it occurred to them that what had just happened might strongly suggest the
presence of a TUG deep-cover mole in the SUB!
Meanwhile, question time went on down below. As was his custom, Krupp called
on two people with serious questions before resorting to the SUB. Eventually
he did so, looking carefully through that section and stabbing his finger at
its middle.
By SUB custom, any call for a question was communal property and was
distributed by consensus to a member of the group. This time, Dexter Fresser,
Sarah's hometown ex-beau, number 2 person in the SUB and its chief political
theorist, got the nod. Shaking his head, he pushed himself up in his seat
until he could see Krupp's face hovering malevolently above the dome of the
next person's bandanna. He took a deep breath, preparing for intellectual
combat, and began.
"You were talking about autonomy. Well, then you were talking about Greek
words of roots. I want to talk about Greek too because we have our roots
in Greece, just like, you know, our words do-- that is, most of us do, our
culture does, even if our ethnicity doesn't. But Rome was much, much more
powerful than Greece, and that was after most of the history of the human
race, which we don't know anything about. And you know in Greece they had
gayness all over the place. I'm saying that nice and loud even though you hate
it, but even though. uh, you know, fascist? But you can't keep me from saying
it. Did you ever think about the concentration camps? How all those people
were killed by fascists? And also in Haiti. which we annexed in 1904. And did
you ever 1 think about the socialist revolution in France that was crushed
by D-Day because the socialists were fighting off the Nazis single-handedly.
Where's the good in that? Bela Lugosi was ugly, but he had a great mind. I
mean, some of the greatest works of art were done by Satan-worshipers like
Shakespeare and Michelangelo! And the next time your car throws a rod on I-90
between Presho and Kennebec because you lost your dipstick you should think,
even if it is a hundred and ten in the shade forty-four Celsius and there are
red winged blackbirds coming at you like Bell AH-64s or something. Put the
goddamn zucchini in later next time and it won't get so mushy! I know this is
strong and direct and undiplomatical, but this is real life and I can't be
like you and phrase it like blue tennis-shoe laces hanging from the rear-view
mirror. See?"
Here he stopped. Krupp had listened patiently, occasionally looking away
to restack his notes or puff on his cigar. "No," he said. "Do you have a
question. son?"
Emotionally wounded, Dex Fresser shook his head back and forth and gestured
around it as though tearing off a heavy layer of tar. While his companions
supported him, another SUBbie rose to take his place. She was of average
height, with terribly pale skin and a safety pin through her septum. She rose
like a zeppelin on power takeoff and began to read in a singsong voice from a
page covered with arithmetic.
"Mister Krupp, sir. Last year. According, to the Monoplex Monitor, you, I
mean the Megaversity Corporation ruling clique, spent ten thousand dollars on
legal fees for union-busting firms. Now. There are forty thousand students at.
American Megaversity. This means that on the average, you spent
four thousand
million dollars on legal fees for union-busting alone! How do you justify
that, when in this very city people have to pay for their own abortions?"
Krupp simply stared in her direction and took three long slow puffs on his
cigar without saying anything. Then he turned to the blackboard. "This
weather's not getting any better," he said, quickly drawing a rough outline of
the United States. "It's this low pressure center up here. See, the air coming
into it turns around counterclockwise because of the Coriolis effect. That
makes it pump cold air from Canada into our area. And we can't do squat about
it. It's a hell of a thing." He turned back to the audience. "Next question!"
The SUB wanted to erupt at this, but they were completely nonplussed and
hardly said anything. "I've taken too many questions from the
kill-babies-not-seals crowd," Krupp announced. He called on Ephraim Klein,
who had been waving his hand violently. "President Krupp, I think the
question of adherence to an inner Law is just a semantic smokescreen around
the real issue, which is neurological. Our brains have two hemispheres with
different functions. The left one handles the day-to-day thinking,
conventional logical thought, while the right one handles synthesis of
incoming information and subconsciously processes it to form conclusions about
what the basic decisions should be-- it converts experience into subconscious
awareness of basic patterns and cause-and-effect relationships and gives us
general direction and a sense of conscience. So this stuff about autonomy is
nothing more than an effort by neurologically ignorant metaphysicists to
develop, by groping around in the dark, an explanation for behavior patterns
rooted in the structure of the brain."
Krupp answered immediately. "So you mean to say that the right hemisphere is
the source of what I call the inner Law, and that rather than being a Law per
se it is merely a set of inclinations rooted in past experience which tells
the left hemisphere what it should do."
"That's right-- in advanced, conscious people. In primitive unconscious
bicameral people, it would verbally speak to the left hemisphere, coming as a
voice from nowhere in times of decision. The left hemisphere would be unable
to do otherwise. There would be no decision at all-- so you would have perfect
adherence to the Law of the right hemisphere voice, absolute autonomy, though
the voice would be attributed to gods or angels."
Krupp nodded all the way through this, squinting at Klein. "You're one of
those, eh?" he asked. "I've never been convinced by Jaynes' theory myself,
though he has some interesting points about metaphors. I don't think an
ignorant carpenter like Jesus had all that flawless theology pumped into the
left half of his brain by stray neural currents." He thought about it for
a moment. "Though it would be a lot quieter around here if everyone were
carrying his stereo around in his skull."
"Jesus," said Ephraim Klein, "you don't believe in God, do you? You?"
"Well, I don't want to spend too much time on this freshman material, uh--
what's your name? Ezekiel? Ephraim. But you ought to grapple sometime with the
fact that this materialistic monism of yours is self-refuting and thus totally
bankrupt. I guess it's attractive to someone who's just discovered he's an
intellectual-- sure was to me thirty years ago-- but sometime you've got to
stop boxing yourself in with this intellectual hubris."
Klein nearly rocketed from his chair and for a moment I said nothing. He was
bolt upright, supporting his weight on i one fist thrust down between his
thighs into the seat, chewing deeply on his lower lip and staring, to use a
Krupp ~ phrase, "like a coon on the runway." "Non sequitur! Ad hominem!" he
cried.
"I know, I know. Tell you what. Stick around and I'll listen to your Latin
afterward, we're losing our audience." Krupp began looking for a new
questioner. From the back of the hall came the sound of a fold-down seat
bounding back up into position, and we turned to make out the ragged figure of
Bert Nix.
"Krupp cuts a fart! The sphinxter cannot hold!" he bellowed hoarsely, and
sat back down again Krupp mainly ignored this, as his aides strode up the
aisle to show Mr. Nix where the exit was and turned his attention to the next
questioner, a tall redheaded SUBbie who accused Krupp of accepting bribes to
let wealthy idiots into the law school. Red added, "I keep asking you this
question, Septimius, and you've never answered it yet. When are you going to
pay some attention to my question?"
Krupp looked disgusted and puffed rapidly, staring at him coldly. Bert Nix
paused in the doorway to shout: "My journey is o'er rocks & Mountains, not in
pleasant vales; I must not sleep nor rest because of madness & dismay."
"Yeah," said Krupp, "and I give you the same answer every time, too. I didn't
do that. There's no evidence I did. What more can I say? I genuinely want to
satisfy you."
"You just keep slinging the same bullshit!" shouted the SUBbie, and slammed
back down into his seat.
Casimir Radon listened to these exchanges with consuming interest. This was
what he had dreamed of finding at college: small lectures on pure ideas from
the president of the university, with discussion afterward. That the SUBbies
had disrupted it with a pie-throwing made him sick; he had stared at them
through a haze of anger for the last part of the meeting. Had he been sitting
by the side door he could have tripped that bastard. Which would have been
good, because Sarah Jane Johnson was sitting there three rows in front of him,
totally unaware of his existence as usual.
Sarah's entrance, several minutes before the start of the lecture, had thrown
Casimir into a titanic intellectual struggle. He now had to decide whether
or not to say "hi" to her. After all, they had had a date, if you could call
stammering in the Megapub for two hours a date. Later he had realized how
dull it must have been for her, and was profoundly mortified. Now Sarah was
sitting just twenty feet away, and he hated to disrupt her thoughts by just
crashing in uninvited; better for her not to know he was there. But in case
she happened to notice him, and wondered why he hadn't said "hi," he made up a
story: he had come in late through the back doors.
He also wanted to ask Krupp a question, a dazzling and perceptive question
that would take fifteen minutes to ask, but he couldn't think of one. This
was regrettable, because Krupp was a man he wanted to know, and he needed to
impress him before making his sales pitch for the mass driver.
At the same time, he was working on a grandiose plan for gathering damaging
information on the university, but this seemed stupid; seen from this
lecture hall, American Megaversity looked pretty much the way it had in the
recruiting literature. He would continue with Project Spike until it gave him
satisfaction. Whether or not he released the information depended on what
happened at the Big U between now and then.
Sarah's voice sounded in one ear. "Casimir. Earth to Casimir. Come in, Casimir
Radon." Shocked and suddenly breathless, he sat up, looking astonished.
"Oh," he said casually. "Sarah. Hi. How're you doing?" Fine," she answered,
"didn't you see me?"
Eventually they went into the hallway, where S. S. Krupp was down to the
last inch of his cigar and having a complicated discussion with Ephraim
Klein. His aides stood to the sides brushing hairs off their suits, various
alien-looking philosophy majors listened intently and I leaned against a
nearby wall watching it all, "Well, why didn't you say so?" Krupp was saying.
"You're a Jaynesian and a materialistic monist. In which case you've got no
reason to believe anything you think, because anything you think is just
a predetermined neural event which can't be considered true or logical.
Self-refuting, son. Think about it."
"But now you've gotten off on a totally different argument!" cried Klein.
"Even if we presume dualism, you've got to admit that intellectual processes
reflect neural events in some way." "Well, sure."
"Right! And since the bicameral mind theory explains human behavior so well,
there's no reason, even if you are a dualist, to reject it."
"In some cases, okay," said Krupp, "but that doesn't support your original
proposition, which is that Kant was just trying to rationalize brain events
through some kind of semantic necromancy."
"Yes it does!"
"Hell no it doesn't."
"Yes it does!"
"No it doesn't. Sarah!" said Krupp warmly. He shook her hand, and the
philosophy majors, seeing that the intelligent part of the conversation was
done, vaporized. "Glad you could come tonight."
"Hello, President Krupp. I wish you'd do this more often."
"Wait a minute," yelled Klein, "I just figured out how to reconcile Western
religion and the bicameral mind."
"Well, take some notes quick, son, there's other people here, well get to it.
Who's your date, Sarah?"
"This is Casimir Radon," said Sarah proudly, as Casimir reflexively shoved out
his right hand.
"Well! That's fine," said Krupp. "That's two conversations I have to finish
now. If we bring Bud here along with us to keep things from getting out of
hand we ought to be safe."
"Look out. I'm not the diplomat you're hoping I am," I mumbled, not knowing
what I was expected to say.
"What say we go down to the Faculty Pub and have some brews? I'm buying."
Our party got quite a few stares in the Faculty Pub. The three students were
not even supposed to be in the place, but the bouncer wasn't very keen on
asking Mr. Krupp's guests to show their IDs. This place bore the same relation
to the Megapub as Canterbury Cathedral to a parking ramp. The walls were
covered with wood that looked five inches thick, the floor was bottomless
carpet and the tables were spotless slabs of rich solid wood. Enough armaments
were nailed to the walls to defend a small medieval castle, and ancient
portraits of the fat and pompous were interspersed with infinitely detailed
coats of arms. The President ordered a pitcher of Guinness and chose a booth
near the corner.
Ephraim had been talking the entire way. "So if you were the religious type,
you know, you could say that the right side of the brain is the 'spiritual'
side, the part that comes into contact with spiritual influences or God or
whatever-- it has a dimension that protrudes into the spiritual plane, if you
want to look at it that way-- while the left half is monistic and nonspiritual
and mechanical. We conscious unicamerals accept the spiritual information
coming in from the right side mixed in subtly with the natural inputs. But a
bicameral person would receive that information in the form of a voice from
nowhere which spoke with great authority. Now, that doesn't contradict the
biblical accounts of the prophets-- it merely gives us a new basis for their
interpretation by suggesting that their communication with the Deity was done
subconsciously by a particular hemisphere of the brain."
Krupp thought that was very good. Sarah and Casimir listened politely.
Eventually, though, the conversation worked its way around to the subject of
the mass driver.
"Tell me exactly why this university should fund your project there, Casimir,"
said Krupp, and watched expectantly.
"Well, it's a good idea."
"Why?"
"Because its relevant and we the people who do it will learn stuff from it."
"Like what?"
"Oh, electronics building things practical stuff."
"Can't they already learn that from doing conventional research under the
supervision of the faculty."
"Yeah, I guess they can."
"So that leaves only the rationale that it is relevant, which I don't deny but
I don't see why it's more relevant than a faculty research project."
"Well, mass drivers could be very important someday!"
Krupp shook his head. "Sure, I don't deny that. There are all kinds of
relevant things which could be very important someday. What I need to be
shown is how funding of your project would he consistent with the basic
mission of a great institution of higher learning. You see? We're talking
basic principles here."
Casimir had removed his glasses in the dim light, and his strangely
naked-looking eyes darted uncertainly around the tabletop. "Well"
"Aw, shit, it's obvious!" shouted Ephraim Klein, drawing looks from everyone
in the pub. "This university, let's face it, is for average people. The
smart people from around here go to the Ivy League, right? So American
Megaversity doesn't get many of the bright people the way, say, a Big Ten
university would. But there are some very bright people here, for whatever
reasons. They get frustrated in this environment because the university is
tailored for averagely bright types and there is very little provision for
the extra-talented. So in order to fulfill the basic mission of allowing
all corners to realize their full potential-- to avoid stultifying the best
minds here-- you have to make allowances for them, recognize their special
creativity by giving them more freedom and self-direction than the typical
student has. This is your chance to have something you can point to as an
example of the opportunities here for people of all levels of ability."
Krupp listened intently through this, lightly tapping the edge of a potato
chip on the table. When Klein finally stopped, he nodded for a while.
"Yep. Yeah, I'd say you have an excellent point there, Isaiah. Casimir, looks
as though you're going to get your funding." He raised an eyebrow.
Casimir stood up, yelled "Great!" and pumped Krupp's hand. "This is a great
investment. When this thing is done it will be the most incredible machine
you've ever seen. There's no end to what you can do with a mass driver."
There was a commotion behind Krupp, and suddenly, larger than life, standing
on the bench in the next booth down, Bert Nix had risen to his full bedraggled
height and was suspending a heavy broadsword (stolen from a suit of armor by
the restroom) over Krupp's head. "O fortunate Damocles, thy reign began and
ended with the same dinner!"
After Krupp saw who it was he turned back around without response. His two
aides staggered off their barstools across the room and charged over to
grab the sword from Bert Nix's hand. He had held it by the middle of the
blade, which made it seem considerably less threatening, but the aides didn't
necessarily see it this way and were not as gentle in showing Mr. Nix out as
they could have been. He was docile except for some cheerful obscenities; but
as he was dragged past a prominent painting, he pulled away and pointed to it.
"Don't you think we have the same nose?" he asked, and soon was out the door.
Krupp got up and brought the conversation to a quick close. After distributing
cigars to Ephraim and Casimir and me, he left. Finding ourselves in an
exhilarated mood and with what amounted to a free ticket to the Faculty Pub,
we stayed long enough to close it down.
Earlier, however, on his fifth trip to the men's room, Casimir stopped to look
at the plaque under the portrait to which Bert Nix had pointed. "WILBERFORCE
PERTINAX RUSHFORTH-GREATHOUSE, 1799-- 1862, BENEFACTOR, GREATHOUSE CHAPEL
AND ORGAN." Casimir tried to focus on the face. As a matter of fact, the
Roman nose did resemble Bert Nix's; they might be distant relatives. It was
queer that a derelict, who couldn't spend that much time in the Faculty Pub,
would notice this quickly enough to point it out. But Bert Nix's mind ran
along mysterious paths. Casimir retrieved the broadsword from where it had
fallen, and laughingly slapped it down on the bar as a deposit for the fourth
pitcher of Dark. The bartender regarded Casimir with mild alarm, and Casimir
considered, for a moment, carrying a sword all the time, a la Fred Fine. But
as he observed to us, why carry a sword when you own a mass driver?
"Casimir?"
"Mmmmm. Huh?"
"You asleep?"
"No."
"You want to talk?"
"Okay."
"Thanks for letting me sleep here."
"No problem. Anytime."
"Does this bother you?"
"You sleeping here? Nah."
"You seemed kind of bothered about something."
"No. It's really fine, Sarah. I don't care."
"If it'd make you feel better, I can go back and sleep in my room. I just
didn't feel like a half-hour elevator hassle, and my wing is likely to be
noisy."
"I know. All that barf on the floors, rowdy people, sticky beer crud all over
the place. I don't blame you. It's perfectly reasonable to stay at someone's
place at a time like this."
"I get the impression you have something you're not saying. Do you want to
talk about it?"
The pile of sheets and blankets that was Casimir moved around, and he leaned
up on one elbow and peered down at her. The light shining in from the opposite
tower made his wide eyes just barely visible. She knew something was wrong
with him, but she also knew better than to try to imagine what was going on
inside Casimir Radon's mind.
"Why should I have something on my mind?"
"Well, I don't see anything unusual about my staying here, but a lot of people
would, and you seemed uptight."
"Oh, you're talking about sex? Oh, no. No problem." His voice was tense and
hurried.
"So what's bothering you?"
For a while there was just ragged breathing from atop the bed, and then he
spoke again. "You're going to think this is stupid, because I know you're
a Women's Libber, but it really bothers me that you're on the floor in a
sleeping bag while I'm up here in a bed. That bothers me."
Sarah laughed. "Don't worry, Casimir. I'm not going to beat you up for it."
"Good. Let's trade places, then."
"If you insist." Within a few seconds they had traded places and Sarah was
up in a warm bed that smelled of mothballs and mildew. They lay there for an
hour.
"Sarah?"
"Huh?"
"I want to talk to you."
"What?"
"I lied. I want to sleep with you so bad it's killing me. Oh, Jeez. I love
you. A lot."
"Oh, damn. I knew it. I was afraid of this. I'm sorry."
"No, don't be. My fault. I'm really, really sorry."
"Should I leave? Do you want me out?"
"No. I want you to sleep with me," he said, as though this answer was obvious.
"How long have you been thinking about me this way?"
"Since we met the first time."
"Really? Casimir! Why? We didn't even know each other!"
"What does that have to do with it?" He sounded genuinely mystified.
"I think we've got a basic difference in the way we think about sex, Casimir."
She had forgotten how they were when it came to this sort of thing.
"What does that mean? Did you ever think about me that way?"
"Not really."
Casimir sucked in his breath and flopped back down.
"Now, look, don't take it that way. Casimir, I hardly know you. We've only had
one or two good conversations. Look, Casimir, I only think about sex every one
or two days-- it's not a big topic with me right now."
"Jeez. Are you okay? Did you have a bad experience?" "Don't put me on the
defensive. Casimir, our friendship has been just fine as it is. Why should I
fantasize about what a friendship might turn into, when the friendship is fine
as is? You've got to live in the real world, Casimir."
"What's wrong with me?"
The poor guy just did not understand at all. There was no way to help him;
Sarah went ahead and spoke her lines.
"Nothing's wrong with you. You're fine."
"Then what is the problem?"
"Look. I sleep with people because there's nothing wrong with them. I don't
fantasize about relationships that will never exist. We're fine as we are. Sex
would just mess it up. We have a good friendship, Casimir. Don't screw it up
by thinking unrealistically."
They sat in the dark for a while. Casimir was being open-minded, which was
good, but still had trouble catching on. "It's none of my business, but just
out of curiosity, do you like sex?"
"Definitely. It's a blast with the right person."
"I'm just not the right person, huh?"
"I've already answered that six times." She considered telling him about
herself and Dex Fresser in high school. In ways-- especially in appearance--
Casimir was similar to Dex. The thing with Dex was a perfect example of what
happened when a man got completely divorced from reality. But Sarah didn't
want the Dex story to get around, and she supposed that Casimir would be
horrified by this high school saga of sex and drugs.
"I think I'll do my laundry now, since I'm up," she said.
"I'll walk you home."
A few minutes later they emerged into a hall as bright as the interior of a
small sun. The dregs of a party in the Social Lounge examined them as they
awaited an elevator, and Sarah was bothered by what they were assuming. Maybe
it would boost Casimir's rep among his neighbors.
An elevator opened and fifty gallons of water poured into the lobby. Someone
had filled a garbage can with water, tilted it up on one corner just inside
the elevator, held it in place as the doors closed, and pulled his hand out at
the last minute so that it leaned against the inside of the doors. Not greatly
surprised, Sarah and Casimir stepped back to let the water swirl around their
feet, then threw the garbage can into the lobby and boarded the elevator.
"That's the nice thing about this time of day," said Casimir. "Easy to get
elevators."
As they made their way toward the Castle in the Air, they spoke mostly of
Casimir's mass driver. With the new funding and with the assistance of Virgil,
it was moving along quite well. Casimir repeatedly acknowledged his debt to
Ephraim for having done the talking.
They took an E Tower elevator up to the Castle in the Air. A nine-leaved
marijuana frond was scotch-taped over the number 13 on the elevator panel
so that it would light up symbolically when that floor was passed. In the
corridors of the Castle the Terrorists were still running wild and hurling
their custom Big Wheel Frisbees with great violence.
Casimir had never seen Sarah's room. He stood shyly outside as she walked into
the darkness. "The light?" he said. She switched on her table lamp.
"Oh." He entered uncertainly, swiveling his bottle-bottom glasses toward the
wall. Conscious of being in an illegally painted room, he shut the door, then
removed his glasses and let them hang around his neck on their safety cord.
Without them, Sarah thought he looked rather old, sensitive, and human. He
rubbed his stubble and blinked at the forest with a sort of awed amusement. By
now it was very detailed.
"Isotropic."
"You saw what?"
"Isotropic. This forest is isotropic It s the same in all directions. It
doesn't tend in any way. A real forest is anisotropic thicker on the bottom
thinner on the top. This doesn't grow in any direction it just is."
She sighed. "Whatever you like."
"Why? What's it for?"
"Well-- what's your mass driver for?"
"Sanity."
"You've got your mass driver. I've got this."
He looked at her in the same way he had been staring at the forest. "Wow," he
said, "I think I get it."
"Don't go overboard on this," she said, "but how would you like to attend
something dreadful called Fantasy Island Nite?"
--December--
So nervous was Ephraim Klein, so primed for flight or combat, that he barely
felt his suitcases in his hands as he carried them toward his room. What
awaited him? He had left a week ago for Thanksgiving vacation. He had waited
as long as he could-- but not long enough to outwait John Wesley Fenrick and
three of his ugly punker friends, who leered hungrily at him as he walked out.
The question was not whether a prank had been played, but how bad it was going
to be. Hyperventilating with anticipation, he stopped before the door. The
cracks all the way around its edges had been sealed with heavy grey duct tape.
This prank did not rely on surprise. He pressed his ear to the door, but all
he could hear was a familiar chunka-chunka-chunk. With great care he peeled
back a bit of tape.
Nothing poured out. Standing to the side, he unlocked the door with surgical
care. There was a cracking sound as the tape peeled away under his impetus.
Finally he kicked it fully open, waited for a moment, then stepped around to
look inside.
He could see nothing. He took another step and then, only then, was enveloped
in a cloud of rancid cheap cigar smoke that oozed out the doorway like a
moribund genie under the propulsion of the Go Big Red Fan.
Incandescently furious, he retreated to the bathroom and wet a T-shirt to put
over his face. Thus protected he strode squinting down the foggy hallway into
the lifeless room.
The only remaining possessions of John Wesley Fenrick's were the Go Big Red
Fan and most of a jumbo roll of foil. He had moved out of the room and then
covered his half of the room with the foil, then spread out on it what must
have been several hundred generic cigars-- it must have taken half an hour
just to light them. The cigars had all burned away to ash, which had been
whipped into a blizzard by the Go Big Red Fan on its slow creep across the
floor to Ephraim's side. The room now looked like Yakima after Mount Saint
Helens. The Fan had ground to a halt against a large potted plant of Ephraim's
and for the rest of the week had sat there chunk-ing mindlessly.
He checked a record. To his relief, the ash had not penetrated to the grooves.
It had penetrated everything else, though, and even the Rules had taken on a
brown parchmentlike tinge. Ephraim Klein took little comfort in the fact that
his ex-roommate had not broken any of them.
He cranked open the vent window, set the Go Big Red Fan into it, cleared ash
from his chair, and sat down to think.
Klein preferred to live a controlled life. He never liked to pull out all the
stops until the final chord. But Fenrick had forced him to turn revenge into a
major project and Klein did not plan to fail. He began to tidy his room, and
to unleash his imagination on John Wesley Fenrick.
"Sarah?"
"Huh?"
"Did I wake you up?"
"No. Hi."
"Let's talk."
"Sure." Sarah rolled over on her stomach and propped ~ herself up on her
elbows.
"I hope you're comfortable sleeping down there."
"Listen. Anyplace is more comfortable than my room when a party's going
on above it."
"I don't mind if you want to share a bed with me Hyacinth. My sister and I
slept together until I was eleven and she was twelve."
"Thanks. But I didn't decide to sleep down here because I don't like you,
Sarah."
"Well, that's nice. I guess it's a little small for two." There was a long
silence. Hyacinth sat up on her sleeping bag, her crossed legs stretching
out her nightgown to make a faint white diamond in the darkness of the room.
Then, soundlessly, she got up and climbed into bed with Sarah. Sarah slid
back against the wall to make room, and after much giggling, rolling around,
rearrangement of covers and careful placement of limbs they managed to find
comfortable positions.
"Too hot," said Hyacinth, and got up again. She opened the window and a cold
wind blew into the room. She scampered back and dove in next to Sarah.
"Comfy?" said Hyacinth.
"Yeah. Mmm. Very."
"Really?" said Hyacinth skeptically. "More than before? Not just physically.
You don't feel awkward, being tangled up with me like this?"
"Not really," said Sarah dreamily. "It's kind of pleasant. It's just, you
know, warm, and kind of comforting to have someone else around. I like you,
you like me, why should it be awkward?"
"Would it be any different if I told you I was a lesbian?" Sarah came wide
awake but did not move. With one eye she gazed into the darkness above the
soft white horizon of Hyacinth's shoulder, on which she had laid her head.
"And that I was hoping we could do other nice things to each other? If you
feel inspired to, that is." She gently, almost imperceptibly, stroked Sarah's
hair. Sarah's heart was pumping rhythmically.
"I wish you'd say something," said Hyacinth. "Are you not sure how you feel,
or are you paralyzed with terror?"
Sarah laughed softly and felt herself relaxing. "I'm pretty naive about this
kind of thing. I mean, I don't think about it a lot. I sort of thought you
might be. Is Lucy?"
"Yes. Nowadays we don't sleep together that much. Sarah, do you want me to
sleep on the floor?"
Sarah thought about it but not very seriously. The room was pleasantly cold now
and the closeness of her friend was something she had not felt in a very long
time. "Of course not. This is great. I haven't slept with anyone in a while--
a man, I mean. Sleeping with someone is one of my favorite things. But it's
different with men. Not quite as... sweet."
"That's for sure."
"Why don't you stay a while?"
"That'd be nice."
"Do you mind if we don't do anything?" At this they laughed loudly, and that
answered the question.
"But we are doing something you know" added Hyacinth later. "Your nose
is in my breast. You're stroking my shoulder. I'm afraid that all counts."
"Oh. Gosh. Does that make me a lesbian?"
"Oh, I don't know. I guess you're off to a promising start."
"Hmmm. Doesn't feel like being a lesbian."
Hyacinth squeezed Sarah tight. "Look, honey, don't worry about it. This is
just great as it is. I just wanted you to know the opportunity was there.
Okay?"
"Okay."
"Want to go to sleep?"
"Take it easy, what's your hurry?"
Last Night was the night of the blue towers. A week before, the towers had
glowed uniformly yellow as forty-two thousand students sat beneath their desk
lamps and studied for finals. The next night, blue had replaced yellow here
and there, as a few lucky ones, finished with their finals, switched on their
TVs. This night, all eight towers were studded with blue, and whole patches of
the Plex flickered in unison with the popular shows. The beer trucks were busy
all day long down at the access lot, rolling kegs up the ramps to the Brew
King in the Mall, whence they were dispersed in canvas carts and two-wheelers
and Radio Flyers to rooms and lounges all over the Plex. As night fell and
the last students came screaming in from their finals, suitcases full of dope
moved through the Main Entrance and were quickly fragmented and distributed
throughout the towers for quick combustion. By dinnertime the faucets ran
cold water only as thousands lined up by the shower stalls, and the Caf was a
desert as most students ate at restaurants or parties. After dark, spotlights
and lasers crisscrossed the walls as partying students shone them into other
towers, and when the Big Wheel sign blazed into life, bands of
Big-Wheel-worshiping Terrorists all over the Plex launched a commemorative
fireworks barrage that sent echoes crackling back and forth among the
towers like bumper pool balls, punctuating the roar of the warring stereos.
By 10:00 the parties were just warming up. At 10:30 the rumor circulated that
a special police squad sent by S. S. Krupp was touring the Plex to bust up
parties. At 11:06 a keg was thrown from A24N and exploded on the Turnpike,
backing up traffic for an hour with a twelve-car chain-reaction smashup. By
11:30 forty students had been admitted to the Infirmary with broken noses,
split cheeks and severe inebriation, and it was beginning to look as though
the official estimate of one death from overintoxication and one from accident
might be a little low. The Rape/Assault/Crisis Line handled a call every
fifteen minutes.
Precisely at 11:40:00 an unknown, uninvited, very clumsy student walked behind
John Wesley Fenrick's chair at the big E31E end-of-semester bash and tripped,
spilling a strawberry malt all over Fenrick's spiky blond hair.
John Wesley Fenrick was in the shower with very hot water spraying onto his
head to dissolve the sticky malt crud, dancing around loosely to a tune in
his head and playing the air guitar. He wondered whether the malt had been
the work of Ephraim Klein. This, however, was impossible; his new room and
number were unlisted and you couldn't follow people home in an elevator. The
only way for Klein to find him was by a freak of chance, or by bribing an
administration person with access to the computer-- very unlikely. Besides,
a malt on the head was a bush-league retaliation even for a quiet little
harpsichord-playing New Jersey fart like Klein, considering what Fenrick had
so brilliantly accomplished.
What made it even greater was that the administration had treated it like
a hilarious college prank, a "concrete expression of malfunction in the
cohabitant interaction, intended only as nonviolent emotional expression."
Though they were after him to pay Klein's cleaning bills, Fenrick's brother
was a lawyer and he knew they wouldn't push it in court. Even if they did,
shit, he was going to be pulling down forty K in six months! A small price for
triumph.
With a snarl of disgust, Fenrick dumped another dose of
honey-beer-aloe-grub-treebark shampoo on his hair, finding that the tenacious
malt substance still had not come off. What's in this crap? Fenrick thought.
Fuck up your stomach, for sure.
Throughout E Tower, scores of Ephraim Klein's friends sat in the great
shiny microwave bathrooms watching the Channel 25 Late Night Eyewitness
InstaAction InvestiNews. Even during the most ghastly stories this program
sounded like an encounter session among five recently canceled sitcom actors
and developmentally disabled hairdressers' models. The weather, well, it
was just as bad, but was relieved by its very bizarreness. The weatherman,
a buffoon who knew nothing about weather and didn't care, was named Marvin
DuZan the Weatherman and would broadcast in a negligee if it boosted ratings;
his other gimmick was to tell an abominable joke at the conclusion of each
forecast. After the devastating punchline was delivered, the picture of the
guffawing pseudometeorologist and his writhing colleagues would be replaced
by an animated short in which a crazy-looking bird tried to smash a tortoise
over the head with a sledgehammer. At the last moment the tortoise would
creep forward, causing the blow to rebound off his shell and crash back into
the cranium of the bird. The bird would then assume a glazed expression and
vibrate around in circles, much like a chair in Klein's room during the
"Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor," finally to collapse at the feet of the
smiling turtle, who would then peer slyly at the audience and wiggle his
eyebrow ridges.
During Marvin DuZan's forecast on Last Night, Ephraim Klein was standing
outside his ex-roomie's shower stall, watching a portable TV and squirting
Hyper Stik brand Humonga-Glue into the latch of the stall's door. He had
turned down the volume, of course, and it seemed just as well, since from the
reactions of the InvestiNews Strike Force (and the cameramen, who were always
visible on the high-tech News Nexus set) it appeared that the joke tonight was
a real turd. As the camera zoomed in on the goonishly beaming face of Marvin
DuZan, Ephraim Klein's grip on the handles of two nearby urinals tightened
and his heart beat wildly, as did the grips and the hearts of a small army of
friends and hastily recruited deputies in many other E Tower bathrooms. Bird
and Tortoise appeared, the hammer was brandished, and smash!
As the hammer rebounded on the bird's head, scores of toilets throughout
E Tower were flushed, causing a vacuum so sharp that pipes bent and tore
and snapped and cold water ceased to flow. There was a short pause, and
then a bloodcurdling scream emanated from Fenrick's shower stall as clouds
of live steam burst out the top. After some fruitless handle-yanking and
Plexiglass-banging, the steam was followed by Fenrick himself, who fell
ungainly to the floor with a crisp splat and shook his head in pain as Ephraim
Klein escaped with his TV. In his haste Fenrick had lacerated his scalp on the
steel showerhead, and as he pawed at his face to clear away suds and blood he
was distantly conscious of a cold draft that irritated his parboiled skin, and
a familiar chunka-chunka-chunk that could be heard above the sounds of gasping
pipes and white water. Finally prying one eye open, he looked into the wind to
see it: the Go Big Red Fan, complacently revolving in front of his stall, set
on HI and still somewhat gray with cigar ash. Unfortunately for John Wesley
Fenrick, he did not soon enough see the puddle of water which surrounded
him, and which was rapidly expanding toward The base of the old and poorly
insulated Fan.
This was also quite an evening for E17S. Ever since joining the Terrorists as
the Flame Squad Faction, this all-male wing had suffered from the stigma of
being mere copies of the Big Wheel Men, Cowboys and Droogs of E13. Tonight
that was to change. The Christmas tree had been purchased three weeks ago,
left in a shower until the fireproofing compound was washed away, and hung
over a hot-air vent in the storage room; it was now a lovely shade of
incendiary brown. They took it up to E3 1, the top floor, seized an elevator,
and stuffed the tree inside. Someone pressed all the buttons for floors 30
through 6 while others squirted lighter fluid over the tree's dessicated
boughs.
Only one match was required. The door slid shut just as the smoke and flames
began to billow forth, and with a cheer and a yell the Flame Squad Faction
began to celebrate.
Twenty-four floors below, Virgil and I were having a few slow ones in my
suite. I had no time for partying because I was preparing for a long drive
home to Atlanta. Virgil happened to be wandering the Plex that night, looking
in on various people, and had paused for a while at my place. Things were
pretty quiet-- as they generally had been since John Wesley Fenrick had left--
and except for the insistent and inevitable bass beat, the wing was peaceful.
The fire alarm rang just before midnight. We cursed fluently and looked out
my door to see what was up. As faculty-in-residence I didn't have to scurry
out for every bogus fire drill, but it seemed prudent to check for smoke.
The smoke was heavy when we opened the door, and we smelled the filthy odor
of burning plastic. The source of the flame was near my room: one of the
elevators, which had automatically stopped and opened once the fire alarm was
triggered. I put a rag over my mouth and headed for the fire hose down the
hall. Meanwhile Virgil prepared to soak some towels in my sink.
Neither of us got any water. My fire hose valve just sucked air and howled.
"God Almighty," Virgil called through the smoke. "Somebody pulled a Big
Flush." He came out and joined the people running for the fire stairs. "No
'vators during fires so Ill have to take the stairs. I've got to get the
parallel pipe system working."
"The what?"
"Parallel pipes," said Virgil, skipping into the stairwell. "Hang on! Find a
keg! The architects weren't totally stupid!" And he was gone down the stairs.
I locked my door in case of looting and went off in search of a keg.
Naturally there was a superabundance that night, and with some help from the
too-drunk-to-be-scared owners I hauled it to the lobby and began to pump
clouds of generic light into the flaming Christmas tree.
Casimir Radon was in Sharon's lab, washing out a beaker. This was merely the
first step of the Project Spike glassware procedure, which involved attack by
two different alcohols and three different concentrated acid mixtures, but he
was in no hurry. For him Christmas had started the day before. With Virgil's
help he could get into this lab throughout the vacation, and that meant plenty
of time to work on Project Spike, build the mass driver and suffer as he
thought about Sarah.
He was annoyed but not exasperated when the water stopped flowing. There was a
gulp in the tapstream, followed by a hefty KLONK as the faucet handle jerked
itself from his grasp. The flow of water stopped, and an ominous gurgling,
sucking noise came from the faucet, like an entire municipal water system
flushing its last. He listened as the symphony of hydraulic sound effects grew
and spread to the dozens of pipes lining the lab's ceiling, the knocks and
gurgles and hisses weaving together as though the pipes were having a wild
Christmas party of their own. But Casimir was tired, and fairly absentminded
to boot, and he shrugged it off as yet another example of the infinite variety
of building and design defects in the Plex. The distilled water tap still
worked, so he used it. Despite the drudgery of the task and his problems with
Sarah, Casimir wore a little smile on his long unshaven face. Project Spike
had worked.
He had been sampling Cafeteria food for three weeks, and until tonight had
come up with nothing. Turkey Quiche, Beef Pot Pies, Lefto Lasagne, Estonian
Pasties, and even Deep-Fried Chicken Livers had drawn blanks, and Casimir had
begun to wonder whether it was a waste of time. Then came Savory Meatloaf
Night, an event which occurred every three weeks or so; despite the efforts
of advanced minds such as Virgil's, no one had ever discerned any reliable
pattern which might predict when this dish was to be served. Today, of course,
the last of the semester, Savory Meatloaf Night had struck and Casimir had
craftily smuggled a slice out in his sock (the Cafeteria exit guards could
afford to take it easy on Savory Meatloaf Night).
Not more than fifteen minutes ago, as he had been irradiating the next batch
of rat poison, the computer terminal had zipped into life with the results
of the analysis: high levels of Carbon- 14! There were rats in the meatloaf!
That was a triumph for Casimir. It seemed likely to be a secret triumph,
though. Sarah would never understand why he was doing this. Casimir wasn't
even sure he understood it himself. S. S. Krupp had funded his mass driver,
so why should he wish to damage the university now? He suspected that Project
Spike was simply a challenge, an opportunity to prove that he was clever
and self-sufficient in a sea of idiocy. He had accomplished that, but as a
political tactic it was still pretty dumb. Sarah would certainly think so.
Sarah had also thought it was dumb when he had decided to work in the lab all
night instead of going to Fantasy Island Nite. She was right on that issue
too, perhaps, but Casimir loathed parties of all sorts and would use any
excuse to avoid one. Hence he was here on the bottom of the Plex, washing out
rat-liver scum, while she was far above, dancing in the clown costume she had
shown him-- probably having a wonderful time as handsome Terrorists salivated
on her.
He observed he was leaning on the counter staring at the wall as though it
were a screen beaming him live coverage of Sarah at the party. Maybe he would
leave now, retaining a lab coat as a costume, and go up and surprise Sarah.
Meanwhile water was squirting out of the wall, forcing its way through the
cracks between the panels, running out from under the baseboards and trickling
presence of a TUG deep-cover mole in the SUB!
Meanwhile, question time went on down below. As was his custom, Krupp called
on two people with serious questions before resorting to the SUB. Eventually
he did so, looking carefully through that section and stabbing his finger at
its middle.
By SUB custom, any call for a question was communal property and was
distributed by consensus to a member of the group. This time, Dexter Fresser,
Sarah's hometown ex-beau, number 2 person in the SUB and its chief political
theorist, got the nod. Shaking his head, he pushed himself up in his seat
until he could see Krupp's face hovering malevolently above the dome of the
next person's bandanna. He took a deep breath, preparing for intellectual
combat, and began.
"You were talking about autonomy. Well, then you were talking about Greek
words of roots. I want to talk about Greek too because we have our roots
in Greece, just like, you know, our words do-- that is, most of us do, our
culture does, even if our ethnicity doesn't. But Rome was much, much more
powerful than Greece, and that was after most of the history of the human
race, which we don't know anything about. And you know in Greece they had
gayness all over the place. I'm saying that nice and loud even though you hate
it, but even though. uh, you know, fascist? But you can't keep me from saying
it. Did you ever think about the concentration camps? How all those people
were killed by fascists? And also in Haiti. which we annexed in 1904. And did
you ever 1 think about the socialist revolution in France that was crushed
by D-Day because the socialists were fighting off the Nazis single-handedly.
Where's the good in that? Bela Lugosi was ugly, but he had a great mind. I
mean, some of the greatest works of art were done by Satan-worshipers like
Shakespeare and Michelangelo! And the next time your car throws a rod on I-90
between Presho and Kennebec because you lost your dipstick you should think,
even if it is a hundred and ten in the shade forty-four Celsius and there are
red winged blackbirds coming at you like Bell AH-64s or something. Put the
goddamn zucchini in later next time and it won't get so mushy! I know this is
strong and direct and undiplomatical, but this is real life and I can't be
like you and phrase it like blue tennis-shoe laces hanging from the rear-view
mirror. See?"
Here he stopped. Krupp had listened patiently, occasionally looking away
to restack his notes or puff on his cigar. "No," he said. "Do you have a
question. son?"
Emotionally wounded, Dex Fresser shook his head back and forth and gestured
around it as though tearing off a heavy layer of tar. While his companions
supported him, another SUBbie rose to take his place. She was of average
height, with terribly pale skin and a safety pin through her septum. She rose
like a zeppelin on power takeoff and began to read in a singsong voice from a
page covered with arithmetic.
"Mister Krupp, sir. Last year. According, to the Monoplex Monitor, you, I
mean the Megaversity Corporation ruling clique, spent ten thousand dollars on
legal fees for union-busting firms. Now. There are forty thousand students at.
American Megaversity. This means that on the average, you spent
four thousand
million dollars on legal fees for union-busting alone! How do you justify
that, when in this very city people have to pay for their own abortions?"
Krupp simply stared in her direction and took three long slow puffs on his
cigar without saying anything. Then he turned to the blackboard. "This
weather's not getting any better," he said, quickly drawing a rough outline of
the United States. "It's this low pressure center up here. See, the air coming
into it turns around counterclockwise because of the Coriolis effect. That
makes it pump cold air from Canada into our area. And we can't do squat about
it. It's a hell of a thing." He turned back to the audience. "Next question!"
The SUB wanted to erupt at this, but they were completely nonplussed and
hardly said anything. "I've taken too many questions from the
kill-babies-not-seals crowd," Krupp announced. He called on Ephraim Klein,
who had been waving his hand violently. "President Krupp, I think the
question of adherence to an inner Law is just a semantic smokescreen around
the real issue, which is neurological. Our brains have two hemispheres with
different functions. The left one handles the day-to-day thinking,
conventional logical thought, while the right one handles synthesis of
incoming information and subconsciously processes it to form conclusions about
what the basic decisions should be-- it converts experience into subconscious
awareness of basic patterns and cause-and-effect relationships and gives us
general direction and a sense of conscience. So this stuff about autonomy is
nothing more than an effort by neurologically ignorant metaphysicists to
develop, by groping around in the dark, an explanation for behavior patterns
rooted in the structure of the brain."
Krupp answered immediately. "So you mean to say that the right hemisphere is
the source of what I call the inner Law, and that rather than being a Law per
se it is merely a set of inclinations rooted in past experience which tells
the left hemisphere what it should do."
"That's right-- in advanced, conscious people. In primitive unconscious
bicameral people, it would verbally speak to the left hemisphere, coming as a
voice from nowhere in times of decision. The left hemisphere would be unable
to do otherwise. There would be no decision at all-- so you would have perfect
adherence to the Law of the right hemisphere voice, absolute autonomy, though
the voice would be attributed to gods or angels."
Krupp nodded all the way through this, squinting at Klein. "You're one of
those, eh?" he asked. "I've never been convinced by Jaynes' theory myself,
though he has some interesting points about metaphors. I don't think an
ignorant carpenter like Jesus had all that flawless theology pumped into the
left half of his brain by stray neural currents." He thought about it for
a moment. "Though it would be a lot quieter around here if everyone were
carrying his stereo around in his skull."
"Jesus," said Ephraim Klein, "you don't believe in God, do you? You?"
"Well, I don't want to spend too much time on this freshman material, uh--
what's your name? Ezekiel? Ephraim. But you ought to grapple sometime with the
fact that this materialistic monism of yours is self-refuting and thus totally
bankrupt. I guess it's attractive to someone who's just discovered he's an
intellectual-- sure was to me thirty years ago-- but sometime you've got to
stop boxing yourself in with this intellectual hubris."
Klein nearly rocketed from his chair and for a moment I said nothing. He was
bolt upright, supporting his weight on i one fist thrust down between his
thighs into the seat, chewing deeply on his lower lip and staring, to use a
Krupp ~ phrase, "like a coon on the runway." "Non sequitur! Ad hominem!" he
cried.
"I know, I know. Tell you what. Stick around and I'll listen to your Latin
afterward, we're losing our audience." Krupp began looking for a new
questioner. From the back of the hall came the sound of a fold-down seat
bounding back up into position, and we turned to make out the ragged figure of
Bert Nix.
"Krupp cuts a fart! The sphinxter cannot hold!" he bellowed hoarsely, and
sat back down again Krupp mainly ignored this, as his aides strode up the
aisle to show Mr. Nix where the exit was and turned his attention to the next
questioner, a tall redheaded SUBbie who accused Krupp of accepting bribes to
let wealthy idiots into the law school. Red added, "I keep asking you this
question, Septimius, and you've never answered it yet. When are you going to
pay some attention to my question?"
Krupp looked disgusted and puffed rapidly, staring at him coldly. Bert Nix
paused in the doorway to shout: "My journey is o'er rocks & Mountains, not in
pleasant vales; I must not sleep nor rest because of madness & dismay."
"Yeah," said Krupp, "and I give you the same answer every time, too. I didn't
do that. There's no evidence I did. What more can I say? I genuinely want to
satisfy you."
"You just keep slinging the same bullshit!" shouted the SUBbie, and slammed
back down into his seat.
Casimir Radon listened to these exchanges with consuming interest. This was
what he had dreamed of finding at college: small lectures on pure ideas from
the president of the university, with discussion afterward. That the SUBbies
had disrupted it with a pie-throwing made him sick; he had stared at them
through a haze of anger for the last part of the meeting. Had he been sitting
by the side door he could have tripped that bastard. Which would have been
good, because Sarah Jane Johnson was sitting there three rows in front of him,
totally unaware of his existence as usual.
Sarah's entrance, several minutes before the start of the lecture, had thrown
Casimir into a titanic intellectual struggle. He now had to decide whether
or not to say "hi" to her. After all, they had had a date, if you could call
stammering in the Megapub for two hours a date. Later he had realized how
dull it must have been for her, and was profoundly mortified. Now Sarah was
sitting just twenty feet away, and he hated to disrupt her thoughts by just
crashing in uninvited; better for her not to know he was there. But in case
she happened to notice him, and wondered why he hadn't said "hi," he made up a
story: he had come in late through the back doors.
He also wanted to ask Krupp a question, a dazzling and perceptive question
that would take fifteen minutes to ask, but he couldn't think of one. This
was regrettable, because Krupp was a man he wanted to know, and he needed to
impress him before making his sales pitch for the mass driver.
At the same time, he was working on a grandiose plan for gathering damaging
information on the university, but this seemed stupid; seen from this
lecture hall, American Megaversity looked pretty much the way it had in the
recruiting literature. He would continue with Project Spike until it gave him
satisfaction. Whether or not he released the information depended on what
happened at the Big U between now and then.
Sarah's voice sounded in one ear. "Casimir. Earth to Casimir. Come in, Casimir
Radon." Shocked and suddenly breathless, he sat up, looking astonished.
"Oh," he said casually. "Sarah. Hi. How're you doing?" Fine," she answered,
"didn't you see me?"
Eventually they went into the hallway, where S. S. Krupp was down to the
last inch of his cigar and having a complicated discussion with Ephraim
Klein. His aides stood to the sides brushing hairs off their suits, various
alien-looking philosophy majors listened intently and I leaned against a
nearby wall watching it all, "Well, why didn't you say so?" Krupp was saying.
"You're a Jaynesian and a materialistic monist. In which case you've got no
reason to believe anything you think, because anything you think is just
a predetermined neural event which can't be considered true or logical.
Self-refuting, son. Think about it."
"But now you've gotten off on a totally different argument!" cried Klein.
"Even if we presume dualism, you've got to admit that intellectual processes
reflect neural events in some way." "Well, sure."
"Right! And since the bicameral mind theory explains human behavior so well,
there's no reason, even if you are a dualist, to reject it."
"In some cases, okay," said Krupp, "but that doesn't support your original
proposition, which is that Kant was just trying to rationalize brain events
through some kind of semantic necromancy."
"Yes it does!"
"Hell no it doesn't."
"Yes it does!"
"No it doesn't. Sarah!" said Krupp warmly. He shook her hand, and the
philosophy majors, seeing that the intelligent part of the conversation was
done, vaporized. "Glad you could come tonight."
"Hello, President Krupp. I wish you'd do this more often."
"Wait a minute," yelled Klein, "I just figured out how to reconcile Western
religion and the bicameral mind."
"Well, take some notes quick, son, there's other people here, well get to it.
Who's your date, Sarah?"
"This is Casimir Radon," said Sarah proudly, as Casimir reflexively shoved out
his right hand.
"Well! That's fine," said Krupp. "That's two conversations I have to finish
now. If we bring Bud here along with us to keep things from getting out of
hand we ought to be safe."
"Look out. I'm not the diplomat you're hoping I am," I mumbled, not knowing
what I was expected to say.
"What say we go down to the Faculty Pub and have some brews? I'm buying."
Our party got quite a few stares in the Faculty Pub. The three students were
not even supposed to be in the place, but the bouncer wasn't very keen on
asking Mr. Krupp's guests to show their IDs. This place bore the same relation
to the Megapub as Canterbury Cathedral to a parking ramp. The walls were
covered with wood that looked five inches thick, the floor was bottomless
carpet and the tables were spotless slabs of rich solid wood. Enough armaments
were nailed to the walls to defend a small medieval castle, and ancient
portraits of the fat and pompous were interspersed with infinitely detailed
coats of arms. The President ordered a pitcher of Guinness and chose a booth
near the corner.
Ephraim had been talking the entire way. "So if you were the religious type,
you know, you could say that the right side of the brain is the 'spiritual'
side, the part that comes into contact with spiritual influences or God or
whatever-- it has a dimension that protrudes into the spiritual plane, if you
want to look at it that way-- while the left half is monistic and nonspiritual
and mechanical. We conscious unicamerals accept the spiritual information
coming in from the right side mixed in subtly with the natural inputs. But a
bicameral person would receive that information in the form of a voice from
nowhere which spoke with great authority. Now, that doesn't contradict the
biblical accounts of the prophets-- it merely gives us a new basis for their
interpretation by suggesting that their communication with the Deity was done
subconsciously by a particular hemisphere of the brain."
Krupp thought that was very good. Sarah and Casimir listened politely.
Eventually, though, the conversation worked its way around to the subject of
the mass driver.
"Tell me exactly why this university should fund your project there, Casimir,"
said Krupp, and watched expectantly.
"Well, it's a good idea."
"Why?"
"Because its relevant and we the people who do it will learn stuff from it."
"Like what?"
"Oh, electronics building things practical stuff."
"Can't they already learn that from doing conventional research under the
supervision of the faculty."
"Yeah, I guess they can."
"So that leaves only the rationale that it is relevant, which I don't deny but
I don't see why it's more relevant than a faculty research project."
"Well, mass drivers could be very important someday!"
Krupp shook his head. "Sure, I don't deny that. There are all kinds of
relevant things which could be very important someday. What I need to be
shown is how funding of your project would he consistent with the basic
mission of a great institution of higher learning. You see? We're talking
basic principles here."
Casimir had removed his glasses in the dim light, and his strangely
naked-looking eyes darted uncertainly around the tabletop. "Well"
"Aw, shit, it's obvious!" shouted Ephraim Klein, drawing looks from everyone
in the pub. "This university, let's face it, is for average people. The
smart people from around here go to the Ivy League, right? So American
Megaversity doesn't get many of the bright people the way, say, a Big Ten
university would. But there are some very bright people here, for whatever
reasons. They get frustrated in this environment because the university is
tailored for averagely bright types and there is very little provision for
the extra-talented. So in order to fulfill the basic mission of allowing
all corners to realize their full potential-- to avoid stultifying the best
minds here-- you have to make allowances for them, recognize their special
creativity by giving them more freedom and self-direction than the typical
student has. This is your chance to have something you can point to as an
example of the opportunities here for people of all levels of ability."
Krupp listened intently through this, lightly tapping the edge of a potato
chip on the table. When Klein finally stopped, he nodded for a while.
"Yep. Yeah, I'd say you have an excellent point there, Isaiah. Casimir, looks
as though you're going to get your funding." He raised an eyebrow.
Casimir stood up, yelled "Great!" and pumped Krupp's hand. "This is a great
investment. When this thing is done it will be the most incredible machine
you've ever seen. There's no end to what you can do with a mass driver."
There was a commotion behind Krupp, and suddenly, larger than life, standing
on the bench in the next booth down, Bert Nix had risen to his full bedraggled
height and was suspending a heavy broadsword (stolen from a suit of armor by
the restroom) over Krupp's head. "O fortunate Damocles, thy reign began and
ended with the same dinner!"
After Krupp saw who it was he turned back around without response. His two
aides staggered off their barstools across the room and charged over to
grab the sword from Bert Nix's hand. He had held it by the middle of the
blade, which made it seem considerably less threatening, but the aides didn't
necessarily see it this way and were not as gentle in showing Mr. Nix out as
they could have been. He was docile except for some cheerful obscenities; but
as he was dragged past a prominent painting, he pulled away and pointed to it.
"Don't you think we have the same nose?" he asked, and soon was out the door.
Krupp got up and brought the conversation to a quick close. After distributing
cigars to Ephraim and Casimir and me, he left. Finding ourselves in an
exhilarated mood and with what amounted to a free ticket to the Faculty Pub,
we stayed long enough to close it down.
Earlier, however, on his fifth trip to the men's room, Casimir stopped to look
at the plaque under the portrait to which Bert Nix had pointed. "WILBERFORCE
PERTINAX RUSHFORTH-GREATHOUSE, 1799-- 1862, BENEFACTOR, GREATHOUSE CHAPEL
AND ORGAN." Casimir tried to focus on the face. As a matter of fact, the
Roman nose did resemble Bert Nix's; they might be distant relatives. It was
queer that a derelict, who couldn't spend that much time in the Faculty Pub,
would notice this quickly enough to point it out. But Bert Nix's mind ran
along mysterious paths. Casimir retrieved the broadsword from where it had
fallen, and laughingly slapped it down on the bar as a deposit for the fourth
pitcher of Dark. The bartender regarded Casimir with mild alarm, and Casimir
considered, for a moment, carrying a sword all the time, a la Fred Fine. But
as he observed to us, why carry a sword when you own a mass driver?
"Casimir?"
"Mmmmm. Huh?"
"You asleep?"
"No."
"You want to talk?"
"Okay."
"Thanks for letting me sleep here."
"No problem. Anytime."
"Does this bother you?"
"You sleeping here? Nah."
"You seemed kind of bothered about something."
"No. It's really fine, Sarah. I don't care."
"If it'd make you feel better, I can go back and sleep in my room. I just
didn't feel like a half-hour elevator hassle, and my wing is likely to be
noisy."
"I know. All that barf on the floors, rowdy people, sticky beer crud all over
the place. I don't blame you. It's perfectly reasonable to stay at someone's
place at a time like this."
"I get the impression you have something you're not saying. Do you want to
talk about it?"
The pile of sheets and blankets that was Casimir moved around, and he leaned
up on one elbow and peered down at her. The light shining in from the opposite
tower made his wide eyes just barely visible. She knew something was wrong
with him, but she also knew better than to try to imagine what was going on
inside Casimir Radon's mind.
"Why should I have something on my mind?"
"Well, I don't see anything unusual about my staying here, but a lot of people
would, and you seemed uptight."
"Oh, you're talking about sex? Oh, no. No problem." His voice was tense and
hurried.
"So what's bothering you?"
For a while there was just ragged breathing from atop the bed, and then he
spoke again. "You're going to think this is stupid, because I know you're
a Women's Libber, but it really bothers me that you're on the floor in a
sleeping bag while I'm up here in a bed. That bothers me."
Sarah laughed. "Don't worry, Casimir. I'm not going to beat you up for it."
"Good. Let's trade places, then."
"If you insist." Within a few seconds they had traded places and Sarah was
up in a warm bed that smelled of mothballs and mildew. They lay there for an
hour.
"Sarah?"
"Huh?"
"I want to talk to you."
"What?"
"I lied. I want to sleep with you so bad it's killing me. Oh, Jeez. I love
you. A lot."
"Oh, damn. I knew it. I was afraid of this. I'm sorry."
"No, don't be. My fault. I'm really, really sorry."
"Should I leave? Do you want me out?"
"No. I want you to sleep with me," he said, as though this answer was obvious.
"How long have you been thinking about me this way?"
"Since we met the first time."
"Really? Casimir! Why? We didn't even know each other!"
"What does that have to do with it?" He sounded genuinely mystified.
"I think we've got a basic difference in the way we think about sex, Casimir."
She had forgotten how they were when it came to this sort of thing.
"What does that mean? Did you ever think about me that way?"
"Not really."
Casimir sucked in his breath and flopped back down.
"Now, look, don't take it that way. Casimir, I hardly know you. We've only had
one or two good conversations. Look, Casimir, I only think about sex every one
or two days-- it's not a big topic with me right now."
"Jeez. Are you okay? Did you have a bad experience?" "Don't put me on the
defensive. Casimir, our friendship has been just fine as it is. Why should I
fantasize about what a friendship might turn into, when the friendship is fine
as is? You've got to live in the real world, Casimir."
"What's wrong with me?"
The poor guy just did not understand at all. There was no way to help him;
Sarah went ahead and spoke her lines.
"Nothing's wrong with you. You're fine."
"Then what is the problem?"
"Look. I sleep with people because there's nothing wrong with them. I don't
fantasize about relationships that will never exist. We're fine as we are. Sex
would just mess it up. We have a good friendship, Casimir. Don't screw it up
by thinking unrealistically."
They sat in the dark for a while. Casimir was being open-minded, which was
good, but still had trouble catching on. "It's none of my business, but just
out of curiosity, do you like sex?"
"Definitely. It's a blast with the right person."
"I'm just not the right person, huh?"
"I've already answered that six times." She considered telling him about
herself and Dex Fresser in high school. In ways-- especially in appearance--
Casimir was similar to Dex. The thing with Dex was a perfect example of what
happened when a man got completely divorced from reality. But Sarah didn't
want the Dex story to get around, and she supposed that Casimir would be
horrified by this high school saga of sex and drugs.
"I think I'll do my laundry now, since I'm up," she said.
"I'll walk you home."
A few minutes later they emerged into a hall as bright as the interior of a
small sun. The dregs of a party in the Social Lounge examined them as they
awaited an elevator, and Sarah was bothered by what they were assuming. Maybe
it would boost Casimir's rep among his neighbors.
An elevator opened and fifty gallons of water poured into the lobby. Someone
had filled a garbage can with water, tilted it up on one corner just inside
the elevator, held it in place as the doors closed, and pulled his hand out at
the last minute so that it leaned against the inside of the doors. Not greatly
surprised, Sarah and Casimir stepped back to let the water swirl around their
feet, then threw the garbage can into the lobby and boarded the elevator.
"That's the nice thing about this time of day," said Casimir. "Easy to get
elevators."
As they made their way toward the Castle in the Air, they spoke mostly of
Casimir's mass driver. With the new funding and with the assistance of Virgil,
it was moving along quite well. Casimir repeatedly acknowledged his debt to
Ephraim for having done the talking.
They took an E Tower elevator up to the Castle in the Air. A nine-leaved
marijuana frond was scotch-taped over the number 13 on the elevator panel
so that it would light up symbolically when that floor was passed. In the
corridors of the Castle the Terrorists were still running wild and hurling
their custom Big Wheel Frisbees with great violence.
Casimir had never seen Sarah's room. He stood shyly outside as she walked into
the darkness. "The light?" he said. She switched on her table lamp.
"Oh." He entered uncertainly, swiveling his bottle-bottom glasses toward the
wall. Conscious of being in an illegally painted room, he shut the door, then
removed his glasses and let them hang around his neck on their safety cord.
Without them, Sarah thought he looked rather old, sensitive, and human. He
rubbed his stubble and blinked at the forest with a sort of awed amusement. By
now it was very detailed.
"Isotropic."
"You saw what?"
"Isotropic. This forest is isotropic It s the same in all directions. It
doesn't tend in any way. A real forest is anisotropic thicker on the bottom
thinner on the top. This doesn't grow in any direction it just is."
She sighed. "Whatever you like."
"Why? What's it for?"
"Well-- what's your mass driver for?"
"Sanity."
"You've got your mass driver. I've got this."
He looked at her in the same way he had been staring at the forest. "Wow," he
said, "I think I get it."
"Don't go overboard on this," she said, "but how would you like to attend
something dreadful called Fantasy Island Nite?"
--December--
So nervous was Ephraim Klein, so primed for flight or combat, that he barely
felt his suitcases in his hands as he carried them toward his room. What
awaited him? He had left a week ago for Thanksgiving vacation. He had waited
as long as he could-- but not long enough to outwait John Wesley Fenrick and
three of his ugly punker friends, who leered hungrily at him as he walked out.
The question was not whether a prank had been played, but how bad it was going
to be. Hyperventilating with anticipation, he stopped before the door. The
cracks all the way around its edges had been sealed with heavy grey duct tape.
This prank did not rely on surprise. He pressed his ear to the door, but all
he could hear was a familiar chunka-chunka-chunk. With great care he peeled
back a bit of tape.
Nothing poured out. Standing to the side, he unlocked the door with surgical
care. There was a cracking sound as the tape peeled away under his impetus.
Finally he kicked it fully open, waited for a moment, then stepped around to
look inside.
He could see nothing. He took another step and then, only then, was enveloped
in a cloud of rancid cheap cigar smoke that oozed out the doorway like a
moribund genie under the propulsion of the Go Big Red Fan.
Incandescently furious, he retreated to the bathroom and wet a T-shirt to put
over his face. Thus protected he strode squinting down the foggy hallway into
the lifeless room.
The only remaining possessions of John Wesley Fenrick's were the Go Big Red
Fan and most of a jumbo roll of foil. He had moved out of the room and then
covered his half of the room with the foil, then spread out on it what must
have been several hundred generic cigars-- it must have taken half an hour
just to light them. The cigars had all burned away to ash, which had been
whipped into a blizzard by the Go Big Red Fan on its slow creep across the
floor to Ephraim's side. The room now looked like Yakima after Mount Saint
Helens. The Fan had ground to a halt against a large potted plant of Ephraim's
and for the rest of the week had sat there chunk-ing mindlessly.
He checked a record. To his relief, the ash had not penetrated to the grooves.
It had penetrated everything else, though, and even the Rules had taken on a
brown parchmentlike tinge. Ephraim Klein took little comfort in the fact that
his ex-roommate had not broken any of them.
He cranked open the vent window, set the Go Big Red Fan into it, cleared ash
from his chair, and sat down to think.
Klein preferred to live a controlled life. He never liked to pull out all the
stops until the final chord. But Fenrick had forced him to turn revenge into a
major project and Klein did not plan to fail. He began to tidy his room, and
to unleash his imagination on John Wesley Fenrick.
"Sarah?"
"Huh?"
"Did I wake you up?"
"No. Hi."
"Let's talk."
"Sure." Sarah rolled over on her stomach and propped ~ herself up on her
elbows.
"I hope you're comfortable sleeping down there."
"Listen. Anyplace is more comfortable than my room when a party's going
on above it."
"I don't mind if you want to share a bed with me Hyacinth. My sister and I
slept together until I was eleven and she was twelve."
"Thanks. But I didn't decide to sleep down here because I don't like you,
Sarah."
"Well, that's nice. I guess it's a little small for two." There was a long
silence. Hyacinth sat up on her sleeping bag, her crossed legs stretching
out her nightgown to make a faint white diamond in the darkness of the room.
Then, soundlessly, she got up and climbed into bed with Sarah. Sarah slid
back against the wall to make room, and after much giggling, rolling around,
rearrangement of covers and careful placement of limbs they managed to find
comfortable positions.
"Too hot," said Hyacinth, and got up again. She opened the window and a cold
wind blew into the room. She scampered back and dove in next to Sarah.
"Comfy?" said Hyacinth.
"Yeah. Mmm. Very."
"Really?" said Hyacinth skeptically. "More than before? Not just physically.
You don't feel awkward, being tangled up with me like this?"
"Not really," said Sarah dreamily. "It's kind of pleasant. It's just, you
know, warm, and kind of comforting to have someone else around. I like you,
you like me, why should it be awkward?"
"Would it be any different if I told you I was a lesbian?" Sarah came wide
awake but did not move. With one eye she gazed into the darkness above the
soft white horizon of Hyacinth's shoulder, on which she had laid her head.
"And that I was hoping we could do other nice things to each other? If you
feel inspired to, that is." She gently, almost imperceptibly, stroked Sarah's
hair. Sarah's heart was pumping rhythmically.
"I wish you'd say something," said Hyacinth. "Are you not sure how you feel,
or are you paralyzed with terror?"
Sarah laughed softly and felt herself relaxing. "I'm pretty naive about this
kind of thing. I mean, I don't think about it a lot. I sort of thought you
might be. Is Lucy?"
"Yes. Nowadays we don't sleep together that much. Sarah, do you want me to
sleep on the floor?"
Sarah thought about it but not very seriously. The room was pleasantly cold now
and the closeness of her friend was something she had not felt in a very long
time. "Of course not. This is great. I haven't slept with anyone in a while--
a man, I mean. Sleeping with someone is one of my favorite things. But it's
different with men. Not quite as... sweet."
"That's for sure."
"Why don't you stay a while?"
"That'd be nice."
"Do you mind if we don't do anything?" At this they laughed loudly, and that
answered the question.
"But we are doing something you know" added Hyacinth later. "Your nose
is in my breast. You're stroking my shoulder. I'm afraid that all counts."
"Oh. Gosh. Does that make me a lesbian?"
"Oh, I don't know. I guess you're off to a promising start."
"Hmmm. Doesn't feel like being a lesbian."
Hyacinth squeezed Sarah tight. "Look, honey, don't worry about it. This is
just great as it is. I just wanted you to know the opportunity was there.
Okay?"
"Okay."
"Want to go to sleep?"
"Take it easy, what's your hurry?"
Last Night was the night of the blue towers. A week before, the towers had
glowed uniformly yellow as forty-two thousand students sat beneath their desk
lamps and studied for finals. The next night, blue had replaced yellow here
and there, as a few lucky ones, finished with their finals, switched on their
TVs. This night, all eight towers were studded with blue, and whole patches of
the Plex flickered in unison with the popular shows. The beer trucks were busy
all day long down at the access lot, rolling kegs up the ramps to the Brew
King in the Mall, whence they were dispersed in canvas carts and two-wheelers
and Radio Flyers to rooms and lounges all over the Plex. As night fell and
the last students came screaming in from their finals, suitcases full of dope
moved through the Main Entrance and were quickly fragmented and distributed
throughout the towers for quick combustion. By dinnertime the faucets ran
cold water only as thousands lined up by the shower stalls, and the Caf was a
desert as most students ate at restaurants or parties. After dark, spotlights
and lasers crisscrossed the walls as partying students shone them into other
towers, and when the Big Wheel sign blazed into life, bands of
Big-Wheel-worshiping Terrorists all over the Plex launched a commemorative
fireworks barrage that sent echoes crackling back and forth among the
towers like bumper pool balls, punctuating the roar of the warring stereos.
By 10:00 the parties were just warming up. At 10:30 the rumor circulated that
a special police squad sent by S. S. Krupp was touring the Plex to bust up
parties. At 11:06 a keg was thrown from A24N and exploded on the Turnpike,
backing up traffic for an hour with a twelve-car chain-reaction smashup. By
11:30 forty students had been admitted to the Infirmary with broken noses,
split cheeks and severe inebriation, and it was beginning to look as though
the official estimate of one death from overintoxication and one from accident
might be a little low. The Rape/Assault/Crisis Line handled a call every
fifteen minutes.
Precisely at 11:40:00 an unknown, uninvited, very clumsy student walked behind
John Wesley Fenrick's chair at the big E31E end-of-semester bash and tripped,
spilling a strawberry malt all over Fenrick's spiky blond hair.
John Wesley Fenrick was in the shower with very hot water spraying onto his
head to dissolve the sticky malt crud, dancing around loosely to a tune in
his head and playing the air guitar. He wondered whether the malt had been
the work of Ephraim Klein. This, however, was impossible; his new room and
number were unlisted and you couldn't follow people home in an elevator. The
only way for Klein to find him was by a freak of chance, or by bribing an
administration person with access to the computer-- very unlikely. Besides,
a malt on the head was a bush-league retaliation even for a quiet little
harpsichord-playing New Jersey fart like Klein, considering what Fenrick had
so brilliantly accomplished.
What made it even greater was that the administration had treated it like
a hilarious college prank, a "concrete expression of malfunction in the
cohabitant interaction, intended only as nonviolent emotional expression."
Though they were after him to pay Klein's cleaning bills, Fenrick's brother
was a lawyer and he knew they wouldn't push it in court. Even if they did,
shit, he was going to be pulling down forty K in six months! A small price for
triumph.
With a snarl of disgust, Fenrick dumped another dose of
honey-beer-aloe-grub-treebark shampoo on his hair, finding that the tenacious
malt substance still had not come off. What's in this crap? Fenrick thought.
Fuck up your stomach, for sure.
Throughout E Tower, scores of Ephraim Klein's friends sat in the great
shiny microwave bathrooms watching the Channel 25 Late Night Eyewitness
InstaAction InvestiNews. Even during the most ghastly stories this program
sounded like an encounter session among five recently canceled sitcom actors
and developmentally disabled hairdressers' models. The weather, well, it
was just as bad, but was relieved by its very bizarreness. The weatherman,
a buffoon who knew nothing about weather and didn't care, was named Marvin
DuZan the Weatherman and would broadcast in a negligee if it boosted ratings;
his other gimmick was to tell an abominable joke at the conclusion of each
forecast. After the devastating punchline was delivered, the picture of the
guffawing pseudometeorologist and his writhing colleagues would be replaced
by an animated short in which a crazy-looking bird tried to smash a tortoise
over the head with a sledgehammer. At the last moment the tortoise would
creep forward, causing the blow to rebound off his shell and crash back into
the cranium of the bird. The bird would then assume a glazed expression and
vibrate around in circles, much like a chair in Klein's room during the
"Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor," finally to collapse at the feet of the
smiling turtle, who would then peer slyly at the audience and wiggle his
eyebrow ridges.
During Marvin DuZan's forecast on Last Night, Ephraim Klein was standing
outside his ex-roomie's shower stall, watching a portable TV and squirting
Hyper Stik brand Humonga-Glue into the latch of the stall's door. He had
turned down the volume, of course, and it seemed just as well, since from the
reactions of the InvestiNews Strike Force (and the cameramen, who were always
visible on the high-tech News Nexus set) it appeared that the joke tonight was
a real turd. As the camera zoomed in on the goonishly beaming face of Marvin
DuZan, Ephraim Klein's grip on the handles of two nearby urinals tightened
and his heart beat wildly, as did the grips and the hearts of a small army of
friends and hastily recruited deputies in many other E Tower bathrooms. Bird
and Tortoise appeared, the hammer was brandished, and smash!
As the hammer rebounded on the bird's head, scores of toilets throughout
E Tower were flushed, causing a vacuum so sharp that pipes bent and tore
and snapped and cold water ceased to flow. There was a short pause, and
then a bloodcurdling scream emanated from Fenrick's shower stall as clouds
of live steam burst out the top. After some fruitless handle-yanking and
Plexiglass-banging, the steam was followed by Fenrick himself, who fell
ungainly to the floor with a crisp splat and shook his head in pain as Ephraim
Klein escaped with his TV. In his haste Fenrick had lacerated his scalp on the
steel showerhead, and as he pawed at his face to clear away suds and blood he
was distantly conscious of a cold draft that irritated his parboiled skin, and
a familiar chunka-chunka-chunk that could be heard above the sounds of gasping
pipes and white water. Finally prying one eye open, he looked into the wind to
see it: the Go Big Red Fan, complacently revolving in front of his stall, set
on HI and still somewhat gray with cigar ash. Unfortunately for John Wesley
Fenrick, he did not soon enough see the puddle of water which surrounded
him, and which was rapidly expanding toward The base of the old and poorly
insulated Fan.
This was also quite an evening for E17S. Ever since joining the Terrorists as
the Flame Squad Faction, this all-male wing had suffered from the stigma of
being mere copies of the Big Wheel Men, Cowboys and Droogs of E13. Tonight
that was to change. The Christmas tree had been purchased three weeks ago,
left in a shower until the fireproofing compound was washed away, and hung
over a hot-air vent in the storage room; it was now a lovely shade of
incendiary brown. They took it up to E3 1, the top floor, seized an elevator,
and stuffed the tree inside. Someone pressed all the buttons for floors 30
through 6 while others squirted lighter fluid over the tree's dessicated
boughs.
Only one match was required. The door slid shut just as the smoke and flames
began to billow forth, and with a cheer and a yell the Flame Squad Faction
began to celebrate.
Twenty-four floors below, Virgil and I were having a few slow ones in my
suite. I had no time for partying because I was preparing for a long drive
home to Atlanta. Virgil happened to be wandering the Plex that night, looking
in on various people, and had paused for a while at my place. Things were
pretty quiet-- as they generally had been since John Wesley Fenrick had left--
and except for the insistent and inevitable bass beat, the wing was peaceful.
The fire alarm rang just before midnight. We cursed fluently and looked out
my door to see what was up. As faculty-in-residence I didn't have to scurry
out for every bogus fire drill, but it seemed prudent to check for smoke.
The smoke was heavy when we opened the door, and we smelled the filthy odor
of burning plastic. The source of the flame was near my room: one of the
elevators, which had automatically stopped and opened once the fire alarm was
triggered. I put a rag over my mouth and headed for the fire hose down the
hall. Meanwhile Virgil prepared to soak some towels in my sink.
Neither of us got any water. My fire hose valve just sucked air and howled.
"God Almighty," Virgil called through the smoke. "Somebody pulled a Big
Flush." He came out and joined the people running for the fire stairs. "No
'vators during fires so Ill have to take the stairs. I've got to get the
parallel pipe system working."
"The what?"
"Parallel pipes," said Virgil, skipping into the stairwell. "Hang on! Find a
keg! The architects weren't totally stupid!" And he was gone down the stairs.
I locked my door in case of looting and went off in search of a keg.
Naturally there was a superabundance that night, and with some help from the
too-drunk-to-be-scared owners I hauled it to the lobby and began to pump
clouds of generic light into the flaming Christmas tree.
Casimir Radon was in Sharon's lab, washing out a beaker. This was merely the
first step of the Project Spike glassware procedure, which involved attack by
two different alcohols and three different concentrated acid mixtures, but he
was in no hurry. For him Christmas had started the day before. With Virgil's
help he could get into this lab throughout the vacation, and that meant plenty
of time to work on Project Spike, build the mass driver and suffer as he
thought about Sarah.
He was annoyed but not exasperated when the water stopped flowing. There was a
gulp in the tapstream, followed by a hefty KLONK as the faucet handle jerked
itself from his grasp. The flow of water stopped, and an ominous gurgling,
sucking noise came from the faucet, like an entire municipal water system
flushing its last. He listened as the symphony of hydraulic sound effects grew
and spread to the dozens of pipes lining the lab's ceiling, the knocks and
gurgles and hisses weaving together as though the pipes were having a wild
Christmas party of their own. But Casimir was tired, and fairly absentminded
to boot, and he shrugged it off as yet another example of the infinite variety
of building and design defects in the Plex. The distilled water tap still
worked, so he used it. Despite the drudgery of the task and his problems with
Sarah, Casimir wore a little smile on his long unshaven face. Project Spike
had worked.
He had been sampling Cafeteria food for three weeks, and until tonight had
come up with nothing. Turkey Quiche, Beef Pot Pies, Lefto Lasagne, Estonian
Pasties, and even Deep-Fried Chicken Livers had drawn blanks, and Casimir had
begun to wonder whether it was a waste of time. Then came Savory Meatloaf
Night, an event which occurred every three weeks or so; despite the efforts
of advanced minds such as Virgil's, no one had ever discerned any reliable
pattern which might predict when this dish was to be served. Today, of course,
the last of the semester, Savory Meatloaf Night had struck and Casimir had
craftily smuggled a slice out in his sock (the Cafeteria exit guards could
afford to take it easy on Savory Meatloaf Night).
Not more than fifteen minutes ago, as he had been irradiating the next batch
of rat poison, the computer terminal had zipped into life with the results
of the analysis: high levels of Carbon- 14! There were rats in the meatloaf!
That was a triumph for Casimir. It seemed likely to be a secret triumph,
though. Sarah would never understand why he was doing this. Casimir wasn't
even sure he understood it himself. S. S. Krupp had funded his mass driver,
so why should he wish to damage the university now? He suspected that Project
Spike was simply a challenge, an opportunity to prove that he was clever
and self-sufficient in a sea of idiocy. He had accomplished that, but as a
political tactic it was still pretty dumb. Sarah would certainly think so.
Sarah had also thought it was dumb when he had decided to work in the lab all
night instead of going to Fantasy Island Nite. She was right on that issue
too, perhaps, but Casimir loathed parties of all sorts and would use any
excuse to avoid one. Hence he was here on the bottom of the Plex, washing out
rat-liver scum, while she was far above, dancing in the clown costume she had
shown him-- probably having a wonderful time as handsome Terrorists salivated
on her.
He observed he was leaning on the counter staring at the wall as though it
were a screen beaming him live coverage of Sarah at the party. Maybe he would
leave now, retaining a lab coat as a costume, and go up and surprise Sarah.
Meanwhile water was squirting out of the wall, forcing its way through the
cracks between the panels, running out from under the baseboards and trickling