eventually things quieted down.
"Is there a second to the motion?" she asked wearily. The crowd screamed YES
and NO.
The speaker yielded to another TUGgie, who stood rigidly with a stack of
3- x -5 cards and began to drone through them. "At one time the leftist
organizations of American Megaversity could claim that they represented some
of the students. But the diverse organizations of the Left soon found that
they all had one member who was very strident and domineering and who would
push the others around until he or she had risen to a position of authority
within the organization. These all turned out to be secretly members of the
Stalinist Underground Battalion who had worked themselves in organizations in
order to merge the Left into a single bloc with no diversity or freedom of
thought. The SUB took over a women's issues newsletter and turned it into the
People's Truth Publication, a highly libelous so-called newspaper. In the same
way
"
He was eventually cut off by Sarah. SUB spokespersons stated their views
passionately, then another TUGgie. Finally a skinny man in dark spectacles
came to the mike, a man whom Sarah recognized but couldn't quite place. He
identified himself as Casimir Radon and said he was president of the physics
club Neutrino. He quieted the crowd down a bit, as his was the first speech of
the evening that was not entirely predictable.
"I'd like to point out that you've only given us four hundred dollars," he
said. "We need more. I've done some analysis of the way our activity money
is budgeted, which I will just run through very quickly here-- " he fumbled
through papers as a disappointed murmur rose from the audience. How long
was this nerd going to take? The cameramen put new film and tape in their
equipment as lines formed outside by the restrooms.
"Here we go. I won't get too involved in the numerical details-- it's all
just arithmetic-- but if you look at the current budget, you see that a small
group of people is receiving a hugely disproportionate share of the money. In
effect, the average funding per member of the Stalinist Underground Battalion
is $114.00, while the figure for everyone else averages out to about $46.00,
and only $33.00 for Neutrino. That's especially unfair because Neutrino needs
to purchase things like books and equipment, while the expenses of a political
organization are much lower. I don't think that's fair."
The SUB howled at this preposterous reasoning but everyone else listened
respectfully.
"So I move we cut SUB funding to the bare minimum, say, twenty bucks per
capita, and give Neutrino its full request for a scientific research project,
$1500.00."
The rest of the evening, anyway, was bonkers, and I'll not go into detail.
It was insignificant anyway, since the administration had the final say; the
Student Government would have to keep passing budgets until they passed one
that S. S. Krupp would sign, and the only question was how long it would
take them to knuckle under. Time was against the SUB. As the members of the
government got more bored, they became more interested in passing a budget
that would go through the first time around. Eventually it became obvious
that the SUB had lost out, and the only thing wanting was the final vote.
The highlight of the evening came just before that vote: the speech of Yllas
Freedperson.
Yllas, the very substantial and brilliant leader of the SUB, was a heavy
black woman in her early thirties, in her fifth year of study at the Modern
Political Art Workshop. She had a knack for turning out woodblock prints
portraying anguished faces, burning tenements, and thick tortured hands
reaching for the sky. Even her pottery was inspired by the work of wretched
Central American peasants. She was also editor and illustrator of the People's
Truth Publication, but her real talent was for public speaking, where she had
the power of a gospel preacher and the fire of a revolutionary. She waited
dignified for the TV lights, then launched into a speech that lasted at least
a quarter of an hour. At just the right times she moaned, she chanted, she
sang, she reasoned, she whispered, she bellowed, she just plain spoke in a
fluid and hypnotically rhythmic voice. She talked about S. S. Krupp and the
evil of the System, how the System turned good into bad, how this society
was just like the one that caused the Holocaust, which was no excuse for
Israel, about conservatism in Washington and how our environment, economic
security, personal freedom, and safety from nuclear war were all threatened
by the greedy action of cutting the SUB's budget. Finally out came the names
of Martin Luther King, Jr., Marx, Gandhi, Che, Jesus Christ, Ronald Reagan,
Hitler, S. S. Krupp, the KKK, Bob Avakian, Elijah Mohammed and Abraham
Lincoln. Through it all, the bat was active, dipping and diving crazily
through the auditorium, divebombing toward walls or lights or people but
veering away at the last moment, flitting through the dense network of beams
and cables and catwalks and light fixtures and hanging speakers and exposed
pipes above us at great smooth speed, tracing a marvelously complicated path
that never brushed against any solid object. All of it was absorbing and
breathtaking, and when Yllas Freedperson was finished and the bat, perhaps no
longer attracted by her voice. slipped up and disappeared into a corner, there
was a long silence before the applause broke out.
"Thank you, Yllas," said Sarah respectfully. "Is there any particular motion
you wanted to make or did you just want to inject your comments?"
"I move," shouted Yllas Freedperson, "that we put the budget the way it was."
The vote was close. The SUB lost. Recounting was no help. They took the
dignified approach, forming into a sad line behind Yllas and singing "We Shall
Overcome" in slow tones as they marched out. Above their heads they carried
their big black-on-red posters of S. S. Krupp with a target drawn over his
face, and they marched so slowly that it took two repetitions of the song
before they made it out into the hallway to distribute leaflets and posters.
Sarah, three members of her cabinet and I gathered later in my suite for wine.
After the frenzy of the meeting we were torpid, and hardly said anything for
the first fifteen minutes or so. Then, as it commonly did those days, the
conversation came around to the Terrorists.
"What's the story on those Terrorist guys?" asked Willy, a business major who
acted as Treasurer. "Are they genuine Terrorists?"
"Not on my floor," said Sarah, "since they subjugated us. We're living in...
the Pax Thirteenica."
"I've heard a number of stories," I said. Everyone looked at me and I
shifted into my professor mode and lit my pipe. "Their major activity is
the toll booth concept. They station Terrorists in the E13 elevator lobby
who continually push the up and down buttons so that every passing elevator
stops and opens automatically. If it doesn't contain any non-students or
dangerous-looking people, they hold the door open until everyone gives them
a quarter. They have also claimed a section of the Cafeteria, and there have
been fights over it. But nothing I'd call true terrorism."
"How about gang rape?" asked Hillary, the Secretary, quietly. Everything got
quiet and we looked at her.
"It's just a rumor," she said. "Don't get me wrong. It hasn't happened to
me. The word is that a few of the hardcore Terrorists do it, kind of as an
initiation. They go to big parties, or throw their own. You know how at a big
party there are always a few women-- typical freshmen-- who get very drunk.
Some nice-looking Terrorist approaches the woman-- I hear that they're very
good at identifying likely candidates-- and gets into her confidence and
invites her to another party. When they get to the other party, she turns
out to be the only woman there, and you can imagine the rest. But the really
terrible thing is that they go through her things and find out where she
lives and who she is, then keep coming back whenever they feel like it. They
have these women so scared and broken that they don't resist. Supposedly the
Terrorists have kind of an invisible harem, a few terrified women all over the
Plex, too dumb or scared to say anything."
I was sitting there with my eyes closed, like everyone else a little queasy.
"I've heard of the same thing elsewhere," I said. "I wonder if it's happened
to any Airheads," murmured Sarah. "God, I'll bet it has. I wonder if any of
them know about it. I wonder if they even understand what is being done to
them-- some of them probably don't even understand they have a right to be
angry."
"How could anyone not understand rape?" said Hillary.
"You don't know how mixed up these women are. You don't know what they did
to me, without even understanding why I didn't like it. You can't imagine
those people-- they have no place to stand, no ideas of their own-- if one
is raped, and not one of her friends understands, where is she? She's cut
loose, the Terrorists can tell her anything and make her into whatever they
want. Shit, where are those animals going to stop? We're having a big
costume party with them in December."
"There's a party to avoid," said Hillary.
"It's called Fantasy Island Nite. They've been planning it for months. But by
the time the semester is over, those guys will be running wild."
"They've been running wild for a long time, it sounds like," said Willy.
"You'd better get used to that, you know? I think you're living in the law of
the jungle." That sounded a trifle melodramatic, but none of us could find a
way to disagree.
Sarah and Casimir met in the Megapub, a vast pale airship hangar littered
with uncertain plastic tables and chairs made of steel rods bent around
into uncomfortable chairlike shapes that stabbed their occupants beneath
the shoulder blades. At one end was a long bar, at the other a serving bay
connected into the central kitchen complex. Casimir declined to eat Megapub
food and lunched on a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich made from overpriced
materials bought at the convenience store and a plastic cup of excessively
carbonated beer. Sarah used the salad bar. They removed several trays from a
window table and stacked them atop a nearby wastebasket, then sat down.
"Thanks for coming on short notice," said Sarah. "I need all the help I can
get in selling this budget to Krupp, and your statistics might impress him."
Casimir, chewing vigorously on a big bite of generic white bread and generic
chunkless peanut butter, drew a few computer-printed graphs from his backpack.
"These are called Lorentz curves," he mumbled, "and they show equality of
distribution. Perfect equality is this line here, at a forty-five degree
angle. Anything less than equal comes out as a curve beneath the equality
line. This is what we had with the old budget." He displayed a graph showing
a deeply sagging curve, with the equality line above it for comparison. The
graph had been produced by a computer terminal which had printed letters at
various spots on the page, demonstrating in crude dotted-line fashion the
curves and lines. "Now, here's the same analysis on our new budget." The new
graph had a curve that nearly followed the equality line. "Each graph has a
coefficient called the Gini coefficient, the ratio of the area between the
line and curve to the area under the line. For perfect equality the Gini
coefficient is zero. For the old budget it was very bad, about point eight,
and for the new budget it is more like point two, which is pretty good."
Sarah listened politely. "You have a computer program that does this?"
"Yeah. Well, I do now, anyway. I just wrote it up."
"It's working okay?"
Casimir peered at her oddly, then at the graphs, then back at her. "I think
so. Why?"
"Well, look at these letters in the curves." She pulled one of the
graphs over and traced out the letters indicating the Lorentz curve:
FELLATIOBUGGERYNECROPHILIACUNNILINGUSANALINGUSBESTIALITY....
"Oh," Casimir said quietly. The other curve read:
CUNTFUCKSHITPISSCOCKASSHOLETITGIVEMEANENEMABEATMELICKMEOWNME.... Casimir's
face waxed red and his tongue was protruding slightly. "I didn't do this.
These are supposed to say, 'new budget' and 'old budget.' I didn't write
this into the program. Uh, this is what we call a bug. They happen from time
to time. Oh, Jeez, I'm really sorry." He covered his face with one hand and
grabbed the graphs and crumpled them into his bag.
"I believe you," she said. "I don't know much about computers, but I know
there have been problems with this one."
About halfway through his treatise on Lorentz curves it had occurred to
Casimir that he was in the process of putting his foot deeply into his mouth.
She was an English major; he had looked her up in the student directory to
find out; what the hell did she care about Gini coefficients? Sarah was still
smiling, so if she was bored she at least respected him enough not to show.
He had told her that he'd just now written this program up, and that was bad,
because it looked-- oy! It looked as though he were trying to impress her, a
sophisticated Humanities type, by writing computer programs on her behalf as
though that were the closest he could come to real communication. And then
obscene Lorentz curves!
He was saved by her ignorance of computers. The fact was, of course, that
there was no way a computer error could do that-- if she had ever run a
computer program, she would have concluded that Casimir had done it on
purpose. Suddenly he remembered his conversation with Virgil. The Worm! It
must have been the Worm. He was about to tell her, to absolve himself, when he
remembered it was a secret he was honor bound to protect.
He had to be honest. Could it be that he had actually written this just to
impress her? Anything printed on a computer looked convincing. If that had
been his motive, this served him right. Now was the time to say something
witty, but he was no good at all with words-- a fact he didn't doubt was
more than obvious to her. She probably knew every smart, interesting
man in the university, which meant he might as well forget about making
any headway toward looking like anything other than an unkempt, poor,
math-and-computer-obsessed nerd whose idea of intelligent conversation was to
show off the morning's computer escapades.
"You didn't have to go to the trouble of writing a program."
"Ha! Well, no trouble. Easier to have the machine do it than work it out by
hand. Once you get good on the computer, that is." He bit his up and looked
out the window. "Which isn't to say I think I'm some kind of great
programmer. I mean, I am, but that's not how I think of myself."
"You aren't a hacker," she suggested.
"Yeah! Exactly." Everyone knew the term "hacker," so why hadn't he just
said it?
She looked at him carefully. "Didn't we meet somewhere before? I could swear
I recognize you from somewhere." He had been hoping that she had forgotten,
or that she would not recognize him through his glacier glasses. That first
day, yes, he had read her computer card for her-- a hacker's idea of a
perfect introduction!
"Yeah. Remember Mrs. Santucci? That first day?" She nodded her head with a
little smile; she remembered it all, for better or worse. He watched her
intensely, trying to judge her reaction.
"Yes," she said, "sure. I guess I never properly thanked you for that, so--
thank you." She held out her hand. Casimir stared at it, then put out his
hand and shook it. He gripped her firmly-- a habit from his business, where
a crushing handshake was a sign of trustworthiness. To her he had probably
felt like an orangutan trying to dislocate her shoulder. Besides which, some
apple-blackberry jam had dripped out onto the first joint of his right index
finger some minutes ago, and he had thoughtlessly sucked on it.
She was awfully nice. That was a dumb word, "nice," but he couldn't come up
with anything better. She was bright, friendly and understanding, and kind to
him, which was good of her considering his starved fanatical appearance and
general fabulous ugliness. He hoped that this conversation would soon end and
that they would come out of it with a wonderful relationship. Ha.
No one said anything; she was just watching him. Obviously she was! It was his
turn to say something! How long had he been sitting there staring into the
navy-blue maw of his mini-pie? "What's your major?" they said simultaneously.
She laughed immediately, and belatedly he laughed also, though his laugh was
sort of a gasp and sob that made him sound as if he were undergoing explosive
decompression. Still, it relaxed him slightly. "Oh," she added, "I'm sorry. I
forgot Neutrino was for physics majors."
"Don't be sorry." She was sorry?
"I'm an English major."
"Oh." Casimir reddened. "I guess you probably noticed that English is not my
strong point."
"Oh, I disagree. When you were speaking last night, once you got rolling you
did very well. Same goes for today, when you were describing your curves. A
lot of the better scientists have an excellent command of language. Clear
thought leads to clear speech."
Casimir's pulse went up to about twice the norm and he felt warmth in the
lower regions. He gazed into the depths of his half-drained beer, not knowing
what to say for fear of being ungrammatical. "I've only been here a few weeks,
but I've heard that S. S. Krupp is quite the speaker. Is that so?"
Sarah smiled and rolled her eyes. At first Casimir had considered her just
a typically nice-looking young woman, but at this instant it became obvious
that he had been wrong; in fact she was spellbindingly lovely. He tried not to
stare, and shoved the last three bites of pie into his mouth. As he chewed he
tried to track what she was saying so that he wouldn't lose the thread of the
conversation and end up looking like an absent-minded hacker with no ability
to relate to anyone who wasn't destined to become a machine-language expert.
"He is quite a speaker," she said. "If you're ever on the opposite side of a
question from S. S. Krupp, you can be sure he'll bring you around sooner or
later. He can give you an excellent reason for everything he does that goes
right back to his basic philosophy. It's awesome, I think."
At last he was done stuffing junk food into his unshaven face. "But when he
out-argues you-- is that a word?"
"Well let it slip by."
"When he does that, do you really agree, or do you think he's just outclassed
you?"
"I've thought about that quite a bit. I don't know." She sat back pensively,
was stabbed by her chair, and sat back up. "What am I saying? I'm an English
major!" Casimir chuckled, not quite following this. "If he can justify it
through a fair argument, and no one else can poke any holes in it, I can't
very well disagree, can I? I mean, you have to have some kind of anchors for
your beliefs, and if you don't trust clear, correct language, how do you know
what to believe?"
'What about intuition?" asked Casimir, surprising himself. "You know the
great discoveries of physics weren't made through argument. They were made in
flashes of intuition, and the explanations and proofs thought up afterward."
"Okay." She drained her coffee and thought about it. "But those scientists
still had to come up with verbal proofs to convince themselves that the
discoveries were real."
So far, Casimir thought, she seemed more interested than peeved, so he
continued to disagree. "Well, scientists don't need language to tell them
what's real. Mathematics is the ultimate reality. That's all the anchor we
need."
"That's interesting, but you can't use math to solve political problems-- it's
not useful in the real world."
"Neither is language. You have to use intuition. You have to use the right
side of your brain."
She looked again at the clock. "I have to go now and get ready for Krupp." Now
she was looking at him-- appraisingly, he thought. She was going to leave! He
desperately wanted to ask her out. But too many women had burst out laughing,
and he couldn't take that. Yet there she sat, propped up on her elbows-- was
she waiting for him to ask? Impossible.
"Uh," he said, but at the same time she said, "Let's get together some other
time. Would you like that?"
"Yeah."
"Fine!" With a little negotiation, they arranged to meet in the Megapub on
Friday night.
"I can't believe you're free Friday night!" he blurted, and she looked at him
oddly. She stood up and held out her hand again. Casimir scrambled up and
shook it gently.
"See you later," she said, and left. Casimir remained standing, watched her
all the way across the shiny floor of the Megapub, then telescoped into his
seat and nearly blacked out.
She did not have to wait long amid the marble-and-mahogany splendor of
Septimius Severus Krupp's anteroom. She would have been happy to wait there
for days, especially if she could have brought some favorite music and maybe
Hyacinth, taken off her shoes, lounged on the sofa and stared out the window
over the lush row of healthy plants. The administrative bloc of the Plex was
an anomaly, like a Victorian mansion airlifted from London and dropped whole
into a niche beneath C Tower. Here was none of the spare geometry of the rest
of the Plex, none of the anonymous monochromatic walls and bald rectangles and
squares that seemed to drive the occupants bonkers. No plastic showed; the
floors were wooden, the windows opened, the walls were paneled and the honest
wood and intricate parquet floors gave the place something of nature's warmth
and diversity. In the past month Sarah had seen almost no wood-- even the
pencils in the stores here were of blond plastic-- and she stared dumbly at
the paneling everywhere she went, as though the detailed grain was there for
a reason and bore careful examination. All of this was an attempt to invest
American Megaversity with the aged respectability of a real university; but
she felt at home here.
"President Krupp will see you now," said the wonderful, witty, kind, civilized
old secretary, and the big panel doors swung open and there was S. S. Krupp.
"Good afternoon, Sarah, I'm sorry you had to wait," he said. "Please come in."
Three of the walls of Krupp's office were covered up to about nine feet
high with bookshelves, and the fourth was all French windows. Above the
bookshelves hung portraits of the founders and past presidents of American
Megaversity. The founding fathers stared sullenly at Sarah through the gloom
of a century and a half's accumulated tobacco smoke, and as she followed the
row of dignitaries around to the other end of the room, their faces shone out
brighter and brighter from the tar and nicotine of antiquity until she got to
the last spaces remaining, where Tony Commodi, Pertinax Rushforth and Julian
Didius III gleamed awkwardly in modern Suits and designer eyeglasses.
The glowing red-orange wooden floor was covered by three Persian rugs,
and the ceiling was decorated with three concentric rings of elaborate
plasterwork surrounding a great domed skylight. A large, carefully polished
chandelier hung on a heavy chain from the center of the skylight. Sarah knew
that the delicate leaded-glass skylight was protected from above by a squat
geodesic dome covered with heavy steel grids and shatterproof Fiberglass
panels, designed to keep everything out of S. S. Krupp's office except for
the sunlight. Nothing short of a B-52 in a power dive could penetrate that
grand silence, though a ring of shattered furniture and other shrapnel piled
about the dome outside attested to the efforts of C Tower students to prove
otherwise.
Krupp led her to a long low table under the windows, and they sat in old
leather chairs and spread their papers out in the grey north light. Between
them Krupp's ever-ready tape recorder was spinning away silently. Shortly the
secretary came in with a silver tea service, and Krupp poured tea and offered
Sarah tiny, cleverly made munchies on white linen napkins embroidered with the
American Megaversity coat of arms.
Krupp was a sturdy man, his handsome cowboy face somewhat paled and softened
by the East. "I understand," he said, "that you had some trouble with those
playground communists last night." "Oh, they were the same as ever. No unusual
problems." "Yes." Krupp sounded slightly impatient at her nonstatement. "I was
pleased to see you disemboweled their budget."
"Oh? What if we'd stayed with the old one?"
"I'd have flushed it." He grinned brightly.
"What about this budget? Is it acceptable?"
"Oh, it's not bad. It's got some warts."
"Well, I want to point out at the beginning that it's easy for you to make
minor adjustments in the budget until the warts are gone. It's much more
difficult for the Student Government to handle. We almost had to call in the
riot police to get this through, and any budget you have approved will be much
harder."
"You're perfectly free to point that out, Sarah, and I don't disagree, doesn't
make much difference."
"Well," said Sarah carefully, "the authority is obviously yours. I'm sure you
can take whatever position you want and back it up very eloquently. But I hope
you'll take into account certain practicalities." Knowing instantly she had
made a mistake, she popped a munchie into her mouth and stared out the window,
waiting.
Krupp snorted quietly and sipped tea, then sat back in his chair and regarded
Sarah with dubious amusement. "Sarah, I didn't expect you, of all people, to
try that one on me. Why is it that everyone finds eloquence so inauspicious?
It's as though anyone who argues clearly can't be trusted-- that's the
opposite of what reasonable people ought to think. That attitude is common
even among faculty here, and I'm just at a loss to understand. I can't talk
like a mongoloid pig-sticker on a three-day drunk just so I'll sound like one
of the boys. God knows I can't support any position, only the right position.
If it's not right, the words won't make it so. That's the value of clear
language."
This was the problem with Krupp. He assumed that everyone always said exactly
what they thought. While this was true of him, it was rarely so with others.
"Okay, sorry," said Sarah. "I agree. I just didn't make my point too well. I'm
just hoping you'll take into account the practical aspects of the problem,
such as how everyone's going to react. Some people say this is a blind spot of
yours." This was a moderately daring thing for Sarah to say, but if she tried
to mush around politely with Krupp, he would cut her to pieces.
"Sarah, it's obvious that people's reactions have to be accounted for. That's
just horse sense. It's just that basic principles are far more important
than a temporary political squabble in Student Government. To you, all those
mono-maniacs and zombies seem more important than they are, and that's why
we can't give you any financial authority. From my point of view I can see a
much more complete picture of what is and isn't important, and one thing that
isn't is a shouting match in that parody of a democratic institution that we
call a government because we are all so idealistic in the university. What's
important is principles."
Suddenly Sarah felt depressed; she sat limply back in her chair. For a while
nothing was said-- Krupp was surprisingly sensitive to her mood.
"Student Government is just a sham, isn't it?" she asked, surprised by her own
bitterness.
"What do you mean by that?"
"It has nothing to do with the real world. We don't make any real decisions.
It's just a bunch of imaginary responsibilities to argue about and put down on
our rиsumиs."
Krupp thought it over. "It's kind of like a dude ranch. If you lose your
dogies, there's someone there to round them up for you. But on the other
hand, if you stand behind your horse you can still get wet. My Lord, Sarah,
everything is real. There's no difference between the 'real' world and this
one. The experience you're gaining is real. But it's true that the importance
ascribed to Student Government is mostly imaginary."
"So what's the point?"
"The point is that we're here to go over this budget, and when I point out
the warts, you tell me why they aren't warts. If you can justify them, you'll
have a real effect on the budget." Krupp spread the pages of the budget out on
the table, and Sarah saw alarming masses of red ink scrawled across them She
felt like whipping out Casimir s graphs but she didn't have them with her and
couldn't risk Krupp's seeing what she had seen.
"Now one item which caught my eye," said Krupp half an hour later, after Sarah
had lost five arguments and won one, "was this money for this little group,
Neutrino. I see they're wanting to build themselves a mass driver."
"Yeah? What's wrong with that?"
"Well," said Krupp patiently, "I didn't say there's anything wrong-- just hold
on, let's not get adverserial yet. You see, we don't often use activities
funds to back research projects. Generally these people apply for a grant
through the usual channels. You see, first estimates of the cost of something
like this are often wildly low, especially when made by young fellows who
aren't quite on top of things yet. This thing is certain to come in over
budget, so we'll either end up with a useless, half-completed heap of junk
or a Neutrino floundering around in red ink. It seems kind of hasty and
ill-considered to me, so I'm just recommending that we strike this item
from the budget, have the folks who want to do this project do a complete,
faculty-supervised study, then try to get themselves a grant."
Sarah sighed and stared at a small ornament on the teapot's handle, thinking
it over.
"Don't tell me," said Krupp. "It's my blind spot again, right?" But he sounded
humorous rather than sarcastic.
"There are several good reasons why you should pass this item. The main factor
is the man who is heading the project. I know him, and he's quite experienced
with this sort of thing in the real world. I know you don't like that term,
President Krupp, but it's true. He's brilliant, knows a lot of practical
electronics-- he had his own business-- and he's deeply committed to the
success of this project."
"That's a good start. But I'm reluctant to see funds given to small
organizations with these charismatic, highly motivated leaders who have
pet projects, because that amounts to just a personal gift to the leader.
Broad interest in the funded activity is important."
"This is not a personal vendetta. The plans were provided for the most part
by Professor Sharon. The organization is already putting together some of
the electronics with their own money."
"Professor Sharon. What an abominable thing that was." Krupp stared into the
light for a long time. "That was a load of rock salt in the butt. If my damn
Residence Life Relations staff wasn't tenured and unionized I'd fire 'em,
find the scum who did that and boot 'em onto the Turnpike. However. We
should resist the temptation to do something we wouldn't otherwise do just
because a peripherally involved figure has suffered. We all revere Professor
Sharon, but this project would not erase his tragedy."
"Well, I can only go on my gut feelings," said Sarah, "but I don't think what
you've said applies. I'm pretty confident about this project."
Krupp looked impressed. "If that's the case, Sarah, then I should meet this
fellow and give him a fair hearing. Maybe I'll have the same gut reaction as
you do."
"Should I have him contact you?" This was a reprieve, she thought; but if
Casimir had been so obviously nervous in front of her, what would he do under
rhetorical implosion from Krupp? It was only reasonable, though.
"Fine," said Krupp, and handed her his card.
Their other differences of opinion were hardly worth arguing over. Halving the
funding for the Basque Eroticism Study Cluster was not going to make political
waves. The meeting came to a civil and reasonable end. Krupp showed her out,
and she smiled at the old secretary and maneuvered the scarlet carpets of the
administration bloc and dawdled by each painting, finally exiting into a broad
shiny electric-blue cinderblock corridor. By the time she made it back to her
room she had adjusted to the Plex again, and taught herself to see and hear as
little of it as possible.
Ephraim Klein and some of his friends occasionally gathered in his room to
smoke cheap cigars, if only because they detested them slightly less than John
Wesley Fenrick did. Fenrick set the Go Big Red Fan up in the vent window and
blew chill November air across the room, forcing perhaps eighty percent of
the fumes out the door. A defect of the Rules was that they made no provision
for exchange of air pollution, unfortunately for Fenrick, who despite his
tradition of chemically induced states of awareness was fanatically clean.
Caught in a random eddy blown up by the Fan, a cigar resting in a stolen
Burger King tinfoil ashtray fell off one evening and rolled several inches,
crossing the boundary line into Fenrick's side of the room. It burned there
for a minute or two before its owner, a friend of Klein's, made bold to reach
across and retrieve it. The result was a brief brown streak on Fenrick's
linoleum. Fenrick did not notice it immediately, but after he did, he grew
more enraged every day. Klein was obligated to clean up "that mess," in his
view. Klein's opinion was that anything on Fenrick's side of the room was
Fenrick's problem; Klein was not paying fifteen thousand dollars a year
and studying philosophy so he could be a floor-scrubber for a rude asshole
geek like John Wesley Fenrick. He pointed to a clause in the Rules which
tentatively bore him out. They screamed across the boundary line on this issue
for nearly a week. Then, one day, I heard Ephraim yelling through their open
door.
"Jesus! What the hell are you-- Ha! I don't believe this shit!" He stuck his
head outside and yelled, "Hey, everybody, come look at what this dumb fucker's
doing!"
I looked.
For reasons I do not care to think about, John Wesley Fenrick kept a
milkbottle full of dirt. When I looked in, he had pulled its lid off and was
scattering red Okie loam over the boundary line and all over Ephraim's side of
the room. Ephraim appeared to be more amused than angry, though he was very
angry, and insisted that as many people as possible come and witness. Fenrick
sat down calmly to watch television, occasionally smiling a small, solitary
smile.
Again the question of my responsibility comes up. But how could I know it
was an event of great significance? I had also seen lovers' quarrels in the
Cafeteria; why should I have known this was much more important? I had no
authority to order these people around. Moreover, I had no desire to. I had
done as much as I could. I had shown them how to be reasonable, and if they
could not get the hang of it, it was not my problem.
The next time I spectated, Ephraim Klein was alone, studying on his bed with
Gregorian chants filling the room. I had come to see why he had borrowed my
broom. He had used it to make a welcome mat for his roomie. Right in front of
the Go Big Red Fan-- the movable portion of the wall that served as a gate--
he had swept all the dirt into an even rectangle about one by two feet and
half an inch thick. In the dirt he had inscribed with his finger:
GET A BUTT
FUCK JOHNNIE-WONNIE
When Fenrick got home I followed him discreetly to his room, to keep an eye on
things. When I got to their doorway he was staring inscrutably at the welcome
mat. He bent and opened the fan-gate, stepped through without disturbing the
dirt and closed it. He turned, and looked for a while at the smirking Ephraim
Klein. Then, with quiet dignity, John Wesley Fenrick reached down and set the
Fan to HI, creating a small simulation of Oklahoma in the 1930's on the other
side of the room.
Once I was satisfied that there would be no violence, I left and abandoned
them to each other.
Septimius Severus Krupp stood behind a cheap plywood lectern in Lecture Hall
13 and spoke on Kant's Ethics. The fifty people in the audience listened or
did not, depending on whether they (like Sarah and Casimir and Ephraim and I)
had come to hear the lecture, or (like Yllas Freedperson) to see the Stalinist
Underground Battalion Operative throw the banana-cream pie into S. S. Krupp's
face.
I had come because I was fascinated by Krupp, and because opportunities to
hear him speak were rare. Sarah, I think, had come for like reasons. Ephraim
was a philosophy major, and Casimir came because this was the type of thing
that you were supposed to do in a university. As for the SUBbies, they were
getting edgy. What the fuck was wrong with the plan, man? they seemed to say,
looking back and forth at one another sincerely and shaking their heads. The
first phases had gone well. Operative 1 had gone out to the stageleft doorway,
twenty feet to Krupp's side, opened the door and propped it, then made a
show of smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke out the door. It was obvious
that she had severe reality problems by the way she posed there, putting on
a casual air so weirdly melodramatic that everyone could see she must be a
guerilla mime, a psycho or simply luded out of her big spherical frizzy-haired
bandanna-wrapped head. It was also odd that she would show so much concern
for others' lungs, considering that her friends were making loud, sarcastic
noises and distracting gestures, but unfortunately S. S. Krupp's aides were
too straight to tell the difference between a loony and a loony with a plan,
and so they suspected nothing when she returned to her seat and forgot to shut
the door again.
Ten minutes later, right on time, Operative 2 had arrived late, entering via
the stage-right doorway and leaving it, of course, propped open. He moved
furtively, like a six-foot mouse with thallium phenoxide poisoning, jerking
his head around as if to look for right-wing death squads and CIA snipers.
But Operative 3 did not appear with the banana-cream pie. Where was he?
Everyone knew about Krupp's CIA connections, and it was quite possible--
don't laugh, the CIA is everywhere, look at Iran-- that he might have been
intercepted by fascist goons and bastinadoed and wired to an old engine block
and thrown into a river. Perhaps the death squads were waiting in their rooms
now, test-firing their silenced UZIs into cartons of Stalinist pamphlets.
In fact, Operative 3, when making his plans for the evening, had forgotten
that once he bought the banana-cream pie at the convenience store it would
have to thaw out. There is little political relevance in bouncing a rock-hard
disc of frozen custard off S. S. Krupp's face-- the splatter is the point--
and so for half an hour he had been in a Plex restroom, holding the pie
underneath the automatic hand dryer as unobtrusively as possible. Whenever he
heard approaching steps, he stopped and dropped the pie into his knapsack, and
held his hands nonchalantly under the hot air; hence he had succeeded only in
liquefying the top two millimeters of the pie and ruffling the ring of whipped
cream. He then repaired to a spot not far from the lecture hall where he
rested the pie on a hot water pipe. There should be plenty of time left in the
lecture, though it was hard to judge these things when stoned: Krupp's voice
droned on and on, incomprehensible as all that logic and philosophy.
Operative 3 snapped to attention. How long had he been spacing off? Only one
way to tell. He stuck his finger in the pie: still kind of stiff, but not
stiff enough to break a nose and wet enough to explode mediagenically.
The time was now. Operative 3 pulled on his ski mask, stole to the open
stage-left door, and waited for the right moment. Shit! One of Krupp's CIA
men had seen him! One of the Frosted Mini-Wheat types with the three-piece
suits who ran Krupp's tape-recorder during speeches. No time to wait; the stun
grenade might be lobbed at any moment.
To us he looked like a strange dexed-out bird, not running across the front of
the hall so much as vibrating across at low frequency. He was tall, skinny,
pale and wore an old Tshirt; he never seemed to plant any part of his nervous
body firmly on the ground. He entered, bouncing off a doorjamb and losing his
balance. He then caromed off a seat near a CIA man, who had not yet reacted,
hopped three times to regain balance and, gaining some direction, scrambled
toward S. S. Krupp, chased all the way by four bats driven into a frenzy by
the aroma of the banana-cream pie.
"This means that the current vulgar usage of the word 'autonomous' to mean
independent, i.e., free of external influence, sovereign, is not entirely
correct," said Krupp, who glanced up from his notes to see what everybody was
gasping at. "To be autonomous, as we can readily see by examining the Greek
roots of the word-- autos meaning self and nomos meaning law"-- here he paused
for a moment and ducked. The pie flew sideways over his head and exploded on
the blackboard behind him. He straightened back up-- "is to be self-ruling,
to exercise a respect for the Law"-- Operative 3 tottered out the door as the
SUB groaned-- "which in this case means not the law of a society or political
system but rather the Law imposed by a rational man on his own actions." in
the hallway there was scuffling, and Krupp paused. With much grunting and
swearing, Operative 3, sans ski mask, was dragged back into the room by three
clean-cut students in pastel sweaters, accompanied by an older, smiling man in
a plaid flannel shirt.
"Here's your man, President Krupp, sir," said an earnest young Anglo-Saxon,
brushing a strand of hair from his brow with his free hand. "We've placed this
Communist under citizen's arrest. Shall we contact the authorities on your
behalf?" Their mentor beamed even more broadly at this suggestion, his horsey,
protruding bicuspids glaring like great white grain elevators on the Dakota
plain.
Krupp regarded them warily, walking around to the other side of the lectern as
though it were a shield. Then he turned to the audience. "Excuse me, please.
Guess I'm the highest authority here, so just let me clear this up." He
looked back at the group by the doorway, who watched respectfully, except for
Operative 3, who shouted from his headlock: "See, man? This is what happens
when you try to change the System!" Several SUBbies began to come to his aid,
but were halted by Krupp's aides.
"Who the hell are you?" said Krupp. "Are you from that squalid North Dakotan
cult thing?"
They were shocked, even Operative 3, and stared uncomprehendingly. Deep
concern showed in the lined, earnest face of the man in the plaid flannel.
Finally he stepped forward. "Yessirree. We are indeed followers of the Temple
of Unlimited Godhead, and proud of it too. With all due respect, just what do
you mean by 'squalid'?"
"It's like a dead dog in the sitting room, son. Look, why don't you all just
let that boy go? That's right."
Regretfully, they released him. Operative 3 stood up, shivering violently. He
could not exactly thank Krupp. After hopping from foot to foot he spun and
continued his flight down the hall as though nothing had happened.
"Look," Krupp continued. "We've got a security force here. We've got organized
religions that have been doing just fine for millennia. Now what we don't need
is a brainwashing franchise, or any of your Kool-Aid-- stoned outlaw Mormon
Jesuits. I know times are hard in North Dakota but they're hard everywhere and
it doesn't call for new religions. Of course, you have some very fine points
on the subject of Communism. Now, this does not mean we will in any way fail
to extend you full religious and political freedoms as with the old-fashioned
nonprofit religions."
The SUB hooted at Krupp's wicked intolerance for religious diversity while the
rest of the audience applauded. The TUGgies were galvanized, and spoke up for
their renegade sect as eloquently as they knew how.
"But that man was a Communist! We found his card."
"Look at it this way. If TUG brainwashes people, how do you explain the great
diversity of our membership, which comes from towns and farms of all sizes all
over the Dakotas and Saskatchewan?"
"TUG is fully consistent with Judeo-Christo-Mohammedan-Bahaism."
Communism is the greatest threat in the world today." "The goals of Messiah
Jorgenson Five are fully consistent with the aims of American higher
education."
"Our church is noncoercive. We believe of our own free, uh, pamphlet.. .
explains our ideas in layman's language." "Visit North Dakota this summer for
fun in the sun. Temple Camp."
"Who is the brainwasher, our church, which teaches that we may all be
Messiah/Buddhas together, or today's media society with its constant emphasis
on materialism?"
"If you'll accept this free book it will reveal truths you may never have
thought about before."
"I couldn't help noticing that you were looking a little down and out, kinda
lonely. You know, sometimes it helps to talk to a stranger."
"Do you need a free dinner?"
Krupp watched skeptically. The older man was silent, but finally touched each
student lightly on the shoulder, silencing one and all. They left, smiling.
Looking disgusted, Krupp returned to the microphone. "Where was I, talking
about autonomy?"
He surveyed his notes and concluded his lecture in another twenty minutes.
He paused then to light his cigar, which he had been fingering, twiddling,
stroking and sniffing exquisitely for several minutes, and was answered
by exaggerated coughing from the SUB section. "I'm free to answer some
questions," he announced, surveying the room and squinting into his cigar
smoke like a cowboy into the setting sun.
Nearly everyone in the SUB raised his/her hand, but Yllas Freedperson,
Operatives 1 and 2 and two others arose and made their loud way up to the
back of the hall for an emergency conference. They were deeply concerned;
they stopped short of being openly suspicious, a deeply fascist trait, but
"Is there a second to the motion?" she asked wearily. The crowd screamed YES
and NO.
The speaker yielded to another TUGgie, who stood rigidly with a stack of
3- x -5 cards and began to drone through them. "At one time the leftist
organizations of American Megaversity could claim that they represented some
of the students. But the diverse organizations of the Left soon found that
they all had one member who was very strident and domineering and who would
push the others around until he or she had risen to a position of authority
within the organization. These all turned out to be secretly members of the
Stalinist Underground Battalion who had worked themselves in organizations in
order to merge the Left into a single bloc with no diversity or freedom of
thought. The SUB took over a women's issues newsletter and turned it into the
People's Truth Publication, a highly libelous so-called newspaper. In the same
way
"
He was eventually cut off by Sarah. SUB spokespersons stated their views
passionately, then another TUGgie. Finally a skinny man in dark spectacles
came to the mike, a man whom Sarah recognized but couldn't quite place. He
identified himself as Casimir Radon and said he was president of the physics
club Neutrino. He quieted the crowd down a bit, as his was the first speech of
the evening that was not entirely predictable.
"I'd like to point out that you've only given us four hundred dollars," he
said. "We need more. I've done some analysis of the way our activity money
is budgeted, which I will just run through very quickly here-- " he fumbled
through papers as a disappointed murmur rose from the audience. How long
was this nerd going to take? The cameramen put new film and tape in their
equipment as lines formed outside by the restrooms.
"Here we go. I won't get too involved in the numerical details-- it's all
just arithmetic-- but if you look at the current budget, you see that a small
group of people is receiving a hugely disproportionate share of the money. In
effect, the average funding per member of the Stalinist Underground Battalion
is $114.00, while the figure for everyone else averages out to about $46.00,
and only $33.00 for Neutrino. That's especially unfair because Neutrino needs
to purchase things like books and equipment, while the expenses of a political
organization are much lower. I don't think that's fair."
The SUB howled at this preposterous reasoning but everyone else listened
respectfully.
"So I move we cut SUB funding to the bare minimum, say, twenty bucks per
capita, and give Neutrino its full request for a scientific research project,
$1500.00."
The rest of the evening, anyway, was bonkers, and I'll not go into detail.
It was insignificant anyway, since the administration had the final say; the
Student Government would have to keep passing budgets until they passed one
that S. S. Krupp would sign, and the only question was how long it would
take them to knuckle under. Time was against the SUB. As the members of the
government got more bored, they became more interested in passing a budget
that would go through the first time around. Eventually it became obvious
that the SUB had lost out, and the only thing wanting was the final vote.
The highlight of the evening came just before that vote: the speech of Yllas
Freedperson.
Yllas, the very substantial and brilliant leader of the SUB, was a heavy
black woman in her early thirties, in her fifth year of study at the Modern
Political Art Workshop. She had a knack for turning out woodblock prints
portraying anguished faces, burning tenements, and thick tortured hands
reaching for the sky. Even her pottery was inspired by the work of wretched
Central American peasants. She was also editor and illustrator of the People's
Truth Publication, but her real talent was for public speaking, where she had
the power of a gospel preacher and the fire of a revolutionary. She waited
dignified for the TV lights, then launched into a speech that lasted at least
a quarter of an hour. At just the right times she moaned, she chanted, she
sang, she reasoned, she whispered, she bellowed, she just plain spoke in a
fluid and hypnotically rhythmic voice. She talked about S. S. Krupp and the
evil of the System, how the System turned good into bad, how this society
was just like the one that caused the Holocaust, which was no excuse for
Israel, about conservatism in Washington and how our environment, economic
security, personal freedom, and safety from nuclear war were all threatened
by the greedy action of cutting the SUB's budget. Finally out came the names
of Martin Luther King, Jr., Marx, Gandhi, Che, Jesus Christ, Ronald Reagan,
Hitler, S. S. Krupp, the KKK, Bob Avakian, Elijah Mohammed and Abraham
Lincoln. Through it all, the bat was active, dipping and diving crazily
through the auditorium, divebombing toward walls or lights or people but
veering away at the last moment, flitting through the dense network of beams
and cables and catwalks and light fixtures and hanging speakers and exposed
pipes above us at great smooth speed, tracing a marvelously complicated path
that never brushed against any solid object. All of it was absorbing and
breathtaking, and when Yllas Freedperson was finished and the bat, perhaps no
longer attracted by her voice. slipped up and disappeared into a corner, there
was a long silence before the applause broke out.
"Thank you, Yllas," said Sarah respectfully. "Is there any particular motion
you wanted to make or did you just want to inject your comments?"
"I move," shouted Yllas Freedperson, "that we put the budget the way it was."
The vote was close. The SUB lost. Recounting was no help. They took the
dignified approach, forming into a sad line behind Yllas and singing "We Shall
Overcome" in slow tones as they marched out. Above their heads they carried
their big black-on-red posters of S. S. Krupp with a target drawn over his
face, and they marched so slowly that it took two repetitions of the song
before they made it out into the hallway to distribute leaflets and posters.
Sarah, three members of her cabinet and I gathered later in my suite for wine.
After the frenzy of the meeting we were torpid, and hardly said anything for
the first fifteen minutes or so. Then, as it commonly did those days, the
conversation came around to the Terrorists.
"What's the story on those Terrorist guys?" asked Willy, a business major who
acted as Treasurer. "Are they genuine Terrorists?"
"Not on my floor," said Sarah, "since they subjugated us. We're living in...
the Pax Thirteenica."
"I've heard a number of stories," I said. Everyone looked at me and I
shifted into my professor mode and lit my pipe. "Their major activity is
the toll booth concept. They station Terrorists in the E13 elevator lobby
who continually push the up and down buttons so that every passing elevator
stops and opens automatically. If it doesn't contain any non-students or
dangerous-looking people, they hold the door open until everyone gives them
a quarter. They have also claimed a section of the Cafeteria, and there have
been fights over it. But nothing I'd call true terrorism."
"How about gang rape?" asked Hillary, the Secretary, quietly. Everything got
quiet and we looked at her.
"It's just a rumor," she said. "Don't get me wrong. It hasn't happened to
me. The word is that a few of the hardcore Terrorists do it, kind of as an
initiation. They go to big parties, or throw their own. You know how at a big
party there are always a few women-- typical freshmen-- who get very drunk.
Some nice-looking Terrorist approaches the woman-- I hear that they're very
good at identifying likely candidates-- and gets into her confidence and
invites her to another party. When they get to the other party, she turns
out to be the only woman there, and you can imagine the rest. But the really
terrible thing is that they go through her things and find out where she
lives and who she is, then keep coming back whenever they feel like it. They
have these women so scared and broken that they don't resist. Supposedly the
Terrorists have kind of an invisible harem, a few terrified women all over the
Plex, too dumb or scared to say anything."
I was sitting there with my eyes closed, like everyone else a little queasy.
"I've heard of the same thing elsewhere," I said. "I wonder if it's happened
to any Airheads," murmured Sarah. "God, I'll bet it has. I wonder if any of
them know about it. I wonder if they even understand what is being done to
them-- some of them probably don't even understand they have a right to be
angry."
"How could anyone not understand rape?" said Hillary.
"You don't know how mixed up these women are. You don't know what they did
to me, without even understanding why I didn't like it. You can't imagine
those people-- they have no place to stand, no ideas of their own-- if one
is raped, and not one of her friends understands, where is she? She's cut
loose, the Terrorists can tell her anything and make her into whatever they
want. Shit, where are those animals going to stop? We're having a big
costume party with them in December."
"There's a party to avoid," said Hillary.
"It's called Fantasy Island Nite. They've been planning it for months. But by
the time the semester is over, those guys will be running wild."
"They've been running wild for a long time, it sounds like," said Willy.
"You'd better get used to that, you know? I think you're living in the law of
the jungle." That sounded a trifle melodramatic, but none of us could find a
way to disagree.
Sarah and Casimir met in the Megapub, a vast pale airship hangar littered
with uncertain plastic tables and chairs made of steel rods bent around
into uncomfortable chairlike shapes that stabbed their occupants beneath
the shoulder blades. At one end was a long bar, at the other a serving bay
connected into the central kitchen complex. Casimir declined to eat Megapub
food and lunched on a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich made from overpriced
materials bought at the convenience store and a plastic cup of excessively
carbonated beer. Sarah used the salad bar. They removed several trays from a
window table and stacked them atop a nearby wastebasket, then sat down.
"Thanks for coming on short notice," said Sarah. "I need all the help I can
get in selling this budget to Krupp, and your statistics might impress him."
Casimir, chewing vigorously on a big bite of generic white bread and generic
chunkless peanut butter, drew a few computer-printed graphs from his backpack.
"These are called Lorentz curves," he mumbled, "and they show equality of
distribution. Perfect equality is this line here, at a forty-five degree
angle. Anything less than equal comes out as a curve beneath the equality
line. This is what we had with the old budget." He displayed a graph showing
a deeply sagging curve, with the equality line above it for comparison. The
graph had been produced by a computer terminal which had printed letters at
various spots on the page, demonstrating in crude dotted-line fashion the
curves and lines. "Now, here's the same analysis on our new budget." The new
graph had a curve that nearly followed the equality line. "Each graph has a
coefficient called the Gini coefficient, the ratio of the area between the
line and curve to the area under the line. For perfect equality the Gini
coefficient is zero. For the old budget it was very bad, about point eight,
and for the new budget it is more like point two, which is pretty good."
Sarah listened politely. "You have a computer program that does this?"
"Yeah. Well, I do now, anyway. I just wrote it up."
"It's working okay?"
Casimir peered at her oddly, then at the graphs, then back at her. "I think
so. Why?"
"Well, look at these letters in the curves." She pulled one of the
graphs over and traced out the letters indicating the Lorentz curve:
FELLATIOBUGGERYNECROPHILIACUNNILINGUSANALINGUSBESTIALITY....
"Oh," Casimir said quietly. The other curve read:
CUNTFUCKSHITPISSCOCKASSHOLETITGIVEMEANENEMABEATMELICKMEOWNME.... Casimir's
face waxed red and his tongue was protruding slightly. "I didn't do this.
These are supposed to say, 'new budget' and 'old budget.' I didn't write
this into the program. Uh, this is what we call a bug. They happen from time
to time. Oh, Jeez, I'm really sorry." He covered his face with one hand and
grabbed the graphs and crumpled them into his bag.
"I believe you," she said. "I don't know much about computers, but I know
there have been problems with this one."
About halfway through his treatise on Lorentz curves it had occurred to
Casimir that he was in the process of putting his foot deeply into his mouth.
She was an English major; he had looked her up in the student directory to
find out; what the hell did she care about Gini coefficients? Sarah was still
smiling, so if she was bored she at least respected him enough not to show.
He had told her that he'd just now written this program up, and that was bad,
because it looked-- oy! It looked as though he were trying to impress her, a
sophisticated Humanities type, by writing computer programs on her behalf as
though that were the closest he could come to real communication. And then
obscene Lorentz curves!
He was saved by her ignorance of computers. The fact was, of course, that
there was no way a computer error could do that-- if she had ever run a
computer program, she would have concluded that Casimir had done it on
purpose. Suddenly he remembered his conversation with Virgil. The Worm! It
must have been the Worm. He was about to tell her, to absolve himself, when he
remembered it was a secret he was honor bound to protect.
He had to be honest. Could it be that he had actually written this just to
impress her? Anything printed on a computer looked convincing. If that had
been his motive, this served him right. Now was the time to say something
witty, but he was no good at all with words-- a fact he didn't doubt was
more than obvious to her. She probably knew every smart, interesting
man in the university, which meant he might as well forget about making
any headway toward looking like anything other than an unkempt, poor,
math-and-computer-obsessed nerd whose idea of intelligent conversation was to
show off the morning's computer escapades.
"You didn't have to go to the trouble of writing a program."
"Ha! Well, no trouble. Easier to have the machine do it than work it out by
hand. Once you get good on the computer, that is." He bit his up and looked
out the window. "Which isn't to say I think I'm some kind of great
programmer. I mean, I am, but that's not how I think of myself."
"You aren't a hacker," she suggested.
"Yeah! Exactly." Everyone knew the term "hacker," so why hadn't he just
said it?
She looked at him carefully. "Didn't we meet somewhere before? I could swear
I recognize you from somewhere." He had been hoping that she had forgotten,
or that she would not recognize him through his glacier glasses. That first
day, yes, he had read her computer card for her-- a hacker's idea of a
perfect introduction!
"Yeah. Remember Mrs. Santucci? That first day?" She nodded her head with a
little smile; she remembered it all, for better or worse. He watched her
intensely, trying to judge her reaction.
"Yes," she said, "sure. I guess I never properly thanked you for that, so--
thank you." She held out her hand. Casimir stared at it, then put out his
hand and shook it. He gripped her firmly-- a habit from his business, where
a crushing handshake was a sign of trustworthiness. To her he had probably
felt like an orangutan trying to dislocate her shoulder. Besides which, some
apple-blackberry jam had dripped out onto the first joint of his right index
finger some minutes ago, and he had thoughtlessly sucked on it.
She was awfully nice. That was a dumb word, "nice," but he couldn't come up
with anything better. She was bright, friendly and understanding, and kind to
him, which was good of her considering his starved fanatical appearance and
general fabulous ugliness. He hoped that this conversation would soon end and
that they would come out of it with a wonderful relationship. Ha.
No one said anything; she was just watching him. Obviously she was! It was his
turn to say something! How long had he been sitting there staring into the
navy-blue maw of his mini-pie? "What's your major?" they said simultaneously.
She laughed immediately, and belatedly he laughed also, though his laugh was
sort of a gasp and sob that made him sound as if he were undergoing explosive
decompression. Still, it relaxed him slightly. "Oh," she added, "I'm sorry. I
forgot Neutrino was for physics majors."
"Don't be sorry." She was sorry?
"I'm an English major."
"Oh." Casimir reddened. "I guess you probably noticed that English is not my
strong point."
"Oh, I disagree. When you were speaking last night, once you got rolling you
did very well. Same goes for today, when you were describing your curves. A
lot of the better scientists have an excellent command of language. Clear
thought leads to clear speech."
Casimir's pulse went up to about twice the norm and he felt warmth in the
lower regions. He gazed into the depths of his half-drained beer, not knowing
what to say for fear of being ungrammatical. "I've only been here a few weeks,
but I've heard that S. S. Krupp is quite the speaker. Is that so?"
Sarah smiled and rolled her eyes. At first Casimir had considered her just
a typically nice-looking young woman, but at this instant it became obvious
that he had been wrong; in fact she was spellbindingly lovely. He tried not to
stare, and shoved the last three bites of pie into his mouth. As he chewed he
tried to track what she was saying so that he wouldn't lose the thread of the
conversation and end up looking like an absent-minded hacker with no ability
to relate to anyone who wasn't destined to become a machine-language expert.
"He is quite a speaker," she said. "If you're ever on the opposite side of a
question from S. S. Krupp, you can be sure he'll bring you around sooner or
later. He can give you an excellent reason for everything he does that goes
right back to his basic philosophy. It's awesome, I think."
At last he was done stuffing junk food into his unshaven face. "But when he
out-argues you-- is that a word?"
"Well let it slip by."
"When he does that, do you really agree, or do you think he's just outclassed
you?"
"I've thought about that quite a bit. I don't know." She sat back pensively,
was stabbed by her chair, and sat back up. "What am I saying? I'm an English
major!" Casimir chuckled, not quite following this. "If he can justify it
through a fair argument, and no one else can poke any holes in it, I can't
very well disagree, can I? I mean, you have to have some kind of anchors for
your beliefs, and if you don't trust clear, correct language, how do you know
what to believe?"
'What about intuition?" asked Casimir, surprising himself. "You know the
great discoveries of physics weren't made through argument. They were made in
flashes of intuition, and the explanations and proofs thought up afterward."
"Okay." She drained her coffee and thought about it. "But those scientists
still had to come up with verbal proofs to convince themselves that the
discoveries were real."
So far, Casimir thought, she seemed more interested than peeved, so he
continued to disagree. "Well, scientists don't need language to tell them
what's real. Mathematics is the ultimate reality. That's all the anchor we
need."
"That's interesting, but you can't use math to solve political problems-- it's
not useful in the real world."
"Neither is language. You have to use intuition. You have to use the right
side of your brain."
She looked again at the clock. "I have to go now and get ready for Krupp." Now
she was looking at him-- appraisingly, he thought. She was going to leave! He
desperately wanted to ask her out. But too many women had burst out laughing,
and he couldn't take that. Yet there she sat, propped up on her elbows-- was
she waiting for him to ask? Impossible.
"Uh," he said, but at the same time she said, "Let's get together some other
time. Would you like that?"
"Yeah."
"Fine!" With a little negotiation, they arranged to meet in the Megapub on
Friday night.
"I can't believe you're free Friday night!" he blurted, and she looked at him
oddly. She stood up and held out her hand again. Casimir scrambled up and
shook it gently.
"See you later," she said, and left. Casimir remained standing, watched her
all the way across the shiny floor of the Megapub, then telescoped into his
seat and nearly blacked out.
She did not have to wait long amid the marble-and-mahogany splendor of
Septimius Severus Krupp's anteroom. She would have been happy to wait there
for days, especially if she could have brought some favorite music and maybe
Hyacinth, taken off her shoes, lounged on the sofa and stared out the window
over the lush row of healthy plants. The administrative bloc of the Plex was
an anomaly, like a Victorian mansion airlifted from London and dropped whole
into a niche beneath C Tower. Here was none of the spare geometry of the rest
of the Plex, none of the anonymous monochromatic walls and bald rectangles and
squares that seemed to drive the occupants bonkers. No plastic showed; the
floors were wooden, the windows opened, the walls were paneled and the honest
wood and intricate parquet floors gave the place something of nature's warmth
and diversity. In the past month Sarah had seen almost no wood-- even the
pencils in the stores here were of blond plastic-- and she stared dumbly at
the paneling everywhere she went, as though the detailed grain was there for
a reason and bore careful examination. All of this was an attempt to invest
American Megaversity with the aged respectability of a real university; but
she felt at home here.
"President Krupp will see you now," said the wonderful, witty, kind, civilized
old secretary, and the big panel doors swung open and there was S. S. Krupp.
"Good afternoon, Sarah, I'm sorry you had to wait," he said. "Please come in."
Three of the walls of Krupp's office were covered up to about nine feet
high with bookshelves, and the fourth was all French windows. Above the
bookshelves hung portraits of the founders and past presidents of American
Megaversity. The founding fathers stared sullenly at Sarah through the gloom
of a century and a half's accumulated tobacco smoke, and as she followed the
row of dignitaries around to the other end of the room, their faces shone out
brighter and brighter from the tar and nicotine of antiquity until she got to
the last spaces remaining, where Tony Commodi, Pertinax Rushforth and Julian
Didius III gleamed awkwardly in modern Suits and designer eyeglasses.
The glowing red-orange wooden floor was covered by three Persian rugs,
and the ceiling was decorated with three concentric rings of elaborate
plasterwork surrounding a great domed skylight. A large, carefully polished
chandelier hung on a heavy chain from the center of the skylight. Sarah knew
that the delicate leaded-glass skylight was protected from above by a squat
geodesic dome covered with heavy steel grids and shatterproof Fiberglass
panels, designed to keep everything out of S. S. Krupp's office except for
the sunlight. Nothing short of a B-52 in a power dive could penetrate that
grand silence, though a ring of shattered furniture and other shrapnel piled
about the dome outside attested to the efforts of C Tower students to prove
otherwise.
Krupp led her to a long low table under the windows, and they sat in old
leather chairs and spread their papers out in the grey north light. Between
them Krupp's ever-ready tape recorder was spinning away silently. Shortly the
secretary came in with a silver tea service, and Krupp poured tea and offered
Sarah tiny, cleverly made munchies on white linen napkins embroidered with the
American Megaversity coat of arms.
Krupp was a sturdy man, his handsome cowboy face somewhat paled and softened
by the East. "I understand," he said, "that you had some trouble with those
playground communists last night." "Oh, they were the same as ever. No unusual
problems." "Yes." Krupp sounded slightly impatient at her nonstatement. "I was
pleased to see you disemboweled their budget."
"Oh? What if we'd stayed with the old one?"
"I'd have flushed it." He grinned brightly.
"What about this budget? Is it acceptable?"
"Oh, it's not bad. It's got some warts."
"Well, I want to point out at the beginning that it's easy for you to make
minor adjustments in the budget until the warts are gone. It's much more
difficult for the Student Government to handle. We almost had to call in the
riot police to get this through, and any budget you have approved will be much
harder."
"You're perfectly free to point that out, Sarah, and I don't disagree, doesn't
make much difference."
"Well," said Sarah carefully, "the authority is obviously yours. I'm sure you
can take whatever position you want and back it up very eloquently. But I hope
you'll take into account certain practicalities." Knowing instantly she had
made a mistake, she popped a munchie into her mouth and stared out the window,
waiting.
Krupp snorted quietly and sipped tea, then sat back in his chair and regarded
Sarah with dubious amusement. "Sarah, I didn't expect you, of all people, to
try that one on me. Why is it that everyone finds eloquence so inauspicious?
It's as though anyone who argues clearly can't be trusted-- that's the
opposite of what reasonable people ought to think. That attitude is common
even among faculty here, and I'm just at a loss to understand. I can't talk
like a mongoloid pig-sticker on a three-day drunk just so I'll sound like one
of the boys. God knows I can't support any position, only the right position.
If it's not right, the words won't make it so. That's the value of clear
language."
This was the problem with Krupp. He assumed that everyone always said exactly
what they thought. While this was true of him, it was rarely so with others.
"Okay, sorry," said Sarah. "I agree. I just didn't make my point too well. I'm
just hoping you'll take into account the practical aspects of the problem,
such as how everyone's going to react. Some people say this is a blind spot of
yours." This was a moderately daring thing for Sarah to say, but if she tried
to mush around politely with Krupp, he would cut her to pieces.
"Sarah, it's obvious that people's reactions have to be accounted for. That's
just horse sense. It's just that basic principles are far more important
than a temporary political squabble in Student Government. To you, all those
mono-maniacs and zombies seem more important than they are, and that's why
we can't give you any financial authority. From my point of view I can see a
much more complete picture of what is and isn't important, and one thing that
isn't is a shouting match in that parody of a democratic institution that we
call a government because we are all so idealistic in the university. What's
important is principles."
Suddenly Sarah felt depressed; she sat limply back in her chair. For a while
nothing was said-- Krupp was surprisingly sensitive to her mood.
"Student Government is just a sham, isn't it?" she asked, surprised by her own
bitterness.
"What do you mean by that?"
"It has nothing to do with the real world. We don't make any real decisions.
It's just a bunch of imaginary responsibilities to argue about and put down on
our rиsumиs."
Krupp thought it over. "It's kind of like a dude ranch. If you lose your
dogies, there's someone there to round them up for you. But on the other
hand, if you stand behind your horse you can still get wet. My Lord, Sarah,
everything is real. There's no difference between the 'real' world and this
one. The experience you're gaining is real. But it's true that the importance
ascribed to Student Government is mostly imaginary."
"So what's the point?"
"The point is that we're here to go over this budget, and when I point out
the warts, you tell me why they aren't warts. If you can justify them, you'll
have a real effect on the budget." Krupp spread the pages of the budget out on
the table, and Sarah saw alarming masses of red ink scrawled across them She
felt like whipping out Casimir s graphs but she didn't have them with her and
couldn't risk Krupp's seeing what she had seen.
"Now one item which caught my eye," said Krupp half an hour later, after Sarah
had lost five arguments and won one, "was this money for this little group,
Neutrino. I see they're wanting to build themselves a mass driver."
"Yeah? What's wrong with that?"
"Well," said Krupp patiently, "I didn't say there's anything wrong-- just hold
on, let's not get adverserial yet. You see, we don't often use activities
funds to back research projects. Generally these people apply for a grant
through the usual channels. You see, first estimates of the cost of something
like this are often wildly low, especially when made by young fellows who
aren't quite on top of things yet. This thing is certain to come in over
budget, so we'll either end up with a useless, half-completed heap of junk
or a Neutrino floundering around in red ink. It seems kind of hasty and
ill-considered to me, so I'm just recommending that we strike this item
from the budget, have the folks who want to do this project do a complete,
faculty-supervised study, then try to get themselves a grant."
Sarah sighed and stared at a small ornament on the teapot's handle, thinking
it over.
"Don't tell me," said Krupp. "It's my blind spot again, right?" But he sounded
humorous rather than sarcastic.
"There are several good reasons why you should pass this item. The main factor
is the man who is heading the project. I know him, and he's quite experienced
with this sort of thing in the real world. I know you don't like that term,
President Krupp, but it's true. He's brilliant, knows a lot of practical
electronics-- he had his own business-- and he's deeply committed to the
success of this project."
"That's a good start. But I'm reluctant to see funds given to small
organizations with these charismatic, highly motivated leaders who have
pet projects, because that amounts to just a personal gift to the leader.
Broad interest in the funded activity is important."
"This is not a personal vendetta. The plans were provided for the most part
by Professor Sharon. The organization is already putting together some of
the electronics with their own money."
"Professor Sharon. What an abominable thing that was." Krupp stared into the
light for a long time. "That was a load of rock salt in the butt. If my damn
Residence Life Relations staff wasn't tenured and unionized I'd fire 'em,
find the scum who did that and boot 'em onto the Turnpike. However. We
should resist the temptation to do something we wouldn't otherwise do just
because a peripherally involved figure has suffered. We all revere Professor
Sharon, but this project would not erase his tragedy."
"Well, I can only go on my gut feelings," said Sarah, "but I don't think what
you've said applies. I'm pretty confident about this project."
Krupp looked impressed. "If that's the case, Sarah, then I should meet this
fellow and give him a fair hearing. Maybe I'll have the same gut reaction as
you do."
"Should I have him contact you?" This was a reprieve, she thought; but if
Casimir had been so obviously nervous in front of her, what would he do under
rhetorical implosion from Krupp? It was only reasonable, though.
"Fine," said Krupp, and handed her his card.
Their other differences of opinion were hardly worth arguing over. Halving the
funding for the Basque Eroticism Study Cluster was not going to make political
waves. The meeting came to a civil and reasonable end. Krupp showed her out,
and she smiled at the old secretary and maneuvered the scarlet carpets of the
administration bloc and dawdled by each painting, finally exiting into a broad
shiny electric-blue cinderblock corridor. By the time she made it back to her
room she had adjusted to the Plex again, and taught herself to see and hear as
little of it as possible.
Ephraim Klein and some of his friends occasionally gathered in his room to
smoke cheap cigars, if only because they detested them slightly less than John
Wesley Fenrick did. Fenrick set the Go Big Red Fan up in the vent window and
blew chill November air across the room, forcing perhaps eighty percent of
the fumes out the door. A defect of the Rules was that they made no provision
for exchange of air pollution, unfortunately for Fenrick, who despite his
tradition of chemically induced states of awareness was fanatically clean.
Caught in a random eddy blown up by the Fan, a cigar resting in a stolen
Burger King tinfoil ashtray fell off one evening and rolled several inches,
crossing the boundary line into Fenrick's side of the room. It burned there
for a minute or two before its owner, a friend of Klein's, made bold to reach
across and retrieve it. The result was a brief brown streak on Fenrick's
linoleum. Fenrick did not notice it immediately, but after he did, he grew
more enraged every day. Klein was obligated to clean up "that mess," in his
view. Klein's opinion was that anything on Fenrick's side of the room was
Fenrick's problem; Klein was not paying fifteen thousand dollars a year
and studying philosophy so he could be a floor-scrubber for a rude asshole
geek like John Wesley Fenrick. He pointed to a clause in the Rules which
tentatively bore him out. They screamed across the boundary line on this issue
for nearly a week. Then, one day, I heard Ephraim yelling through their open
door.
"Jesus! What the hell are you-- Ha! I don't believe this shit!" He stuck his
head outside and yelled, "Hey, everybody, come look at what this dumb fucker's
doing!"
I looked.
For reasons I do not care to think about, John Wesley Fenrick kept a
milkbottle full of dirt. When I looked in, he had pulled its lid off and was
scattering red Okie loam over the boundary line and all over Ephraim's side of
the room. Ephraim appeared to be more amused than angry, though he was very
angry, and insisted that as many people as possible come and witness. Fenrick
sat down calmly to watch television, occasionally smiling a small, solitary
smile.
Again the question of my responsibility comes up. But how could I know it
was an event of great significance? I had also seen lovers' quarrels in the
Cafeteria; why should I have known this was much more important? I had no
authority to order these people around. Moreover, I had no desire to. I had
done as much as I could. I had shown them how to be reasonable, and if they
could not get the hang of it, it was not my problem.
The next time I spectated, Ephraim Klein was alone, studying on his bed with
Gregorian chants filling the room. I had come to see why he had borrowed my
broom. He had used it to make a welcome mat for his roomie. Right in front of
the Go Big Red Fan-- the movable portion of the wall that served as a gate--
he had swept all the dirt into an even rectangle about one by two feet and
half an inch thick. In the dirt he had inscribed with his finger:
GET A BUTT
FUCK JOHNNIE-WONNIE
When Fenrick got home I followed him discreetly to his room, to keep an eye on
things. When I got to their doorway he was staring inscrutably at the welcome
mat. He bent and opened the fan-gate, stepped through without disturbing the
dirt and closed it. He turned, and looked for a while at the smirking Ephraim
Klein. Then, with quiet dignity, John Wesley Fenrick reached down and set the
Fan to HI, creating a small simulation of Oklahoma in the 1930's on the other
side of the room.
Once I was satisfied that there would be no violence, I left and abandoned
them to each other.
Septimius Severus Krupp stood behind a cheap plywood lectern in Lecture Hall
13 and spoke on Kant's Ethics. The fifty people in the audience listened or
did not, depending on whether they (like Sarah and Casimir and Ephraim and I)
had come to hear the lecture, or (like Yllas Freedperson) to see the Stalinist
Underground Battalion Operative throw the banana-cream pie into S. S. Krupp's
face.
I had come because I was fascinated by Krupp, and because opportunities to
hear him speak were rare. Sarah, I think, had come for like reasons. Ephraim
was a philosophy major, and Casimir came because this was the type of thing
that you were supposed to do in a university. As for the SUBbies, they were
getting edgy. What the fuck was wrong with the plan, man? they seemed to say,
looking back and forth at one another sincerely and shaking their heads. The
first phases had gone well. Operative 1 had gone out to the stageleft doorway,
twenty feet to Krupp's side, opened the door and propped it, then made a
show of smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke out the door. It was obvious
that she had severe reality problems by the way she posed there, putting on
a casual air so weirdly melodramatic that everyone could see she must be a
guerilla mime, a psycho or simply luded out of her big spherical frizzy-haired
bandanna-wrapped head. It was also odd that she would show so much concern
for others' lungs, considering that her friends were making loud, sarcastic
noises and distracting gestures, but unfortunately S. S. Krupp's aides were
too straight to tell the difference between a loony and a loony with a plan,
and so they suspected nothing when she returned to her seat and forgot to shut
the door again.
Ten minutes later, right on time, Operative 2 had arrived late, entering via
the stage-right doorway and leaving it, of course, propped open. He moved
furtively, like a six-foot mouse with thallium phenoxide poisoning, jerking
his head around as if to look for right-wing death squads and CIA snipers.
But Operative 3 did not appear with the banana-cream pie. Where was he?
Everyone knew about Krupp's CIA connections, and it was quite possible--
don't laugh, the CIA is everywhere, look at Iran-- that he might have been
intercepted by fascist goons and bastinadoed and wired to an old engine block
and thrown into a river. Perhaps the death squads were waiting in their rooms
now, test-firing their silenced UZIs into cartons of Stalinist pamphlets.
In fact, Operative 3, when making his plans for the evening, had forgotten
that once he bought the banana-cream pie at the convenience store it would
have to thaw out. There is little political relevance in bouncing a rock-hard
disc of frozen custard off S. S. Krupp's face-- the splatter is the point--
and so for half an hour he had been in a Plex restroom, holding the pie
underneath the automatic hand dryer as unobtrusively as possible. Whenever he
heard approaching steps, he stopped and dropped the pie into his knapsack, and
held his hands nonchalantly under the hot air; hence he had succeeded only in
liquefying the top two millimeters of the pie and ruffling the ring of whipped
cream. He then repaired to a spot not far from the lecture hall where he
rested the pie on a hot water pipe. There should be plenty of time left in the
lecture, though it was hard to judge these things when stoned: Krupp's voice
droned on and on, incomprehensible as all that logic and philosophy.
Operative 3 snapped to attention. How long had he been spacing off? Only one
way to tell. He stuck his finger in the pie: still kind of stiff, but not
stiff enough to break a nose and wet enough to explode mediagenically.
The time was now. Operative 3 pulled on his ski mask, stole to the open
stage-left door, and waited for the right moment. Shit! One of Krupp's CIA
men had seen him! One of the Frosted Mini-Wheat types with the three-piece
suits who ran Krupp's tape-recorder during speeches. No time to wait; the stun
grenade might be lobbed at any moment.
To us he looked like a strange dexed-out bird, not running across the front of
the hall so much as vibrating across at low frequency. He was tall, skinny,
pale and wore an old Tshirt; he never seemed to plant any part of his nervous
body firmly on the ground. He entered, bouncing off a doorjamb and losing his
balance. He then caromed off a seat near a CIA man, who had not yet reacted,
hopped three times to regain balance and, gaining some direction, scrambled
toward S. S. Krupp, chased all the way by four bats driven into a frenzy by
the aroma of the banana-cream pie.
"This means that the current vulgar usage of the word 'autonomous' to mean
independent, i.e., free of external influence, sovereign, is not entirely
correct," said Krupp, who glanced up from his notes to see what everybody was
gasping at. "To be autonomous, as we can readily see by examining the Greek
roots of the word-- autos meaning self and nomos meaning law"-- here he paused
for a moment and ducked. The pie flew sideways over his head and exploded on
the blackboard behind him. He straightened back up-- "is to be self-ruling,
to exercise a respect for the Law"-- Operative 3 tottered out the door as the
SUB groaned-- "which in this case means not the law of a society or political
system but rather the Law imposed by a rational man on his own actions." in
the hallway there was scuffling, and Krupp paused. With much grunting and
swearing, Operative 3, sans ski mask, was dragged back into the room by three
clean-cut students in pastel sweaters, accompanied by an older, smiling man in
a plaid flannel shirt.
"Here's your man, President Krupp, sir," said an earnest young Anglo-Saxon,
brushing a strand of hair from his brow with his free hand. "We've placed this
Communist under citizen's arrest. Shall we contact the authorities on your
behalf?" Their mentor beamed even more broadly at this suggestion, his horsey,
protruding bicuspids glaring like great white grain elevators on the Dakota
plain.
Krupp regarded them warily, walking around to the other side of the lectern as
though it were a shield. Then he turned to the audience. "Excuse me, please.
Guess I'm the highest authority here, so just let me clear this up." He
looked back at the group by the doorway, who watched respectfully, except for
Operative 3, who shouted from his headlock: "See, man? This is what happens
when you try to change the System!" Several SUBbies began to come to his aid,
but were halted by Krupp's aides.
"Who the hell are you?" said Krupp. "Are you from that squalid North Dakotan
cult thing?"
They were shocked, even Operative 3, and stared uncomprehendingly. Deep
concern showed in the lined, earnest face of the man in the plaid flannel.
Finally he stepped forward. "Yessirree. We are indeed followers of the Temple
of Unlimited Godhead, and proud of it too. With all due respect, just what do
you mean by 'squalid'?"
"It's like a dead dog in the sitting room, son. Look, why don't you all just
let that boy go? That's right."
Regretfully, they released him. Operative 3 stood up, shivering violently. He
could not exactly thank Krupp. After hopping from foot to foot he spun and
continued his flight down the hall as though nothing had happened.
"Look," Krupp continued. "We've got a security force here. We've got organized
religions that have been doing just fine for millennia. Now what we don't need
is a brainwashing franchise, or any of your Kool-Aid-- stoned outlaw Mormon
Jesuits. I know times are hard in North Dakota but they're hard everywhere and
it doesn't call for new religions. Of course, you have some very fine points
on the subject of Communism. Now, this does not mean we will in any way fail
to extend you full religious and political freedoms as with the old-fashioned
nonprofit religions."
The SUB hooted at Krupp's wicked intolerance for religious diversity while the
rest of the audience applauded. The TUGgies were galvanized, and spoke up for
their renegade sect as eloquently as they knew how.
"But that man was a Communist! We found his card."
"Look at it this way. If TUG brainwashes people, how do you explain the great
diversity of our membership, which comes from towns and farms of all sizes all
over the Dakotas and Saskatchewan?"
"TUG is fully consistent with Judeo-Christo-Mohammedan-Bahaism."
Communism is the greatest threat in the world today." "The goals of Messiah
Jorgenson Five are fully consistent with the aims of American higher
education."
"Our church is noncoercive. We believe of our own free, uh, pamphlet.. .
explains our ideas in layman's language." "Visit North Dakota this summer for
fun in the sun. Temple Camp."
"Who is the brainwasher, our church, which teaches that we may all be
Messiah/Buddhas together, or today's media society with its constant emphasis
on materialism?"
"If you'll accept this free book it will reveal truths you may never have
thought about before."
"I couldn't help noticing that you were looking a little down and out, kinda
lonely. You know, sometimes it helps to talk to a stranger."
"Do you need a free dinner?"
Krupp watched skeptically. The older man was silent, but finally touched each
student lightly on the shoulder, silencing one and all. They left, smiling.
Looking disgusted, Krupp returned to the microphone. "Where was I, talking
about autonomy?"
He surveyed his notes and concluded his lecture in another twenty minutes.
He paused then to light his cigar, which he had been fingering, twiddling,
stroking and sniffing exquisitely for several minutes, and was answered
by exaggerated coughing from the SUB section. "I'm free to answer some
questions," he announced, surveying the room and squinting into his cigar
smoke like a cowboy into the setting sun.
Nearly everyone in the SUB raised his/her hand, but Yllas Freedperson,
Operatives 1 and 2 and two others arose and made their loud way up to the
back of the hall for an emergency conference. They were deeply concerned;
they stopped short of being openly suspicious, a deeply fascist trait, but