimir gently laid him out on a workbench
and crossed his arms over his heart.
After pinching the barrel of the .22 shut in a vise, Casimir curled up on a
neighboring workbench and slept.
Though Casimir considered Sarah and Hyacinth safe, they were only relatively
safe when they and Lucy left E12S. Their destination was the Women's Center,
and their route was a young and disorganized war.
They went first to my suite-- I had given Lucy a key. They remained for a
couple of hours, borrowing clothes, eating, calming down and building up their
courage.
Fully clothed, equipped and reloaded, they broke out my picture window in
midafternoon and lowered themselves a few feet onto Tar City. For the time
being they kept their guns concealed. Running across the roof it was possible
to cover ground swiftly and avoid the thronged corridors. After a couple of
hundred feet and a few far misses by bombardiers above, they arrived at one
of the large holes in the roof and ducked down into the kitchen warehouses.
Approaching quietly, they slid into the narrow space between the boxes and the
ceiling and avoided detection. Following Hyacinth, they slid on their bellies
down the shelf to the nearest door. This turned out to be guarded by a GASF
soldier, who watched the door while a dozen TUGgies methodically tore open and
examined crates of food. Hyacinth slid a hundredweight of pasteurized soybean
peanut butter substitute onto the guard's head and they dropped to the floor,
pulling more crates with them to hinder pursuit. Running into the kitchens,
they found themselves cheerfully greeted by more TUGgies. Fortunately the
kitchen was huge, full of equipment and partitions and fallen junk and clouds
of steam and twists and turns, and after some aimless running around they came
to the giant wad of Cheezy Surprise Tetrazzini, squeezed past it through the
door, and entered a little-used service corridor filled with the wounded and
scared. Four of the latter, also women, seeing that these three were armed and
not as scared as they were, joined up. The seven edged into a main hall and
made for the Women's Center.
This was in the Student Union Bloc, an area not as bitterly contested as
the Caf or the Towers. Hyacinth wounded two Droogs on the way and reloaded.
Eventually they came to a long hail lined with the offices of various student
activities groups, dark and astonishingly still after their riotous trip.
Here they slowed and relaxed, then began to file along the corridor. Soon
they smelled sweet incense, and began to make out the distant sounds of
chanting and the tinkling of bells. Moving along quietly, they paused by each
door: the Outing Club; the Yoga, Solar Power and Multiple Orgasm Support
Group; the Nonsocietal Assemblage of Noncoercively Systematized Libertarian
Individuals; Let's Understand Animals, Not Torture Them; the men's room;
the punk fraternity Zappa Krappa Claw; the Folk Macrame Explorers. As they
approached the Women's Center, the sweet odors grew stronger, the soprano-alto
chant louder.
"Looks like the Goddess worshipers got here first," said Sarah. "I guess I can
live with that, if they can live with someone who shaves her pits." She and
Lucy and Hyacinth concealed their guns again, not wanting to seem obtrusive.
Hyacinth knocked. There was a lull, then the voice of Yllas Freedperson, then
a new chant.
"You don't know the True Knock," said Yllas.
"Well, we're women, this is the Women's Center."
"Not all women can enter the Women's Center."
"Oh."
"Some have more man than woman in them. No manhood can be allowed here, for
this place is sacred to the Goddess."
"Who says?"
"Astarte, the Goddess. Athena. Mary. Vesta. The Goddess of Many Names."
"Have you been talking to her a lot lately?" asked Hyacinth.
"Since I offered her my womb-blood at the Equinox last week, we have been
in constant contact."
"Well look," said Hyacinth, "we didn't come to play Dungeons and Dragons,
we're here for safety, okay?"
"Then you must purifiy yourself in the sight of the Goddess," said Yllas,
opening the door. She and the two dozen others in the Center were all naked.
All the partitions that had formerly divided the place into many rooms had
been knocked down to unify the Center into a single room. They couldn't see
dull voices that they had missed their floor and were staying on for the
return trip. Therefore the journalists and protesters found no room in the
compartment; only the four of us could squeeze in.
This chummy group rode to the Terrorist-controlled ninth floor, where everyone
else got off. As the doors slid shut, a burnout who had just disembarked
turned around to say, "Sweet dreams, S. S. Krupp."
We started up again. "Shit!" said Krupp. "We've got a problem. Everyone get on
the floor. Tex, you got your .44?"
Of course he did. Much to the concern of the SUB, Tex was massively armed at
all times, on the theory that you never knew when degens might come and shoot
up the clinic looking for purer highs. He was prepared to go out like a true
AM administrator. Dropping stiffly to the floor, he paused on his knees to
whip a humongous revolver out of his briefcase and hand it to Krupp.
"Hope we don't have to shoot it out on thirteen," he said. We agreed. Krupp
tore from Tex's briefcase a medicine bottle, struggled with the childproof
cap, yanked out the cotton wad, tore it in half and stuffed it into his ears.
At this point I began to experience terror, more of Krupp than of whatever he
was planning to dismember with that howitzer.
We passed the twelfth floor and the elevator crashed to a stop. Above us, from
the elevators still halted on thirteen, we heard excited yelling.
"I get it." Krupp cocked the revolver and we all plugged our ears as he
pointed it at the ceiling, The bullet vaporized the latch on the trap door
and flipped the door open as well. We saw light above us. Krupp's second shot
annihilated the light in our car. I felt as though my fingers had been driven
three inches deep into my ears; my eyelids fluttered in shock and my nose
complained of dense smoke. Krupp now stood up in the darkness and fired the
remaining three rounds through the trapdoor. With a sigh and a thump, a corpse
crashed into our roof.
At a great distance I heard Tex say, "Sep. Here's a speed loader." After some
clicking and cursing, Krupp fired two more rounds-- the natives were getting
restless-- and tugged at my shirt, "Leg up!" he shouted.
I stood and made a step of my hands, and he used it to propel himself through
the trap door. Once he had scrambled through, I jumped and dragged myself to
the roof after him. The only thing I was scared of was touching the corpse;
other than that, one place was as dangerous as another. Krupp, who did not
share my fear, retrieved a revolver from the body and handed it to me.
He began scaling the emergency ladder on the shaft wall. When he got to
thirteen, he pounded the wall switch and the doors slid open. Seeing him jump
through the aperture onto thirteen, I began to follow him up the ladder, not
really thinking about what I'd do when I arrived. The two adjacent elevators
began to head down, and as they passed, someone on a roof fired off a wild
shot in my direction.
A tremendous roar rang up and down the shaft. It came in three bursts, and
not until the third one did I realize it was machine-gun fire. I had been
dimly aware of it-- "Oh, that's a machine gun being fired"-- but it was not
for a few moments that I comprehended that machine guns were in use at my
institution of higher learning. There were also three WHAMs, and then silence.
Taking this as a good sign, I dove through onto thirteen and lay there dazed,
looking at an elevator lobby dotted with strings of machine-gun fire and blood
pools, tracked and smeared by hasty tennis-shoe footprints that converged on
the two elevators. I sat up timidly. Krupp went to the far side of a large
pillar and retrieved an assault rifle from a dead soldier. "See," he said,
pounding hollowly on the pillar with the butt of the rifle, "these pillars are
just for show. Just a little girder in the middle and the rest is plaster and
chicken wire. Don't want to hide behind them." Judging from the bullet holes
in the pillar and the unmoving legs and feet on the other side, someone had
recently been in dire need of Krupp's architectural knowledge. "Can't believe
they're handing out loaded Kalashnikovs to cretins like that, whoever it is
that's running this show," he grumbled. "These youths need ROTC training if
they're going to pack ordnance like this,"
"Maybe this is someone's ROTC program," I suggested, trying to lighten
the atmosphere. Krupp frowned. "Maybe this is someone's ROTC," I shouted,
remembering the cotton. He nodded in deep thought. "Very good. What's your
field again?"
"Remote sensing. Remote sensing. Involves geography, geology and electrical
engineering."
"I'm listening," Krupp assured me in the middle of my sentence, as he walked
to the two corners of the lobby to peer down the hallways. "But you'll have to
speak up," he added, squeezing off a half-second blast at something. There was
an answering blast, muffled by the fire doors between the combatants, but it
apparently went into the ceiling. Impressed, Krupp nodded.
"Well, we've got two basic tactical options here," he continued, ejecting
the old clip and inserting a fresh one taken from the dead SUBbie, "We
can seize the wing, or retreat. Based on what we've seen of these sandbox
insurrectionists, I don't doubt we can stage a takeover. The question is:
is this wing a worthwhile strategic goal in and of itself, or is my strong
inclination to seize it singlehandedly-- almost, excuse me-- just what we call
a macho complex these days? Not that I'm trying to draw us into psychobabble."
He glared at me, one eyebrow raised contemplatively.
"Depends on what kind of forces they have elsewhere."
"Well, you're saying it's easier to make tactical decisions when one has
more perfect information, a sort of strategic context from which to plan.
That's a predictable attitude for a remote-sensing man. The aereal point of
view comes naturally to a generalistic, left-handed type like you." He nodded
at my revolver, which I was holding, naturally, in my left hand. "But lacking
that background, we'll have to use a different method of attack-- using
'attack' in a figurative sense now-- and use the more linear way of thinking
that would suggest itself to, say, a right-handed low-level Catholic civil
engineer. Follow?"
"I suppose," I shouted, looking down the elevator shaft at Tex's face, barely
visible in the dim light.
"For example," continued Krupp, "our friends below, though we must be
concerned for them, are irrelevant now. Presumably, the students on this wing
will do the rational thing and not attack us, because to attack means coming
into the halls and exposing themselves to our fire. So we control entry and
exit. If we leave now, we'll just have to retake it later. Secondly, this
lobby fire stair here ensures our safety; we can always escape. Third, our
recent demonstration should delay a reinforcement action on their part. What I
figure is that if we move along room by room disarming the occupants, they'll
be too scared by what happened to that guy in the hall to try any funny stuff.
Christ on fishhooks!" Krupp dove back into the safety of the lobby as a
barrage of fire ripped down the hall, blowing with it the remains of the fire
doors. We made for the stairway and began skittering down the steps as quickly
as we could. By the time we had descended three flights, the angry shouts of
Terrorists and SUBbies were pursuing us. The shouters themselves prudently
remained on their own landing.
"We're okay unless they have something like a hand grenade or satchel charge
they can drop down this central well," said Krupp. "Hold it right there, son!
That's right! Keep those paws in the air! Say, I know you."
We had surprised Casimir Radon on a landing. He merely stared at S. S. Krupp's
AK-47, dumbfounded.
"Let's all hold onto our pants for a second and ask Casimir what he's up to,"
Krupp suggested.
"Well," said Casimir, taking off his glacier glasses to see us better in
the dim stairwell. "I was going to visit Sarah. Things are getting pretty
wild now, you know. I guess you do know," he concluded, looking again at
the assault rifle.
"Physics problem:" said Krupp, "how far does a hand grenade fall in the
seven seconds between handle release and boom?"
"Well, air resistance makes that a toughie. It's pretty asymmetrical, and it
would probably tumble, which makes the differential equation a son-of-a-bitch
to solve. You'd have to use a numerical method, like"
"Estimate, son! Estimate!"
"Eight hundred feet."
"No problem. But what if they counted to three? How far in four seconds?"
"Sixteen times four
two hundred fifty-six feet."
"If they count to five?"
"Two seconds
sixty-four feet."
"That's terrible. That's six stories. That would be about the sixth floor,
which is where we make the run into the lobby. Do you think they'd be dumb
enough to pull the pin and count to five?"
"Not with a Soviet grenade."
"Good point."
"If I'm not mistaken, sir," said Casimir, "they all have impact fuses on them
anyway. So it'd go off on six in any case."
"Oh. Well what the hell?" said Krupp, and started to run down the stairs
again.
"Wait!" I said. Krupp stopped on the next landing. "You don't want to go up
there," I told Casimir.
"Yeah. If you think it's wild down there, you should see thirteen. It's wilder
than a cat on fire, thirteen. Those people are irrational," said Krupp.
"Are you going to stop me by force?" asked Casimir.
"Well, anyone traveling with S. S. Krupp today is a prime target, so I
couldn't justify that," said Krupp.
"Then I'm going," said Casimir, and resumed his climb. "Let's get a move on.
Let's build up a good head of steam here so we can charge right through the
danger zone at the bottom. I think the twenty-third psalm is in order."
Reluctantly, I left Casimir to his own dreams and we began to charge down the
steps side by side, crossing paths at each turn, listening upward. I saw a 7
painted on the wall. We were practically diving down the last flight when I
heard someone yell "Five!" We were on the level now, sprinting for a door with
a small rectangular window and a sign reading E TOWER MAIN LOBBY.
"Did he say five, or fire?" Krupp wondered as we neared the door. We punched
it open together and were in the lobby. And there, waiting for us, were
three Crotobaltislavonians with UZIs. "Professionals, I see," said Krupp.
He had gone through on the hinged side of the door and now pushed it all
the way around so that it was flat against the lobby wall, where he leaned
against it. Back in the stairwell there was a series of metallic clanks, like
something heavy bouncing off an iron pipe. Having seen many TV shows involving
foreigners with submachine guns, I had already raised my hands; I now took the
opportunity to clap them over my ears.
Krump. Bits of fire shot out the door at incredible speed. The three janitors
just seemed to melt and soften, sagging to the floor quietly.
"It worked," said Krupp, sounding drunken and amazed. Trying to walk around, I
found that the concussion had scrambled my inner ear; stars shot around like
tracer bullets. I went to a wall phone, dialed Lucy and Hyacinth's number,
and listened to it ring. At each ring my head cleared a bit. They were not
answering. Had the Terrorists taken twelve? I redialed; no answer. After eight
rings I lost my mind, gripped the handset that had withstood untold vandalism
attempts and jerked it out by its roots. I grabbed its shattered wires and
swung it into the wall like a mace, ludicrously enraged, and began to stumble
back toward the stairway.
"Hate to bust in, but we've got to stop porch-setting here," shouted Krupp
from the lobby entryway. He lay on the floor with the AK-47 pointed down the
hall.
"What about these B-men?"
"They'll keep."
"I'm not leaving. My friends are up on twelve. Hey, look. These men are in
pain okay? I'm going to tell their friends upstairs they've got wounded down
here."
"Could do that," said Krupp, "but Casimir's in the stair well, If they come
down this way, he'll be like a hoppity toad in a snake stampede."
For the first time, we heard shouting and shooting from the main hallway which
led to the Cafeteria. "Don't look forward to fighting my way through whatever
that sounds like," said Krupp.
"Shit. Shit in a brown bag. Great fucking ghost of Rommel," I said. "That
thing is a tank." - Indeed, a small tank was approaching our location. We
retreated.
For Fred Fine too it was a hell of a day. He was physically burned out to
begin with. The Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome had stood at yellow alert
for two days, and he had worked like an android the whole time, directing the
stockpiling of supplies and material in the most secure regions of Plexor.
Klystron may have been a haughty swordsman who reveled in single combat, but
Chris the Systems Programmer was a master strategist who understood that,
in a long war, food was power. The recent Mixture of Klystron and Chris was
regrettable, but it did enable him to plan for the coming weeks with magical
intuition and technological knowledge, a combination that proved extremely
potent.
Finally Consuela and Chip Dixon had insisted that he sleep, and Klystron/Chris
had okayed the rec. He slept from the close of our expedition until 1200 hours
on April First, then rolled smartly out of the sack, called an aide for a
quick briefing and proceeded to the mess hall for some grub and a few cups of
joe. It was there, in the Cafeteria, just as he had predicted, that the war
began.
Many things contributed to its success. The MegaUnion finally found the secret
elevator used to smuggle scab workers into the Caf, resulting in fights
between the Haitian and Vietnamese cooks and the professors and clerical
workers who stood in their way. The outcome was predictable, and when the
battered progressives returned to the main picket outside the Caf entrance,
Yllas Freedperson exhorted them to hang tough, to further peace and freedom
in the Plex by finding the violent people who had hurt them and bashing their
brains out.
Mobs of hungry students broke through the picket lines empty-handed, obviously
bent on eating scab food. The unionists were still so pissed off from the
earlier fight that more scuffling and debris-throwing ensued. Twenty TUGgies
carrying anti-communist signs took advantage of the confusion to set up a
barrier around the SUB information table and erect their OM generator, a black
box with big speakers used to augment their own personal OMs, which they now
OMed through megaphones. A picket-sign duel broke out; it became clear that
the SUB had reinforced their picket signs to make them into dangerous weapons.
At a sign from their leader, Messiah #645, the TUGgies produced sawed-off pool
cues and displayed highly developed kendo abilities.
All the Terrorists then seemed to arrive together. Twenty Droogs, thirty-two
Blue Light Specials, nineteen Roy G Bivs, eight Ninja with Big Wheels on
their foreheads, four of the Flame Squad Brotherhood and forty-three of the
Plex Branch of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army (Unofficial)
marched in with their politically correct bag lunches and, shouting and waving
sticks in the air, demanded that a large area be cleared of scab sympathizers
and other scum so they could sit down. This section contained a table of
twenty-five athletic team standouts, heavily drunk, as well as a number
of people on ghetto scholarships who really knew how to handle unpleasant
situations. Much hand-to-hand violence took place and the Terrorists were
humiliated. There were more of them, though. A huge arena ring formed around
the brawl and tables were herded to the walls to make room. The SUB showed
up, decided that the brawl was ideologically impure, and began chanting and
throwing food. This triggered the Cafeteria's mass food fight emergency plan;
but as the enforcers began to emerge from the serving bays, they were met by
MegaUnion partisans who wanted to get them out in the open. Short on brawling
power because of the inexplicable absence of the Crotobaltislavonians, the
MegaUnion was bested here.
The Haitians and Vietnamese, who had built up fierce hatred for the
Terrorists, took this opportunity to rush into the central brawl. The SUB
tried to block them, without success. The TUGgies charged after the SUB to
make sure they didn't do anything illegal. The fight was frenzied now; a
flying wedge of cooks speared back toward the kitchen to obtain big knives.
Upstairs in the towers, SUB/Terrorist extremists who were apparently waiting
for something like this began to bombard the roof of the vast kitchen complex
with heavy projectiles. On cue, the administration's anti-terrorism guards,
stationed on Tar City and in some wings and on top of towers, responded by
blasting tear gas grenades into the SUB/Terrorist strongholds. Already there
were gaping holes in the roof; above the tumult, everyone in the Caf now heard
the booms of the grenade launchers-- every gun in the place was drawn for the
first time.
Shooting began, at first to scare and then to injure. People scrambled to
the walls, throwing furniture through the wide plate-glass wall sections to
escape. But some were unable to get out, and others were happy to stay and
fight. After a minute of incomprehensible noise and violence, battle lines
formed and things became organized.
Obviously SUB and TUG were prepared. Both groups hoped to capture the kitchen
by entering through the serving bays and vaulting the steam tables, Local
fights hence developed along the approaches to all twelve serving bays. Squads
from both groups made for the main serving bay, ducking sporadic fire. The SUB
got there first, shot the lock out and kicked the door; but there was a senior
TUGgie barricaded behind a steam table, with a heavy machine gun aimed at them
and a smiling protиgи holding the ammo belt. The gunner watched cheerfully
as the SUBbies jumped back and rolled away from the door, but held his fire
until the TUGgies behind them had jumped through the breach and scurried out
of the line of fire. He immediately opened fire on a strategic SUB salad bar
across the Cafeteria. This entailed shooting through several tables, but he
had plenty of ammo, and as soon as the furniture was conveniently dissolved, a
river of red tracer fire could swing around and demolish whatever it touched,
such as a milk machine, a number of people, and, of course, the flimsy salad
bar. The SUBbies retreated and joined their Terrorist allies in safer places.
Klystron/Chris knew as well as anyone that the kitchens were the strategic
linchpin of the Plex. He was the first person in the Cafeteria to decide that
war was breaking out, and so during the early stages of the great fistfight
he mobilized and girded his loins for the Apocalypse. Retreating to a corner,
he dumped the now-useless textbooks out of his briefcase and withdrew the
bayonet, which he stuck in his belt, and the flash gun, which he carried.
As the booms and thuds from the ceiling indicated that aerial bombardment
had begun, he flexed his fingers, then shoved his right hand into his left
armpit and snapped out a standard-issue .45 automatic pistol-- just to test
the shoulder holster one last time. After cocking the weapon he gingerly slid
it back under his houndstooth polyester blazer and turned toward the nearest
serving bay.
A burst from the flash gun got him through the door and over the steam tables
into the kitchen area. Here was chaos: scab workers running to and fro, some
with knives; Cafeteria administrators telling him to get the hell out of here,
an opinion his flash gun then modified; particularly bold SUBbies and TUGgies
making their first inroads; a man in a flannel shirt carrying a .50-caliber
machine gun-- that could be a problem-- all of this in an almost primeval
landscape littered with sections of roof, piano fragments, scattered food and
utensils, broken pipes spewing steam and water, sparks and flames breaking out
here and there.
The elevator he sought was at the dead-end of a hallway, hidden in the
nethermost parts of the kitchens, back by the strategic food warehouses.
Arriving safely, Klystron/Chris protected his rear by slitting open and
overturning several hundred-pound barrels of freeze-dried potatoes and
dehydrated eggs near the doorway, where hot water spewed from a broken
ceiling pipe. Without waiting to watch the results he jogged down and boarded
the elevator, held for him by a captain of the Grand Army of Shekondar the
Fearsome.
Below, in the Burrows, he emerged to find all in readiness: several officers
awaiting orders; his body armor and weapons; and in a nearby storage closet,
the APPASMU, or All-Purpose Plex Armed Strife Mobile Unit.
The APPASMU was a project begun three years ago by several MARS members.
Starting out as a joke-- a tank for use in the Plex, ha ha-- it became a
hobby, a thing to tinker with, and finally, this semester, an integral part
of the GASF defense posture. The tank was built on the chassis of an electric
golf cart, geared down so that its motor could haul additional weight. The
tires had been filled with dense foam to make them bulletproof, and a sturdy
frame of welded steel tubing built around the cart to support the rest of the
innovations, Hardened steel plates were welded to the frame to make a sloping,
pyramidal body in which as many as four people could sit or lie. Gun slits,
shielded peepholes and thick glass prisms enabled the occupants to see and
shoot anything in their vicinity, while a full complement of lights, radios,
sirens, loudspeakers and so forth gave the APPASMU eyes and ears and vocal
cords. The APPASMU had been designed to fit into any elevator in the Plex. It
could recharge its batteries at any wall outlet, and replacement battery packs
had already been stashed at several secret locations around the building.
From status reports provided by underlings as he pulled on his gear,
Klystron/Chris learned that S. S. Krupp was trapped in a hostile area of E
Tower. Such a mission was perfect to battle-test the APPASMU and toughen up
its crew, and so after barking some orders to his major officers he squeezed
into the tank along with three others and steered it backward into the
elevator.
The situation upstairs had begun to take on some texture. The dead-end outside
the elevator was blocked by a mountain of light-yellow potato-egg mixture. The
APPASMU plowed through with ease, and Klystron/Chris could now hear the rumble
of the heavy TUG machine gun. The APPASMU could not withstand such firepower,
so Klystron/Chris decided to outflank it by exiting the kitchens through a
back route. He aimed the APPASMU down an aisle lined with great pressure vats
and headed for the door.
Unfortunately a stray weapons burst had struck a pressure vat by the exit.
The top of the vat exploded off, blasting a neat hole through the ceiling,
and the vat, torn loose by the recoil, tumbled over and spilled thousands
of gallons of Cheezy Surprise Tetrazzini onto the floor. This mixture had
long, long overcooked in the fighting, causing the noodles to congeal into
a glutinous orange mass with an internal temperature over three hundred
degrees Fahrenheit, which had rolled out on impact and squatted sullenly
in the doorway, swathed in its nebula of live orange steam. Klystron/Chris
fired a few desultory rounds into it and concluded that this doorway was now
impassable. They would have to choose a serving bay, pass through the Caf and
hope to avoid the TUG machine gun-- exactly what the APPASMU was built for,
though to fire it now would be to use up their first and only surprise.
"Well have to make the most of it, men. We'll head for the lines of the
SUB/Terrorist Axis and pick up all the weaponry we can find. If you see
anything that looks like it's armor-piercing, sing out!" Without further
chitchat, and accompanied by a soft plopping of potato-egg, the minitank
was out of the kitchen and into a serving bay which was being disputed in
hand-to-hand combat. The astonished fighters could only stand in confusion,
and only two rounds glanced off the APPASMU's armor before they entered
the Caf. The tank's entrance occasioned a surprised lull in the fighting.
Klystron/Chris and Chip Dixon used the flat-trajectory indoor mortars to lob a
few stun grenades behind the line of overturned tables and main salad bar that
served as the SUB bunker. At this, the Axis forces turned and ran through the
shattered plate-glass walls behind them and scurried for F Tower. The poorly
armed wretches who had been pinned down by their presence emerged and sprinted
for the exits.
They got a fine haul from the stunned and demoralized soldiers in the Axis
bunker: a Kalashnikov, a twelve-gauge slug gun, ammo, knives, clubs and gas
masks, all plastered with smoldering lettuce and sprouts but functional.
After collecting the booty and using his intercom to dispatch a negotiator
to cut a deal with the TUGgies-- who were clearly winning in this theater--
Klystron/Chris sent the APPASMU crashing magnificently through a plate-glass
panel that had miraculously remained unbroken, and pointed it toward E Tower
and the endangered Septimius Severus Krupp.
There we met them, below E Tower. From a distance we could make out the
insignia: a stylized plan of the Plex (eight Swiss crosses within a square)
with a sword and phaser rifle crossed underneath and the word MARS above. "I
guess that would be Fred Fine," I said.
The top hatch flipped open and a helmeted, goggled head arose, speaking
through the PA system. "This is the Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome
Expeditionary Plex Purification Warfare Corps. Resistance is useless." The
tank pulled up next to us, and Fred Fine pulled back the mask to reveal (alas)
his face. He spoke with his usual grating humility.
"Mr. President. Professor Redfield. Sorry if we upset you. This is a little
something we've been developing as a career suitability demonstration project
during the recent years of decaying civilization. In fact, once we're on
secure ground, I'd like to discuss the possibility of receiving some academic
credit for it, Mr. President. The basic design principles are the same as for
any armored vehicle."
"I see that," said Krupp, nodding. "Heimlich would go nuts over this. But what
you need, I think, are more liberal arts courses." "Dr. Redfield will find the
infrared personnel sensing equipment very interesting. But sirs, we have heavy
fighting in the Cafeteria. My men have secured the other end of this hallway
while I came to get you."
Chip Dixon had clambered out to reconnoiter and inspect the APPASMU. Seeing
the three mangled B-men, he scurried over to them and slid his hand under
one's ear to check his pulse. A queer look came on his face and he stared
directly up at Fred Fine. "Jim, he's dead," he whispered.
"Sir to you," said Fred Fine, nonplussed, "and my name is not Jim, it's . .
. something else. Anyway, sirs, my men are now securing D Tower, with direct
elevator connections to the Burrows. We've arranged with your anti-terrorist
forces to courier you to C Tower, which they are securing. Chip will steer the
APPASMU, you'll sit in my place and I'll serve as point man. Dr. Redfield is
welcome to follow. But first we must retrieve those weapons!" He clomped over
to the remains of the Crotobaltislavonians.
Sarah slept until about noon, when a corpse burst through her window. Her
eyes were half open, so that it exploded out of a dream: a leathery female
cadaver from the Med College, wearing the wig Sarah had left behind in Tiny's
room, white clown makeup smeared on the face. This effigy had been placed in
a hangman's noose and thrown out the window above hers; it swung down and
crashed through her window, then swung out and in and out as Sarah struggled
between sleep and awakeness, disbelief and terror. At last she chose awakeness
and terror, and stared at the corpse, which grinned.
She tried to scream and gag at the same time, but did neither. Outside she
heard the excited whispers of the lurking Terrorists. She took three slow
breaths and pulled her .38 from under her pillow. As she was sliding her feet
into her running shoes, she found a big shard of window glass on one of them
and nearly panicked. She picked up her phone and punched out Hyacinth's number
(after the rape attempt she had bought a pushbutton phone so she could dial
silently). Hyacinth answered alertly. Sarah pushed the 1 button three times
and hung up, stood, slipped on the pack containing her emergency things and
padded to the door. Sleeping in her long johns was neither cool nor glamorous,
but proved useful nonetheless.
There was a long wait. The Terrorists were quietly getting impatient.
wondering whether she was in there, talking about shooting the door open--they
knew a police lock would be difficult to blow off. Sarah stood shivering, feet
on marked places on the floor, gun in right hand, doorlock in left. If only
there had been a way to practice this!
Hyacinth's gun sounded. Horribly slow, she snapped the lock, moved her hand to
the doorknob, grasped it, turned it, swung the door open and examined the five
men standing there. They were looking sideways toward Hyacinth. As they began
to turn their faces toward her, she finally picked out the one with the gun--
thanking God there was only one gun. For just a second now they were trapped
and helpless, caught in a double take, trying to process the new information.
For the first time Sarah understood how generals and terrorists made their
plans of attack.
The one with the shotgun had turned it toward Hyacinth and now seemed
indecisive. The other men were stepping back and dropping to the floor.
Sarah's finger twitched and she fired a round into the ceiling.
The rest happened in an instant. She pointed her gun at the head of the armed
man. One of the other four suddenly whipped a handgun from his belt. Sarah
wheeled and shot him in the stomach. The one with the shotgun tried to swing
around but scraped the end of his barrel on the wall; Sarah and Hyacinth fired
two shots apiece; three missed, and one of Sarah's hit the man in the arm and
dropped him. The other three had simply disappeared; looking down the ball,
Sarah saw them piling into the fire stairway.
There was less blood than she had expected. Before she could examine the two
wounded, Hyacinth floated past and Sarah followed. They ran to the elevator
lobby, where Lucy was waiting with an elevator and another gun. That was
what had taken so long-- an elevator! But many Terrorists were pouring into
the lobby as the doors began to creep shut. A Terrorist glided toward the
wall buttons, hoping to punch the doors open; Sarah made eye contact with
him; he kept going; she fired a shot whose effects she never saw. The doors
were closed, joining in front of them to form a Big Wheel mural. The car was
motionless for a sickeningly long time, and then shifted and began to sink.
Casimir Radon only came in at the end of it. He had gotten up earlier than any
of us that morning. Opening his curtains to let in the gray light, he had seen
the blind patches grow, and had put on his glacier glasses before allowing any
more light past his eyelids. He lay in bed until the blind spots had shifted
over to the right side of his vision, then read some physics and tinkered with
the railgun's electronics. Finally he went to lunch; but seeing the outbreak
of violence there, he headed back up the stairs to look for Sarah, meeting
me and Krupp. After we parted, he continued resolutely. placing his feet as
gently as possible on each tread and pressing carefully until he moved up
to the next step. As a result he moved with a smoothness that was not even
noticed by the little embryonic headache in his brain.
A few seconds after leaving us behind, something flashed by him down the
center of the stairwell, and a second later-- accompanied by a brief stabbing
light-- came a sharp awesome KABOOM that KABOOMed many times over as it
bounded up and down the height of the stairwell. To Casimir it was like being
bayoneted through the head, and when he dared to move again, the headache
struck so badly that he could only laugh at it. He proceeded toward the Castle
in the Air with a helpless moaning laugh, heels of hands buried in temples,
and heard other, less tremendous explosions.
The door to E12S was open and three Terrorists were running through in a
panic, headed for thirteen. Something white flashed by the door, heading for
the lobby. Casimir ran into the hall and was promptly knocked aside by a
migration of Terrorists, who emerged from several nearby rooms. Falling, he
glimpsed Sarah and Hyacinth, clad in white long johns, running with guns and
backpacks down the hall. He managed to trip a few of the Terrorists, more by
flailing away randomly than by craftiness, and stood up and began to head for
the elevators too. As he approached the lobby, there was another painful WHAM
and he felt a sharp pain in his chest. He had no idea what had happened. In
fact, Sarah's last bullet, after ricocheting off several walls and passing
through a fire door, had in mangled form dispersed its last bit of energy by
bouncing sharply off Casimir's T-shirt.
Something hard was against the back of his head-- the floor? The Terrorists
were standing above him. He stood up. Two wounded men were being carried
toward him, leaving uneven trails of blood on the shiny tile floor. He
followed these trails to their sources, and stepped through Sarah's open door.
A clown-cadaver was smiling at him through the window and he knew he was
hallucinating. Nothing he did could dissolve the ghastly sight. Noticing a
Terrorist looking at him from the doorway, he walked over, slammed the door
in his face and locked it. Then he wandered around the room, picking up and
examining random objects-- numerous mementos of Sarah's friends and family,
books he would never read, a little framed collection of snapshots. A family
portrait, graduation photos of several smiling good-looking earnest types--
which was her boyfriend?-- and various shots of Sarah and friends being happy
in different places, including some of Hyacinth. Tucked in one corner of the
frame was a folded piece of paper. Casimir felt filthy reading it; it was
obviously a love note. He had never gotten one himself, but he figured this
was one of them. Getting to the bottom, he read the name of the mysterious man
Sarah so obviously preferred to Casimir: Hyacinth.
He sat on her bed, elbows on knees, scarcely hearing the shouting outside. He
smiled a little, knowing Sarah and Hyacinth had made it out safely.
He knew why he'd come up here. Not to assist Sarah, or go with her, but to
save her. To create a debt of gratitude that could neither be erased nor
forgotten. She would have to love him then, right? This impossible secret hope
of his had made his thoughts so twisted and complicated that he no longer knew
why he was doing anything; he was never one to analyze his pipe dreams. But
now she was safe. His goal was accomplished. And if she had done it herself,
and not seen him, then that was his fault. She was safe, and now he had to be
happy whether he wanted to or not.
Most importantly, he had seen the proof he had needed for so long, the
undeniable proof that she would never be in love with him. All his wild
fantasies were impossible now. He could purge himself of his useless
infatuation. He could relax. It was wonderful. The Terrorists shot out the
lock, came in and grabbed his arms. In the hall he was thrown on his back and
straddled by a Terrorist while others sat on his arms and legs. Then they all
stared at him dully, lost and indecisive.
"Let's knock his teeth out," said a voice from behind Casimir. A hammer was
given to the man on his chest. Someone held Casimir by the hair. Casimir's
vision was sharp and bright without the glacier glasses; the hammerhead
was cold and luminous in the white light, finely scratched on its polished
striking face, red paint worn way from use. The Terrorist was examining
Casimir's face as though he could not find the mouth, neither excited nor
scared, just curiously resigned to what he was doing and, it seemed, at peace
with himself.
This is what I get, being heroic for the wrong reason, thought Casimir. He
could not take his eyes off the hammer. He began to struggle. His captors
clamped down harder. The torturer made a swing; but Casimir jerked his head
to one side and the blow slid down his cheek and crushed a fold of neck skin
against the floor.
Then he felt a light tingly feeling and sat up. The hammerer slid backward
onto the floor. Casimir's hands were free and he punched the man in the nuts,
then pulled his legs free and stood up. Everything he touched now snapped away
and started bleeding. Someone was coming with a shotgun, so Casimir re-entered
Sarah's room and bolted the door with her police lock.
He smashed the photo frame on her desk, removed a snapshot of Sarah and
Hyacinth, wrapped it in Kleenex and put it in his pocket. The only potential
weapon was a fencing saber, so he took that. He knocked over a set of
brick-and-board shelves, and using one brick as a hammer and another as an
anvil, snapped off the final inch of the blade to leave a clean, sharply
fractured edge.
When he opened the door again, all he had to do was push the barrel of the
shotgun out of the way and push his saber through one of the owner's lungs.
The gun came free in his hand and he hurled it backward out the window, where
it bounced off the cadaver and fell to Tar City. In the ensuing melee Casimir
slashed and whipped several Terrorists with the blade, or punched them with
the guard, and then they were all gone and he was walking down the stairs.
His destination was a room in a back hallway far beneath A Tower: University
Locksmithing. This was the most heavily fortified room in the Plex, as a
single breach in its security meant replacing thousands of locks. It had
just one outside window, gridded over by heavy steel tubes, and the door was
solid steel, locked by the toughest lock technology could devise. As Casimir
approached it, he found the nearby corridors empty. The security system was
still on the ball, he supposed. But the events of the day had unleashed in
Casimir's mind a kind of maniacal, animal cunning, accumulated through years
of craftily avoiding migraines and parties.
The corridors in this section were relatively narrow. He put his feet against
one wall and his hands against the other, pushed hard enough to hold himself
in the air, slowly "walked" up the walls until his back was against the pipes
on the ceiling, then "walked" around the corner and down the hall toward that
steel door. Usually the only beings found on the ceilings of the Plex were
bats, and so the little TV camera mounted above the door was aimed down toward
the floor. Eventually Casimir was able to rest his hands directly on the
camera's mounting bracket and wedge his feet into a crack between a ceiling
pipe and the ceiling across the hail. Not very comfortable, he used one hand
to undo his belt buckle. In five minutes, during which he frequently had to
rest both arms, he was able to get the belt over another pipe and rebuckle it
around his waist, giving himself an uncomfortable but stable harness.
Within half an hour, the TV camera, inches from his face, began to swivel back
and forth warily. Casimir loosened his belt buckle. The lock clicked open and
an old man emerged, holding a pistol. Casimir simply dropped, pulled the gun
free, flung it back into the room, then dragged the locksmith inside. While
the man was regaining his breath, Casimir went through his pockets and came up
with a heavily laden key-chain.
After a while the locksmith sat up. "Whose side are you on?" he said.
"No side. I'm on a quest."
The locksmith, apparently familiar with quests, nodded. "What do you want with
me?" he asked.
"The master keys, and a place for the night. It looks as though I've got
both." Casimir tossed the keys in his hand. "Where were you taking these
keys?"
The locksmith rose to his feet, looking suddenly fierce and righteous. "I was
getting them out of the Plex, young fella! Listen. I didn't spend thirty-five
years here so's I could sell the masters to the highest bidder soon as things
got hairy. I was taking those out of the Plex for safekeeping and damn you for
insulting me. Give 'em back."
"I have no right to take them, then," said Casimir, and dropped the keys into
the locksmith's hands. The man stepped back, first in fear, then in wonder.
There was a high crack and the locksmith fell. Casimir ran for the door, where
a loner with a bolt-action .22 was frantically trying to get a second round
into the chamber. Casimir nailed him with the saber, kicked him dead into the
hallway, grabbed the .22 and locked the door.
The locksmith was struggling to his feet, pulling something bright from his
sock. The big keychain was still on the floor where he'd dropped it. He now
held seven loose keys in his hands, and with a distant, dying look he gazed
through the crossbars of the window at the million lights of the city. Casimir
ran and stood before him, but seeing his shadow cross the man's face, fell to
his knees.
"Thirty-five years I looked for someone worthy to take my place," whispered
the Locksmith. "Thought I never would, thought it was all turning to shit.
And here in the last five minutes
here, lad, I pass my charge on to you." He
parted his hands, allowing the keys to fall into Casimir's. Then he dropped
his hands to his sides and died. Casimir gently laid him out on a workbench
and crossed his arms over his heart.
After pinching the barrel of the .22 shut in a vise, Casimir curled up on a
neighboring workbench and slept.
Though Casimir considered Sarah and Hyacinth safe, they were only relatively
safe when they and Lucy left E12S. Their destination was the Women's Center,
and their route was a young and disorganized war.
They went first to my suite-- I had given Lucy a key. They remained for a
couple of hours, borrowing clothes, eating, calming down and building up their
courage.
Fully clothed, equipped and reloaded, they broke out my picture window in
midafternoon and lowered themselves a few feet onto Tar City. For the time
being they kept their guns concealed. Running across the roof it was possible
to cover ground swiftly and avoid the thronged corridors. After a couple of
hundred feet and a few far misses by bombardiers above, they arrived at one
of the large holes in the roof and ducked down into the kitchen warehouses.
Approaching quietly, they slid into the narrow space between the boxes and the
ceiling and avoided detection. Following Hyacinth, they slid on their bellies
down the shelf to the nearest door. This turned out to be guarded by a GASF
soldier, who watched the door while a dozen TUGgies methodically tore open and
examined crates of food. Hyacinth slid a hundredweight of pasteurized soybean
peanut butter substitute onto the guard's head and they dropped to the floor,
pulling more crates with them to hinder pursuit. Running into the kitchens,
they found themselves cheerfully greeted by more TUGgies. Fortunately the
kitchen was huge, full of equipment and partitions and fallen junk and clouds
of steam and twists and turns, and after some aimless running around they came
to the giant wad of Cheezy Surprise Tetrazzini, squeezed past it through the
door, and entered a little-used service corridor filled with the wounded and
scared. Four of the latter, also women, seeing that these three were armed and
not as scared as they were, joined up. The seven edged into a main hall and
made for the Women's Center.
This was in the Student Union Bloc, an area not as bitterly contested as
the Caf or the Towers. Hyacinth wounded two Droogs on the way and reloaded.
Eventually they came to a long hail lined with the offices of various student
activities groups, dark and astonishingly still after their riotous trip.
Here they slowed and relaxed, then began to file along the corridor. Soon
they smelled sweet incense, and began to make out the distant sounds of
chanting and the tinkling of bells. Moving along quietly, they paused by each
door: the Outing Club; the Yoga, Solar Power and Multiple Orgasm Support
Group; the Nonsocietal Assemblage of Noncoercively Systematized Libertarian
Individuals; Let's Understand Animals, Not Torture Them; the men's room;
the punk fraternity Zappa Krappa Claw; the Folk Macrame Explorers. As they
approached the Women's Center, the sweet odors grew stronger, the soprano-alto
chant louder.
"Looks like the Goddess worshipers got here first," said Sarah. "I guess I can
live with that, if they can live with someone who shaves her pits." She and
Lucy and Hyacinth concealed their guns again, not wanting to seem obtrusive.
Hyacinth knocked. There was a lull, then the voice of Yllas Freedperson, then
a new chant.
"You don't know the True Knock," said Yllas.
"Well, we're women, this is the Women's Center."
"Not all women can enter the Women's Center."
"Oh."
"Some have more man than woman in them. No manhood can be allowed here, for
this place is sacred to the Goddess."
"Who says?"
"Astarte, the Goddess. Athena. Mary. Vesta. The Goddess of Many Names."
"Have you been talking to her a lot lately?" asked Hyacinth.
"Since I offered her my womb-blood at the Equinox last week, we have been
in constant contact."
"Well look," said Hyacinth, "we didn't come to play Dungeons and Dragons,
we're here for safety, okay?"
"Then you must purifiy yourself in the sight of the Goddess," said Yllas,
opening the door. She and the two dozen others in the Center were all naked.
All the partitions that had formerly divided the place into many rooms had
been knocked down to unify the Center into a single room. They couldn't see