through the grommets in the sides of Casimir's tennis shoes. Abruptly brought
back into the here and now, he looked around half-dazed and started unplugging
things and moving them to higher ground. What the hell was happening? A broken
pipe? He figured that if there was enough water pressure on the 31st floor to
run a fire hose, the pressure down here must be phenomenal. This was going to
be a hell of a mess.
Water was now trickling through old nail holes high on the wall. Casimir
covered the computer terminal with plastic and then ran out to search for
B-men. They were not here now, of course-- probably spreading rat poison or
celebrating some Crotobaltislavonian radish festival.
Across from Sharon's lab was a freight elevator closed off by a manually
operated door. When he looked through its little window Casimir saw water
falling down the shaft, and sparks spitting past. He got insulated gloves from
the lab and hauled the door open. Several gallons of pent-up water rushed past
his ankles and fell into the blackness. From below rose the-harsh wet odor of
the sewers.
The sparks issued from the electrical control box on the shaft wall. Once
Casimir was sure there was no danger of fire or electrocution he left, leaving
the doors open so that water could drain out of this bottom level of the Plex.
Oh, God. The rat poison. It was only supposed to stay in the radiation source
for a minute at a time! Casimir had put it in an hour ago, then simply
forgotten about it once the results of the analysis had come in. The damn
stuff must be glowing in the dark. He sloshed back into the lab.
Water poured and squirted from the walls and ceiling everywhere he looked. He
shielded his face from spray and walked through a wall of water toward the
neutron source, a garbage can full of paraffin with the plutonium button at
its center. Stopping to listen, he sensed that the slow ticking noise which
had been coming from one wall had sped up and was growing louder. He stood
petrified as it grew into a rumble, then a groan. then a scream-- and the wall
crashed open and a torrent rushed through the lab. An adjacent storage room
had filled with water from a large broken pipe, and Casimir was now knocked to
the floor by a torrent of Fiberglass panels, aluminum studs, and janitorial
supplies. He rolled just in time to see the neutron source, buoyed on the rush
of water, bob through the doorway and across the hall.
Taking care not to be swept along, he made his way to the shaft and looked
down. All was dark, but from far below, under the waterfall sound, he thought
he heard a buzz, or a ringing: the sound of an alarm. Maybe his ears were
ringing, and maybe it was a fire alarm above. Nauseated, he returned to the
lab, sat on a table and awaited the B-men.
Fantasy Island Nite was turning out to be not such a bad thing after all.
Those Terrorists upstairs in their own lounge were making a lot of noise,
but those down here on 12 were making an admirable effort to behave, per
their agreement with the Airheads. Only this agreement had persuaded Sarah
and Hyacinth to show up. It was potentially interesting, it was nice to be
sociable once in a while and they could always leave if they didn't like it.
Sarah wore a clown costume. This was her way of making fun of the fantasy
theme of the party-- most Airheads came as beauty queens or vamps-- and
had the extra advantage of making her totally unrecognizable. Hyacinth put
together a smashing Fairy Godmother costume, as a joke only Sarah would get.
Their plan was to drink so much it would become socially acceptable for them
to dance together.
While Sarah was working on the first stage of this plan she began g a lot
of attention from three Terrorists. These three-- ,a Cowboy, a Droog and a
Commando-- were obvious jerks, each one incensed that she would not reveal her
name, but as long as they danced, fetched drinks and didn't try to converse
they seemed like harmless fun. After a while she got a little boogied out, and
withdrew from the action to look out over the city. Hyacinth had gone to visit
another party and was expected back soon.
Time twisted and she was no longer at the party; she was watching it from a
place in her mind where she had not been for many years. She slid backward
like an air hockey puck until she was high up in one corner of the room. The
walls of the Plex fell away so that she could see in all directions at once.
One of the picture windows had been replaced by a gate that opened to the
sky. The gate was gaily festooned with shining pulsing color-blobs. All the
other party-goers had lined up in front of it. On one side of the gate stood
Mitzi, taking tickets; on the other, Mrs. Saritucci, checking off their names
on a clipboard. Each Airhead-Terrorist who passed through stepped out and sat
down on a long slippery-slide made of blue light, and squealed with delight
as they zoomed earthward. Sarah could not see all the way to the slide's end,
but she could see that, below, the Death Vortex had turned into a whirlpool of
multicolored fire. Forests and towns and families whirled around and around
before gurling down the center to disappear. The Vortex was ringed with
hundreds of fire trucks whose crews halfheartedly sprayed their tiny jets of
water into its middle.
When Sarah looked beyond the whirlpool she saw in its light a shattered
landscape of rubble and corpses, where bawling dirty people scrabbled about
aimlessly and squinted into the fire-glow. Nothing more than dust, solitary
bricks, cockroaches and jagged glass was there, though Sarah's vision swooped
across it for a thousand miles and a thousand years.
Beyond its distant edge was a nonlandscape: a milky white vacuum where choking
black clouds of static grew, split, re-formed, hurled themselves against
one another, clashed with horrible dry violence and abated to grow and form
again. Its slowness and its dryness made it the most awful thing Sarah had
ever seen. After five millennia, when she thought she was entirely lost and
crazy, she saw a piece of broken glass. then a rivulet of blood. Following
them, she found herself in the terrible landscape again, with the Plex on the
horizon erupting like a volcano. Blue beams of light shot from its top and
wrapped around her and sucked her back through the air into the building. But
she could no longer find herself there. She was no longer in the Lounge. The
Lounge had been vacant for centuries and only dust and yellowed party favors
remained. Following footprints in the dust she came to the hallway-- brightly
lit, loud, filled with shouting students and bats. She flew straight down
the hail until four dots at its end grew into four people and she could slow
down and follow them. There were three men: a Cowboy and a Commando held the
arms of a woman dressed as a clown, hurrying her down the hall, while a Droog
walked ahead of them carrying a paper punch cup which glowed with a green
light from within. Sarah closed her eyes to the glow and shook her head, and
when she opened them again she was the clown-woman-- though she did not want
to be.
They were in an elevator filled with black water that rose and crept warmly up
Sarah's thighs. Swimming in the water were bad hidden things, so she kicked as
well as she could. Her hands were held up above her head by men ten feet high,
lost in the glare of the overhead light where it was too bright to look.
Then they were on a floor that reminded Sarah of the broken landscape. On the
wall a giant mouth was chewing vigorously, drooling on the floor and smacking
its disgusting lips. The men threw her through it and followed behind.
"I won't go down the slide," she protested, but they did not really care.
Inside all was red and blue; a neon beer emblem burned in the window and
licked her with its hot rays. There stood a giant in a football costume who
wore the head of Tiny, leader of the Terrorists.
"Is Dex here?" she said, more out of habit than anything. It would be like
Dex to slip her some LSD. But then she knew this was a stupid question. She
felt the door being locked behind her and saw the music turned up until it
was purest ruby red, causing her body to turn into fragile glass. To move now
would be to shatter and die.
"Handle with care," she murmured, "I'm glass now," but the words just dribbled
down the front of her costume. They were ripping her costume away. She
squirmed but felt herself cracking horribly. The beer sign cast grotesque red
and blue light on the transparent flesh of her thighs.
She knew what was going to happen next. Somehow her mind connected it all in a
straight line, before the idea was swept away by the internal storm. The worst
thing in the world. She should have gone down the slide.
She made an effort of will. The sound and the light went away, it was spring;
grass and flowers and blue sky were all around and she was not about to be
raped. She was eating raspberries on the banks of a creek. Out of curiosity
she scratched at the air with her fingernail. Red and blue rays stabbed out
into her skin again, and peeking all the way through for a moment she could
see that they had not yet started.
No wonder; they were moving in slow motion. Sarah would have to spend many
hours waiting on the banks of the creek. She drew back into the sunshine.
Perhaps she could live here forever and have a perfect life.
When she slept, she dreamed of those dry, unending wars in the land of milky
white. She knew it was all an illusion. She tore it away and came back to
the room. She was not going to sleep through anything. She was not going to
imagine anything that didn't exist.
The sign was wavy and upside down now, reflected in a puddle of water on the
floor.
A Terrorist was in the corner twisting a faucet handle. Sarah stood up. Tiny
turned toward her and smashed her across the face. She was on the floor again,
and over there a Terrorist groped in the scintillating ocean of red and blue
for the sign's power cord. He was screaming like an electric guitar now. He
was trying to swim in the shallow lake of blood and bile.
Sarah was thrown onto a bed. Her arms and legs flailed, and one heel found a
Terrorist's kneecap. The Droog got on top of her, and because he was in slow
motion she kicked him in the nuts. He curled up on top of her and she looked
through his hair at the ceiling, which sputtered in the failing sign-light.
Tiny was unwinding a long piece of rope and its thin tendrils floated around
him like black smoke. She rolled half out from under the Droog and curled
into a fetal position so he could not take her arms and legs. As she did she
peered down through the transparent floor and saw the Airheads, plastered with
grotesque makeup, drinking LSD from crystal goblets and cheering. But where
was Hyacinth?
Hyacinth was standing in the doorway. An extremely loud explosion seeped
into her ears. Smoke filled the room, catching the hallway light and forming
hundreds of 3-D images from Sarah's past life.
Hyacinth's fairy godmother costume was changed, for now she wore heavy leather
gloves over her white cloth gloves, and bulky ear protectors under her conical
hat, and a pair of goggles beneath her milky-white veil. In her hands she
carried a giant revolver. Sarah knew that under her dress, Hyacinth was made
of strong young oakwood.
Hyacinth took one step into the room and shrugged on the main light switch.
Tiny stood in the center, staring. The man who had been swimming on the floor
was dead. Another clasped his knee and screamed at the ceiling. Sarah laid her
head down restfully and put her hands on her ears.
Cones of fire were spurting from the front and back of Hyacinth's gun and her
hands were snapping rhythmically up and down. Tiny had his hands on his chest,
and as he walked backward toward the window the back of his football jersey
bulged and fluttered like a loose sail, darkness splashing away from it. The
electrical cord was between his legs. His steps shortened and he fell backward
through the picture window. The cord and plug trailed slowly behind him and
snapped out room and were gone. The noise was so immense that Sarah heard
nothing until much later. The blasts were synchronized with the music's beat:
WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM
with each WHAM followed by a high whine that shrieked through until the next
WHAM, so that when Tiny was gone there remained a terrible high tone that
resonated between the walls of the room, far too loud for Sarah to stand,
filling her awareness like the blowing of the Last Trumpet and tormenting the
injured Terrorists, who cried out in it and wrapped their arms around their
heads. The Droog on, top of Sarah was pulled slowly away and Hyacinth yanked
Sarah to her feet. Sarah did not even move her legs as the smoky doorway
twisted past her, the corridor walls with their Big Wheels rolled on by, the
landings of the fire stair rushed up toward her from blackness and her soft
bed drifted up to envelop her face. Hyacinth was above her, probing, rubbing,
kissing her. She would not stop until Sarah was well again.
Virgil used his master key eight times before attaining a dark, stained
sub-sublevel of the Plex, where great water mains from the City entered from
the depths and fed the giant pumps that pressurized the plumbing system
overhead.
In an uncharacteristic flash of foresightedness, the Plex's architects made
allowances for the certainty that, once in a while, one group or another would
flush hundreds of toilets simultaneously and damage the cold water system. So
they installed two parallel, independent systems of main pipes to feed the
distribution systems of the wings; to switch between them one need only close
one set of valves and open another. This Virgil accomplished by grunting and
straining at a few red iron wheels. Satisfied that things were settling back
toward normal, he set out for Professor Sharon's old lab to see if Casimir
Radon was still there.
* * *
The Computing Center was not far away. Though it had many rooms, its heart
was a cavernous square space with white walls and a white floor waxed to a
thick glossy sheen. The white ceiling was composed of square fluorescent light
panels in a checkerboard pattern. Practically all of the room was occupied by
disc memory units: brown-and-blue cubes, spaced in a grid to form a seemingly
endless matrix of six-foot aisles. At the center of the room was an open
circle, and at the center of that area stood the Central Processing Unit of
the Janus 64. A smooth triangular column five feet on a side and twelve feet
high, it would have touched the ceiling except that above was a circular
opening about forty feet across, encircled by a railing so that observers
could stand and look into the core of the Computing Center.
Around the CPU were a few other large machines: secondary computers to
organize the tasks being fed to the Janus 64, array processors, high-speed
laser printers, a central control panel and the like. But closest of all was
the Operator's Station, a single video terminal, and tonight the operator was
Consuela Gorm, high priestess of MARS. She had volunteered to do the job on
this night of partying, when the only people still using the computer in the
adjacent Terminal Room were the goners, the hopelessly addicted hackers who
had nothing else to live for.
The only sounds were the whine of the refrigeration units, which drew away the
heat thrown off by the tightly packed components of the Janus 64; the high
hum of the whirling memory discs, multiplied by hundreds; and the pitter-pat
of Consuela's fingertips across the keypad of the Operator's Station. She was
hunkered down there, staring hypnotized into the screen, and behind her Fred
Fine stood thin and straight as the CPU itself. Tonight they were testing
Shekondar Mark V, their state-of-the-art Sewers & Serpents simulation program.
Now, at a few minutes before midnight, they had worked out the few remaining
bugs and they stood transfixed as their program did exactly what it was
supposed to.
"Looks like a routine adventure," mumbled Consuela.
"But it looks like Shekondar might have generated a werewolf colony in this
party's vicinity. I'm seeing a lot of indications of lycanthropic activity."
"You'd want plenty of silver arrows on this campaign."
"With this level of activity, you'd want a cleric specialized in
lycanthropes," scoffed Consuela.
Fred Fine was perfectly aware of that. He was merely making conversation so
Consuela would not realize he was thinking intently about something, and try
to beat him to the punch. Yes, the werewolf colony was obvious-- it was a
large one, probably east-northeast in the Mountains of Krang. Only large-scale
organization could account for the lack of wolfsbane and garlic, which were
usually abundant in this biome. But Fred Fine was concerned with observations
on a far grander scale. Though nothing was catastrophically wrong, something
was very strange, and Fred Fine found that he was covered with goosebumps. He
tapped a foot nervously and scanned the descriptions scrolling past on the
screen.
"Listen for birds!" he hissed.
Consuela ordered an Aural Stimuli Report, specifying Avians as field of
interest.
NO AVIAN SOUNDS DETECTABLE, said Shekondar Mark V.
"Damn!" said Fred Fine. "Let's have the alchemist test one of his magical
substances-- say, some of the fire-starting fluid." MAGICAL COMBUSTIBLES AND
EXPLOSIVES FAIL TO FUNCTION.
"Uh-oh! All characters jettison all magical items immediately!" SMALL FIRES
AND EXPLOSIONS IN ALCHEMICAL SUBSTANCES.
"Good. We'll get farther away."
LARGE EXPLOSIONS. NOXIOUS SMOKE. NO INJURIES DUE TO WIND DIRECTION.
"Lucky! Forgot even to check for that. My character will try turning on his
pocket calculator."
ELECTRONIC DEVICES FAIL TO FUNCTION.
"Wait a minute," said the astonished Consuela. "What is this? I don't know
of anything that can cause disruption of magic and technology at the same
time! Some kind of psionics, maybe?" "I don't know. I don't know what it is.,,
"We wrote this thing. We have to know what's in it." "Aural Stimuli Report,
General. Quick!"
DEEP RUMBLING CONSISTENT WITH TEMBLOR OR LARGE SUBTERRANEAN MOVEMENT.
"Can't be an earthquake. We'll head for solid rock, that should protect us.
Head uphill!"
MOVEMENT SPEED HALVED BY TEMBLOR. ROCK OUTCROPPING REACHED IN SIX TURNS.
EXTREMELY LOUD HISSING. GASEOUS ODOR. GROUND BECOMES WARM.
"It's almost like a Dragon," said Consuela in a constricted, terrified voice,
"but from down in the earth."
"God! I can't think of what the hell this is!"
ONE HUNDRED METERS TO YOUR NORTH EARTH BULGES UPWARD. BULGE IS FIFTY METERS
IN DIAMETER AND RISING QUICKLY. EARTH CRACKS OPEN AND YOU SEE A GLISTENING
SURFACE....
The terminal went blank. From just behind them came a violent scream, like a
buzzsaw wrenching to a stop in a concrete block. They knew it though they had
never heard it before; it was the sound of a disc unit dying, the sound made
when the power was cut off and the automatic readers (similar to the tone-arms
of phonographs) sank into, and shredded, the hysterically spinning magnetic
discs. It was to them what the snapping of a horse's leg is to a jockey, and
when they spun around they were astonished and horrified to see a curtain of
water pouring onto the floor from the circular walkway overhead. Not more than
a dozen feet from the base of the Janus 64, the ring was spreading inward.
"Hey, Fred 'n' Con!" someone yelled. At one end of the room, at the window
that looked out into the Terminal Room, an overweight blond-bearded hacker
squinted at them. "What's going on? System problems? Oh, Jeeeezus!"
He turned to his comrades in the Terminal Room, screaming, "Head crash! Head
crash! Water on the brain!" Soon two dozen hackers had vaulted through the
window into the Center and were sprinting down the aisles as fast as their
atrophied legs could carry them, the men stripping off their shirts as they
ran. Another disc drive shorted out and sizzled to destruction. Abruptly Fred
Fine spun and grabbed the Operator's Key-chain, then ran through the circular
waterfall toward another wall of the Center, shouting for people to follow
him.
In seconds he had snapped open the door to the storage room, where tons of
accordion-fold computer paper were stored in boxes. As some of the hackers did
their best to sweep water away from the base of the Janus 64, the rest formed
a line from the storage room to the central circle. The boxes were passed down
the line as quickly as possible, slit open with Fred Fine's authentic Civil
War bayonet and their contents dumped out as big green-and-white cubes inside
the deadly water-ring. Though it did not entirely stem the flow, the paper
absorbed what It did not dam. Soon all space between the waterfall and the
CPU was covered with at least two feet of soggy computer paper. Meanwhile,
Consuela had shut down all the disc drives.
The danger was past. Fred Fine, still palpitating, noticed a small waterfall
in the corner of the storage room. Flicking on the lights for the first time,
he clambered over the stacked boxes to check it out. In the corner, three
pipes about ten inches in diameter ran from floor to ceiling. One was swathed
in the insulation used for hot water pipes. Water was running down one of the
bare pipes; higher up. above the ceiling, it must be leaking heavily. Fred
Fine put his hand on the third pipe and found that it was neither hot nor
cool, and did not seem to be carrying a current. A firehose supply pipe? No,
they were supposed to be bright red. He puzzled over it, rubbing his hand
over the long thin whiskers that straggled down his cheeks when he had been
computing for a week or more.
As he watched, the hiss of running water lowered and died away and a few
seconds later the leak from above was stemmed. There was the KLONK of an air
hammer in a pipe. Fred Fine put his hand on the mystery pipe, and began to
feel the gentle vibration of running water underneath, and a sensation of
coolness spreading out from the interior.
The hackers saw him wandering slowly toward the Janus, which rose like an
ancient glyph from the tumbled, sodden blocks of paper. He had a distant look,
and was consumed in thought.
"These are the End Times," he was heard to say. "The Age draws to a close."
He was no weirder than they were, so they ignored him.
Tiny landed on a burning sofa not far from my window. The impact forced much
excess lighter fluid out of the foam cushions and created a burst of flame
whose origin we did not know until later. Once the water had come back on, and
we had soaked the elevator and the Christmas tree, we aimed the fire hose out
my living-room window and drenched the heap of dimly burning furniture that
was Tiny the Terrorist's funeral pyre. It was a few minutes past midnight, the
second strangest midnight I have ever known, and my first semester at the Big
U was at an end.
---------------------
-- Second Semester --
---------------------
--January--
The fog of war was real down here. The knee-deep gloom on the tunnel floor
exhaled it in sheets and columns, never disturbed by a clean wind or a breath
of dryness. Through its darkness moved a flickering cloud of light, and at the
center walked a tall thin figure with headphones sprouting long antennae. He
carried an eight-foot wizard's staff in one hand, a Loyal Order of Caledonian
Comrades ceremonial sword in the other, and wore hip waders, a raincoat, and a
gas mask. His headlamp's beam struck the fog in front of his eyes and stopped
dead, limiting his visibility to what he could see through occasional holes
in the atmosphere. From the twin filters of his gas mask came labored hissing
sighs as he panted with an effort of wading through the muck.
"I've come to the intersection of the Tunnel of Goblins and the Tunnel of
Dragon Blood," he announced. "This is my turnaround point and I will now
return to rendezvous with Zippy the Dwarf, Lord Flail and the White Priest in
the Hall of the Idols of Zarzang-Zed." True to his word, Klystron the Impaler
laboriously reversed direction by gripping his staff and making a five-point
turn, then paused for a rest.
A voice crackled from his headphones, a lush, tense introvert's voice made
tinny by the poor transmission quality.
"Roger, Klystron the Impaler, This is Liaison. Please hold." There was a brief
silence, but the flickering of her fingers on the computer keys up there, and
her ruffling of papers, kept her voice-operated mike open. She snickered,
unaware that Klystron, Zippy, Flail and the White Priest could hear her. "Oh
ho," she gloated, "are you in for trouble now. You don't hear anything yet."
More fingers on the keyboard. Klystron concluded that Shekondar had generated
a monster with many statistics and at least three attack modes, a monster
with which Consuela was not entirely familiar. Perhaps, for once, a worthy
opponent.
Klystron the Impaler drew his mask down to dangle on his chest. Taking care
not to breathe through his nose, he brought out his wineskin, opened the
plastic spigot and shot a long stream of warm Tab onto his tongue. God, it
stank down here. But Klystron could deal with far worse. Anything was better
than doing this in a safe light place, like the D & D players, and never
experiencing the darkness, claustrophobia and terror of reality.
Liaison was ready. "Klystron the Impaler, known to' -his allies as the Heroic,
High Lord of Plexor, Mage of the CeePeeYu and Tamer of the Purple Worm of
Longtunnel, is attacked by the ELECTRIC MICROWAVE LIZARD OF QUIZZYXAR!" She
nearly shrieked the last part of this, as frenzied as a priestess during a
solar eclipse. "You are not surprised, you have one turn to prepare defense.
Statement of intent, please."
Klystron corked the wineskin with his thumb and let it drop to his side,
sliding the mask back over his face. So, it was the electric microwave lizard
of Quizzyxar. Consuela's reaction had hinted it was something big. He was
ready.
"As you will recall, I took an anti-microwave potion six months ago, before
the Siege of Dud, and that has not worn off yet. As he will probably attack
with microwaves first, this gives me an extra turn. I begin by flipping down
the visor on my Helm of Courage. Is he charging?"
"No. She's advancing slowly."
"I stand my ground on the left side of the tunnel and fire a freeze-blast from
my Staff of Cold." He wheeled his staff into firingposition as though it were
a SAM-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile launcher and his body shook with
imagined recoil as he CHOONGed a couple of sound effects into the mike.
But why had Consuela specified the lizard was a she? With Consuela it could
not have been a mere Freudian slip. "Okay," Con said slowly, typing in
Klystron's actions, "your freeze-blast strikes home, hitting her in the
left head. It has no effect. The lizard's microwave blast does not hurt you
but explodes your wineskin, causing you two points of concussion damage. It
continues to advance at a walk."
"Touchи. " So much for Tab.
"Liaison, do we know about this yet?" It was Lord Flail. Liaison asked
Shekondar. "Yes. The lizard makes a lot of noise and you hear it."
"Okay!" cried Lord Flail. "We'll proceed at top speed toward the melee."
"Me too," added Zippy the Dwarf.
"It'll take us forever to get there," said the White Priest, who did not seem
to be very far into his character. "We're at least a thousand feet away."
Klystron the Impaler took advantage of these negotiations to do some planning.
Obviously the female type was immune to cold-- highly obnoxious to the male
type.
"In my quiver I have a fire arrow which I took from the dying Elf-Lord during
that one time when we space-warped into Middle Earth. I'll fire that. Which
head is it leading with?" "Left."
"Then I aim for the right head."
"The arrow finds its mark and burns fiercely," announced Consuela with relish.
"The lizard bites you on your left arm, which is now useless until the White
Priest can heal it. While you switch back to your sword it claws you with a
tentacle! claw appendage, doing five points of damage to your chest. The claw
is poisoned but... you make your saving throw."
"Good. I'll take a swipe at the appendage as it attacks."
"You miss."
"Okay, I'll make for the right head."
"The lizard has succeeded in clawing the fire arrow out of its hide. Now it
makes a right tongue strike, sticking you, and begins drawing you into its
mouth. Will you attack the tongue, or parry the poison claw attacks?"
Klystron considered it. This was a hell of a situation. As a last resort he
could use a wish from his wishing sword, but that could be risky, especially
with Consuela.
"I will defend myself from the claws, and deal with the mouth when I get to
it. I've been swallowed before."
"You parry three swipes. But now you are just inside the mouth and it is
exhaling poison gas, and you have lost half your strength." "Oh, all right,"
said Klystron in disgust. "I'll make a wish on my wishing sword. I'll say
"
"Wait a minute!" came the feminine squeal of Zippy the Dwarf. I just spotted
him!"
Snapping to attention, Klystron scanned the surrounding mist with the beam of
his headlamp and picked out Zippy's red chest waders. "Confirm contact with
Zippy the Dwarf. Estimated range ten meters."
"In that case," observed Consuela, "she is right behind the lizard. Your
action, Zippy?"
"Three double fireballs from my fireball-shooting tiara." "I duck," said
Klystron hastily. Shekondar was just clever enough to generate an accidental
hit on him. He sighed in relief and his pulse became leaden. It was going to
be fine.
"All fireballs strike in abdominal area. Lizard is now in bad shape and moving
slowly."
"I cut myself loose from the tongue."
"Done."
"Two more fireballs in the right head."
"As soon as I'm out of the way, that is."
"Okay. The lizard dies, Congratulations, people. That's ten thousand
experience points apiece."
Klystron and Zippy joined up, edging together against the tunnel wall to avoid
the imaginary lizard corpse sprawled between them. They shook hands robustly,
though Klystron had some reservations about being saved by a female dwarf,
"Good going, guys!" shouted Lord Flail, overloading his mike. "Yeah. Way to
go," the White Priest added glumly.
"Flail and Priest, give estimated distance from us." Klystron was concerned;
those two were the weakest members, even when they were together, and now
that one monster had been noisily eliminated others were sure to converge on
the area to clean up. "To be frank, I'm not sure," answered the White Priest.
"I kind of thought we'd be getting to an intersection near you by now, but
apparently not. The layout of these tunnels isn't what I saw on the Plex
blueprints."
Klystron winced at this gross violation of game ethics and exchanged
exasperated glances with Zippy. "You mean that the secret map you found was
incorrect," he said. "Well, don't continue if you're lost. We will proceed in
the direction of the Sepulchre of Keldor and hope to meet you there." He and
Zippy plugged off down the tunnel.
They wandered for ten minutes looking for one another, and every sixty seconds
Liaison had them stop while Shekondar checked for prowling monsters. Shortly,
Klystron overheard an exchange between the Priest and the Lord, who apparently
had removed their masks to talk.
"Take it easy! It doesn't take very long, you know," said the White Priest.
"I'll be right back. Stay here."
"I don't think we should separate, Your Holiness," pleaded Lord Flail. "Not
after a melee that'll attract other monsters." Klystron turned up the gain on
his mike and shouted, "He's right! Don't split up," in hopes that they would
hear it without earphones.
The Priest and Lord Flail conversed inaudibly for a few seconds. Then Flail
came back on, having apparently replaced his mask. "Uh, this is to notify
Shekondar that the White Priest has gone aside," he said, using the code
phrase for taking a leak. Klystron chuckled. A few seconds later came another
prowling monster check. Everyone tensed and waited for Shekondar's decree.
"Okay," said Liaison triumphantly, "we've got a monster, Lord Flail, now solo,
is attacked by... giant sewer rats! There are twelve of them, and they take
him by surprise."
"Well listen for his battle cry and try to locate him that way," announced
Klystron immediately, and pulled his headphones down to listen. Oddly, Flail
had not responded.
"Statement of intent! Move it!" snapped Consuela.
But no statement of intent was forthcoming from Flail. Instead, a ghastly
series of sound effects was transmitted through his mike. First came a whoosh
of surprise, followed by a short pause, and some confused interjections. Then
nothing was heard for a few seconds save ragged panting; and then came a
long, loud scream which obliged them to turn down the volume. The screaming
continued, swamping the others' efforts to make themselves heard on the line.
Finally Consuela's voice came through, angry and hurt. "You're jumping the
gun. The melee hasn't started yet." But Lord Flail was no longer screaming,
and the only sounds coming over his mike were an occasional scraping and
shuffling mixed with odd squeals that might have been radio trouble.
Klystron and Zippy, headphones down, could hear the screams echoing down the
tunnel a second after they came in on the radio. Flail's plan was clear; he
was making a god-awful lot of noise to assist the better fighters in tracking
him down. A good plan for a character with a fighting level of three and a
courage/psychostability index of only eight, but it was a little overdone.
The odd noises continued for several minutes as they tramped toward the scene
of the melee, which was in a higher tunnel with a much drier floor.
Ahead of them, Flail's headlamp cast an unmoving yellow blotch on the ceiling.
On the fringes of that cone of light moved great swift shadows. Klystron
slowed down and drew his sword. Zippy had dropped back several feet. "Making
final approach to Flail's location," Klystron mumbled, edging forward, falling
unconsciously into the squatting stance of the sabre fighter. At the end of
his lamp's beam he could see quickly moving gray and brown fur, and blood.
"At your approach the rats get scared and flee," said Consuela, franticly
typing, "though not without persuasion."
He could see them clearly now. They were dogs, like German shepherds, though
rather fat, and they had long, long bare tails. And round ears. And pointy
quivering snouts. Oh, my God. Several scurried away, some stood their ground
staring at his headlamp with beady black and red eyes, and one rushed him.
Reacting frantically he split the top of its skull with a blow of the dull
sword. The rest of the giant sewer rats turned and ran squealing down the
tunnel. Lord Flail was not going anywhere, and what remained of him, as
battle-hardened as Klystron was, was too disgusting to look at.
"You are too late," said Consuela. "Lord Flail has been gnawed to death by the
giant sewer rats."
"I know," said Klystron. Hearing nothing from Zippy, he turned around to see
her sitting there staring dumbly at the corpse. "Uh, request permission to
temporarily leave character."
"Granted. What's going on down there?"
"Consuela, this is Fred. It's Steve. Steven has been, uh, I supposed you could
say, uh, eaten, by a bunch of"
Fred Fine stepped forward and swept his beam over the brained animal at his
feet. "By giant sewer rats."
"Oh, golly!" said Zippy. "What about Virgil? He went off to go tinkle!"
"Jeez," said Fred Fine, and started looking around for footprints. "Liaison,
White Priest is solo in unknown location." The twelve giant sewer rats had run
right past the White Priest and ignored him. He was standing with his chest
waders around his thighs, relieving himself onto a decaying toilet paper core,
when the mass of squealing rodent fervor had hurtled out of the fog, parted
down the middle to pass around him, rejoined behind, their long tails lashing
inquisitively around his knees, and shot onward toward their rendezvous with
Lord Flail.
He stood there almost absentmindedly and finished his task, staring into the
swirling lights in front of his face, breathing deeply and thinking. Then
the screaming started, and he pulled up his waders and got himself together,
unslinging the Sceptre of Cosmic Force from its handy shoulder strap and
brandishing it. Fred Fine and Consuela had insisted he bring along convincing
props, so he had manufactured the Sceptre, an iron re-rod wrapped in aluminum
foil, topped with a xenon flash tube in a massive glass ball that was wired to
a power supply in the handle. When they had mustered for the expedition, he
had switched off the lights and "convinced" them by turning it on and bouncing
a few explosive purple flashes off their unprepared retinas. After he had
explained the circuitry to Fred Fine, they entered character and descended
a long spiral stair into the tunnels. In the ensuing three hours the White
Priest had used the Sceptre of Cosmic Force to blind, disorient and paralyze
three womp rats, a samurai, a balrog, Darth Vader and a Libyan hit squad.
He began to slog back toward Steven, and the screaming ended. Either the
rats had left or Steven was dead or someone had helped the poor bastard
out. Tramping down the tunnel, his lamp beam bounding over the discarded
feminine-hygiene products, condoms, shampoo-bottle lids and Twinkie wrappers,
Virgil tried to decide whether this was really happening or was simply part of
the game. The tunnels and the chanting of Consuela had made a few inroads on
his sense of reality, and now he was not so sure he had seen those rats. The
screams, however, had not sounded like the dramaturgical improvisations of an
escapist Information Systems major.
He stopped. The rats were coming back! He looked around for a ladder, or
something to climb up on, but the walls of the tunnel were smooth and
featureless. He turned and ran as quickly as he could in the heavy rubberized
leggings, soon discarding the gas mask and headphones so he could take deep
breaths of the fetid ammonia-ridden air.
The rats were gaining on him. Virgil searched his memory, trying to visualize
where this tunnel was and where it branched off; if he were right, there were
no branches at all-- it was a dead end. But the blueprints had been wrong
before.
A branch? He swept the left wall with his lamp, and discerned a dark patch ten
paces ahead. He made for it. The rats were lunging for his ankles. He kept his
left hand on the wall as he ran, flailing with the Sceptre in his right. Then
his left hand abruptly felt air and he dove in that direction, tripping over
his own feet and falling on his side within the branch tunnel.
A rat was on top of him before he had come to rest, and he stood up wildly,
using his body to throw the screaming beast against the wall. Grabbing the
Sceptre in both hands he swung it like a scythe. Whatever else it was, it was
first and foremost a rod with a heavy globe at one end, a fine mace.
Virgil stood with his back to the wall, kicking alternately with his feet like
a Crotobaltislavonian folk dancer to shake off the bites of the rats, lashing
out with the Sceptre at the same time. He was then blinded as his hand touched
the toggle switch that activated the powerful flasher at the end. He cringed
and looked away, and at the same time the rats fell back squealing. He shook
sweat and condensation from his eyes, snapped his wet hair back and waved
the Sceptre around at arms' length, surveying his opponents in the exploding
light. They were gathered around him in a semicircle, about ten feet away, and
with every flash their fur glistened for an instant and their eyeballs sparked
like distant brakelights. They were hissing and muttering to one another now,
their number constantly growing, watching with implacable hostility-- but none
dared approach.
Continuing to wave the Sceptre of Cosmic Force, Virgil felt down with his
other hand to the butt of the weapon, where he had installed a dial to adjust
the speed of the flashing. Turning it carefully up and down, he found that as
the flashes became less frequent, the circle tightened around him unanimously
so that he must frantically spin the dial up to a higher frequency. At
this the rats reacted in pain arid backed away in the flickering light in
stop-action. Now Virgil's vision was composed of a succession of still images,
each slightly different from the last, and all he saw was rats. dozens of
rats, and each shining purple rat-image was fixed permanently into his perfect
memory until he could remember little else. Encouraged by their fear, he
grasped the knob again and sped up the flasher, until suddenly they reached
some breaking-point; then they dissolved into perfect chaotic frenzy and
turned upon one another with hysterical ferocity, charging lustily together
into a great stop-action melee at the tunnel intersection. Bewildered and
disgusted, Virgil closed his eyes to shut it out, so that all he saw was
the red veins in his eyelids jumping out repeatedly against a yellow-pink
background.
Some of the rats were colliding with his legs. He lowered the Sceptre so that
the flasher was between his ankles, and, guiding himself by sound and touch,
moved away from the obstructed intersection and down the unmapped passageway.
He opened his eyes and began to run, holding the flasher out in front of
him like a blind man's cane. From time to time he encountered a rat who had
approached the source of the sound and fury and then gone into convulsions
upon encountering the sprinting electronics technician with his Sceptre. Soon,
though, there were no more rats, and he turned it off.
Something was tugging at his belt. Feeling cautiously, he found that it was
the power cord of the headlamp, which had been knocked off his head and had
been bouncing along behind him ever since. He found that the lens, once he had
wiped crud from it, cast an intermittent light-- a connection was weakened
somewhere-- that did, however, enable him to see.
This unmapped tunnel was relatively narrow. Its ceiling, to his shock, was
thick with bats, while its floor was clean of the stinking glom that covered
most of the tunnels in varying depths. Instead there was a thin layer of slimy
fluid and fuzzy white bat guano which stank but did not hinder. This was
probably a good sign; the passage must lead somewhere. He noted the position
of the Sceptre's dial that had caused the rats to blow their stacks, then
slung the weapon over his shoulder and continued down the passage, his feet
curiously light and free in the absence of deep sludge.
Before long he discerned a light at the end of the tunnel. He broke into a
jog, and soon he could see it clearly, about a hundred and fifty feet away: a
region at the end of the passage that was clean and white and fluorescently
lit. Nothing in the blueprints corresponded to this.
He was still at least a hundred feet away when a pair of sliding doors on
the right wall at the very end of the tunnel slid open. He stopped, sank
to a squat against the tunnel wall and then lay on his stomach as he heard
shouting.
"Ho! Heeeeyah! Gitska!" Making these and similar noises, three B-men peeked
out the door and up the passageway, then emerged, carrying weapons-- not just
pistols, but small machine guns. Two of them assumed a kneeling position on
the floor, facing up the tunnel, and their leader, an enormous B-man foreman
named Magrov, stood behind them and sighted down the tunnel through the bulky
infrared sight of his weapon. About halfway between Virgil and the B-men, a
giant rat had turned and was scuttling toward Virgil. There was a roar and a
flickering light not unlike that of Virgil's Sceptre, and two dozen automatic
rounds dissolved the rat into a long streak on the floor. Magrov shone a
powerful flashlight over the wreckage of the rodent, but apparently Virgil
was too small, distant and filthy to be noticed. Magrov belched loudly in a
traditional Croto expression of profound disgust, and the other two murmured
their agreement. He signaled to whoever was waiting beyond the sliding doors.
A large metal cylinder about a foot and a half in diameter and six feet long,
strapped to a heavy four-wheeled cart, was carefully pushed sideways into the
passage. Magrov walked to a box on the wall, punched a button with the barrel
of his weapon and spoke. "Control, Magrov once again. We have put it in normal
place like usual, and today only one of those goddamn pink-tailed ones, you
know. We taking off now. I guess we be back in a few hours."
"That's an A-OK. All clear to reascend, team." came the unaccented answer from
the box. The B-men walked through the sliding doors, which closed behind them,
and Virgil was barely able to make out a hum which sounded like an elevator.
After a few seconds, the end wall of the tunnel parted slowly and Virgil
saw that it wasn't the end at all, it was a pair of thick steel slabs that
retracted into the floor and ceiling. Beyond the doors was a large room,
brightly lit, containing several men walking around in what looked like
bright yellow rainsuits and long loose hoods with black plastic windows over
the eyes. Three of these figures emerged and quickly slid cart and cylinder
through the doors while two others stood guard with submachine guns. Then all
retreated behind the doors, and the steel slabs slid back together and sealed
the tunnel.
He remained motionless for a few minutes more, and noticed some other things:
wall-mounted TV cameras that incessantly swiveled back and forth on power
gimbals; chemical odors that wafted down the tunnel after the doors were
closed; and the many gnawed and broken rat bones scattered across the nearby
floor. Then Virgil Gabrielsen concluded that the wisest thing to do was to go
back into the here and now, he looked around half-dazed and started unplugging
things and moving them to higher ground. What the hell was happening? A broken
pipe? He figured that if there was enough water pressure on the 31st floor to
run a fire hose, the pressure down here must be phenomenal. This was going to
be a hell of a mess.
Water was now trickling through old nail holes high on the wall. Casimir
covered the computer terminal with plastic and then ran out to search for
B-men. They were not here now, of course-- probably spreading rat poison or
celebrating some Crotobaltislavonian radish festival.
Across from Sharon's lab was a freight elevator closed off by a manually
operated door. When he looked through its little window Casimir saw water
falling down the shaft, and sparks spitting past. He got insulated gloves from
the lab and hauled the door open. Several gallons of pent-up water rushed past
his ankles and fell into the blackness. From below rose the-harsh wet odor of
the sewers.
The sparks issued from the electrical control box on the shaft wall. Once
Casimir was sure there was no danger of fire or electrocution he left, leaving
the doors open so that water could drain out of this bottom level of the Plex.
Oh, God. The rat poison. It was only supposed to stay in the radiation source
for a minute at a time! Casimir had put it in an hour ago, then simply
forgotten about it once the results of the analysis had come in. The damn
stuff must be glowing in the dark. He sloshed back into the lab.
Water poured and squirted from the walls and ceiling everywhere he looked. He
shielded his face from spray and walked through a wall of water toward the
neutron source, a garbage can full of paraffin with the plutonium button at
its center. Stopping to listen, he sensed that the slow ticking noise which
had been coming from one wall had sped up and was growing louder. He stood
petrified as it grew into a rumble, then a groan. then a scream-- and the wall
crashed open and a torrent rushed through the lab. An adjacent storage room
had filled with water from a large broken pipe, and Casimir was now knocked to
the floor by a torrent of Fiberglass panels, aluminum studs, and janitorial
supplies. He rolled just in time to see the neutron source, buoyed on the rush
of water, bob through the doorway and across the hall.
Taking care not to be swept along, he made his way to the shaft and looked
down. All was dark, but from far below, under the waterfall sound, he thought
he heard a buzz, or a ringing: the sound of an alarm. Maybe his ears were
ringing, and maybe it was a fire alarm above. Nauseated, he returned to the
lab, sat on a table and awaited the B-men.
Fantasy Island Nite was turning out to be not such a bad thing after all.
Those Terrorists upstairs in their own lounge were making a lot of noise,
but those down here on 12 were making an admirable effort to behave, per
their agreement with the Airheads. Only this agreement had persuaded Sarah
and Hyacinth to show up. It was potentially interesting, it was nice to be
sociable once in a while and they could always leave if they didn't like it.
Sarah wore a clown costume. This was her way of making fun of the fantasy
theme of the party-- most Airheads came as beauty queens or vamps-- and
had the extra advantage of making her totally unrecognizable. Hyacinth put
together a smashing Fairy Godmother costume, as a joke only Sarah would get.
Their plan was to drink so much it would become socially acceptable for them
to dance together.
While Sarah was working on the first stage of this plan she began g a lot
of attention from three Terrorists. These three-- ,a Cowboy, a Droog and a
Commando-- were obvious jerks, each one incensed that she would not reveal her
name, but as long as they danced, fetched drinks and didn't try to converse
they seemed like harmless fun. After a while she got a little boogied out, and
withdrew from the action to look out over the city. Hyacinth had gone to visit
another party and was expected back soon.
Time twisted and she was no longer at the party; she was watching it from a
place in her mind where she had not been for many years. She slid backward
like an air hockey puck until she was high up in one corner of the room. The
walls of the Plex fell away so that she could see in all directions at once.
One of the picture windows had been replaced by a gate that opened to the
sky. The gate was gaily festooned with shining pulsing color-blobs. All the
other party-goers had lined up in front of it. On one side of the gate stood
Mitzi, taking tickets; on the other, Mrs. Saritucci, checking off their names
on a clipboard. Each Airhead-Terrorist who passed through stepped out and sat
down on a long slippery-slide made of blue light, and squealed with delight
as they zoomed earthward. Sarah could not see all the way to the slide's end,
but she could see that, below, the Death Vortex had turned into a whirlpool of
multicolored fire. Forests and towns and families whirled around and around
before gurling down the center to disappear. The Vortex was ringed with
hundreds of fire trucks whose crews halfheartedly sprayed their tiny jets of
water into its middle.
When Sarah looked beyond the whirlpool she saw in its light a shattered
landscape of rubble and corpses, where bawling dirty people scrabbled about
aimlessly and squinted into the fire-glow. Nothing more than dust, solitary
bricks, cockroaches and jagged glass was there, though Sarah's vision swooped
across it for a thousand miles and a thousand years.
Beyond its distant edge was a nonlandscape: a milky white vacuum where choking
black clouds of static grew, split, re-formed, hurled themselves against
one another, clashed with horrible dry violence and abated to grow and form
again. Its slowness and its dryness made it the most awful thing Sarah had
ever seen. After five millennia, when she thought she was entirely lost and
crazy, she saw a piece of broken glass. then a rivulet of blood. Following
them, she found herself in the terrible landscape again, with the Plex on the
horizon erupting like a volcano. Blue beams of light shot from its top and
wrapped around her and sucked her back through the air into the building. But
she could no longer find herself there. She was no longer in the Lounge. The
Lounge had been vacant for centuries and only dust and yellowed party favors
remained. Following footprints in the dust she came to the hallway-- brightly
lit, loud, filled with shouting students and bats. She flew straight down
the hail until four dots at its end grew into four people and she could slow
down and follow them. There were three men: a Cowboy and a Commando held the
arms of a woman dressed as a clown, hurrying her down the hall, while a Droog
walked ahead of them carrying a paper punch cup which glowed with a green
light from within. Sarah closed her eyes to the glow and shook her head, and
when she opened them again she was the clown-woman-- though she did not want
to be.
They were in an elevator filled with black water that rose and crept warmly up
Sarah's thighs. Swimming in the water were bad hidden things, so she kicked as
well as she could. Her hands were held up above her head by men ten feet high,
lost in the glare of the overhead light where it was too bright to look.
Then they were on a floor that reminded Sarah of the broken landscape. On the
wall a giant mouth was chewing vigorously, drooling on the floor and smacking
its disgusting lips. The men threw her through it and followed behind.
"I won't go down the slide," she protested, but they did not really care.
Inside all was red and blue; a neon beer emblem burned in the window and
licked her with its hot rays. There stood a giant in a football costume who
wore the head of Tiny, leader of the Terrorists.
"Is Dex here?" she said, more out of habit than anything. It would be like
Dex to slip her some LSD. But then she knew this was a stupid question. She
felt the door being locked behind her and saw the music turned up until it
was purest ruby red, causing her body to turn into fragile glass. To move now
would be to shatter and die.
"Handle with care," she murmured, "I'm glass now," but the words just dribbled
down the front of her costume. They were ripping her costume away. She
squirmed but felt herself cracking horribly. The beer sign cast grotesque red
and blue light on the transparent flesh of her thighs.
She knew what was going to happen next. Somehow her mind connected it all in a
straight line, before the idea was swept away by the internal storm. The worst
thing in the world. She should have gone down the slide.
She made an effort of will. The sound and the light went away, it was spring;
grass and flowers and blue sky were all around and she was not about to be
raped. She was eating raspberries on the banks of a creek. Out of curiosity
she scratched at the air with her fingernail. Red and blue rays stabbed out
into her skin again, and peeking all the way through for a moment she could
see that they had not yet started.
No wonder; they were moving in slow motion. Sarah would have to spend many
hours waiting on the banks of the creek. She drew back into the sunshine.
Perhaps she could live here forever and have a perfect life.
When she slept, she dreamed of those dry, unending wars in the land of milky
white. She knew it was all an illusion. She tore it away and came back to
the room. She was not going to sleep through anything. She was not going to
imagine anything that didn't exist.
The sign was wavy and upside down now, reflected in a puddle of water on the
floor.
A Terrorist was in the corner twisting a faucet handle. Sarah stood up. Tiny
turned toward her and smashed her across the face. She was on the floor again,
and over there a Terrorist groped in the scintillating ocean of red and blue
for the sign's power cord. He was screaming like an electric guitar now. He
was trying to swim in the shallow lake of blood and bile.
Sarah was thrown onto a bed. Her arms and legs flailed, and one heel found a
Terrorist's kneecap. The Droog got on top of her, and because he was in slow
motion she kicked him in the nuts. He curled up on top of her and she looked
through his hair at the ceiling, which sputtered in the failing sign-light.
Tiny was unwinding a long piece of rope and its thin tendrils floated around
him like black smoke. She rolled half out from under the Droog and curled
into a fetal position so he could not take her arms and legs. As she did she
peered down through the transparent floor and saw the Airheads, plastered with
grotesque makeup, drinking LSD from crystal goblets and cheering. But where
was Hyacinth?
Hyacinth was standing in the doorway. An extremely loud explosion seeped
into her ears. Smoke filled the room, catching the hallway light and forming
hundreds of 3-D images from Sarah's past life.
Hyacinth's fairy godmother costume was changed, for now she wore heavy leather
gloves over her white cloth gloves, and bulky ear protectors under her conical
hat, and a pair of goggles beneath her milky-white veil. In her hands she
carried a giant revolver. Sarah knew that under her dress, Hyacinth was made
of strong young oakwood.
Hyacinth took one step into the room and shrugged on the main light switch.
Tiny stood in the center, staring. The man who had been swimming on the floor
was dead. Another clasped his knee and screamed at the ceiling. Sarah laid her
head down restfully and put her hands on her ears.
Cones of fire were spurting from the front and back of Hyacinth's gun and her
hands were snapping rhythmically up and down. Tiny had his hands on his chest,
and as he walked backward toward the window the back of his football jersey
bulged and fluttered like a loose sail, darkness splashing away from it. The
electrical cord was between his legs. His steps shortened and he fell backward
through the picture window. The cord and plug trailed slowly behind him and
snapped out room and were gone. The noise was so immense that Sarah heard
nothing until much later. The blasts were synchronized with the music's beat:
WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM
with each WHAM followed by a high whine that shrieked through until the next
WHAM, so that when Tiny was gone there remained a terrible high tone that
resonated between the walls of the room, far too loud for Sarah to stand,
filling her awareness like the blowing of the Last Trumpet and tormenting the
injured Terrorists, who cried out in it and wrapped their arms around their
heads. The Droog on, top of Sarah was pulled slowly away and Hyacinth yanked
Sarah to her feet. Sarah did not even move her legs as the smoky doorway
twisted past her, the corridor walls with their Big Wheels rolled on by, the
landings of the fire stair rushed up toward her from blackness and her soft
bed drifted up to envelop her face. Hyacinth was above her, probing, rubbing,
kissing her. She would not stop until Sarah was well again.
Virgil used his master key eight times before attaining a dark, stained
sub-sublevel of the Plex, where great water mains from the City entered from
the depths and fed the giant pumps that pressurized the plumbing system
overhead.
In an uncharacteristic flash of foresightedness, the Plex's architects made
allowances for the certainty that, once in a while, one group or another would
flush hundreds of toilets simultaneously and damage the cold water system. So
they installed two parallel, independent systems of main pipes to feed the
distribution systems of the wings; to switch between them one need only close
one set of valves and open another. This Virgil accomplished by grunting and
straining at a few red iron wheels. Satisfied that things were settling back
toward normal, he set out for Professor Sharon's old lab to see if Casimir
Radon was still there.
* * *
The Computing Center was not far away. Though it had many rooms, its heart
was a cavernous square space with white walls and a white floor waxed to a
thick glossy sheen. The white ceiling was composed of square fluorescent light
panels in a checkerboard pattern. Practically all of the room was occupied by
disc memory units: brown-and-blue cubes, spaced in a grid to form a seemingly
endless matrix of six-foot aisles. At the center of the room was an open
circle, and at the center of that area stood the Central Processing Unit of
the Janus 64. A smooth triangular column five feet on a side and twelve feet
high, it would have touched the ceiling except that above was a circular
opening about forty feet across, encircled by a railing so that observers
could stand and look into the core of the Computing Center.
Around the CPU were a few other large machines: secondary computers to
organize the tasks being fed to the Janus 64, array processors, high-speed
laser printers, a central control panel and the like. But closest of all was
the Operator's Station, a single video terminal, and tonight the operator was
Consuela Gorm, high priestess of MARS. She had volunteered to do the job on
this night of partying, when the only people still using the computer in the
adjacent Terminal Room were the goners, the hopelessly addicted hackers who
had nothing else to live for.
The only sounds were the whine of the refrigeration units, which drew away the
heat thrown off by the tightly packed components of the Janus 64; the high
hum of the whirling memory discs, multiplied by hundreds; and the pitter-pat
of Consuela's fingertips across the keypad of the Operator's Station. She was
hunkered down there, staring hypnotized into the screen, and behind her Fred
Fine stood thin and straight as the CPU itself. Tonight they were testing
Shekondar Mark V, their state-of-the-art Sewers & Serpents simulation program.
Now, at a few minutes before midnight, they had worked out the few remaining
bugs and they stood transfixed as their program did exactly what it was
supposed to.
"Looks like a routine adventure," mumbled Consuela.
"But it looks like Shekondar might have generated a werewolf colony in this
party's vicinity. I'm seeing a lot of indications of lycanthropic activity."
"You'd want plenty of silver arrows on this campaign."
"With this level of activity, you'd want a cleric specialized in
lycanthropes," scoffed Consuela.
Fred Fine was perfectly aware of that. He was merely making conversation so
Consuela would not realize he was thinking intently about something, and try
to beat him to the punch. Yes, the werewolf colony was obvious-- it was a
large one, probably east-northeast in the Mountains of Krang. Only large-scale
organization could account for the lack of wolfsbane and garlic, which were
usually abundant in this biome. But Fred Fine was concerned with observations
on a far grander scale. Though nothing was catastrophically wrong, something
was very strange, and Fred Fine found that he was covered with goosebumps. He
tapped a foot nervously and scanned the descriptions scrolling past on the
screen.
"Listen for birds!" he hissed.
Consuela ordered an Aural Stimuli Report, specifying Avians as field of
interest.
NO AVIAN SOUNDS DETECTABLE, said Shekondar Mark V.
"Damn!" said Fred Fine. "Let's have the alchemist test one of his magical
substances-- say, some of the fire-starting fluid." MAGICAL COMBUSTIBLES AND
EXPLOSIVES FAIL TO FUNCTION.
"Uh-oh! All characters jettison all magical items immediately!" SMALL FIRES
AND EXPLOSIONS IN ALCHEMICAL SUBSTANCES.
"Good. We'll get farther away."
LARGE EXPLOSIONS. NOXIOUS SMOKE. NO INJURIES DUE TO WIND DIRECTION.
"Lucky! Forgot even to check for that. My character will try turning on his
pocket calculator."
ELECTRONIC DEVICES FAIL TO FUNCTION.
"Wait a minute," said the astonished Consuela. "What is this? I don't know
of anything that can cause disruption of magic and technology at the same
time! Some kind of psionics, maybe?" "I don't know. I don't know what it is.,,
"We wrote this thing. We have to know what's in it." "Aural Stimuli Report,
General. Quick!"
DEEP RUMBLING CONSISTENT WITH TEMBLOR OR LARGE SUBTERRANEAN MOVEMENT.
"Can't be an earthquake. We'll head for solid rock, that should protect us.
Head uphill!"
MOVEMENT SPEED HALVED BY TEMBLOR. ROCK OUTCROPPING REACHED IN SIX TURNS.
EXTREMELY LOUD HISSING. GASEOUS ODOR. GROUND BECOMES WARM.
"It's almost like a Dragon," said Consuela in a constricted, terrified voice,
"but from down in the earth."
"God! I can't think of what the hell this is!"
ONE HUNDRED METERS TO YOUR NORTH EARTH BULGES UPWARD. BULGE IS FIFTY METERS
IN DIAMETER AND RISING QUICKLY. EARTH CRACKS OPEN AND YOU SEE A GLISTENING
SURFACE....
The terminal went blank. From just behind them came a violent scream, like a
buzzsaw wrenching to a stop in a concrete block. They knew it though they had
never heard it before; it was the sound of a disc unit dying, the sound made
when the power was cut off and the automatic readers (similar to the tone-arms
of phonographs) sank into, and shredded, the hysterically spinning magnetic
discs. It was to them what the snapping of a horse's leg is to a jockey, and
when they spun around they were astonished and horrified to see a curtain of
water pouring onto the floor from the circular walkway overhead. Not more than
a dozen feet from the base of the Janus 64, the ring was spreading inward.
"Hey, Fred 'n' Con!" someone yelled. At one end of the room, at the window
that looked out into the Terminal Room, an overweight blond-bearded hacker
squinted at them. "What's going on? System problems? Oh, Jeeeezus!"
He turned to his comrades in the Terminal Room, screaming, "Head crash! Head
crash! Water on the brain!" Soon two dozen hackers had vaulted through the
window into the Center and were sprinting down the aisles as fast as their
atrophied legs could carry them, the men stripping off their shirts as they
ran. Another disc drive shorted out and sizzled to destruction. Abruptly Fred
Fine spun and grabbed the Operator's Key-chain, then ran through the circular
waterfall toward another wall of the Center, shouting for people to follow
him.
In seconds he had snapped open the door to the storage room, where tons of
accordion-fold computer paper were stored in boxes. As some of the hackers did
their best to sweep water away from the base of the Janus 64, the rest formed
a line from the storage room to the central circle. The boxes were passed down
the line as quickly as possible, slit open with Fred Fine's authentic Civil
War bayonet and their contents dumped out as big green-and-white cubes inside
the deadly water-ring. Though it did not entirely stem the flow, the paper
absorbed what It did not dam. Soon all space between the waterfall and the
CPU was covered with at least two feet of soggy computer paper. Meanwhile,
Consuela had shut down all the disc drives.
The danger was past. Fred Fine, still palpitating, noticed a small waterfall
in the corner of the storage room. Flicking on the lights for the first time,
he clambered over the stacked boxes to check it out. In the corner, three
pipes about ten inches in diameter ran from floor to ceiling. One was swathed
in the insulation used for hot water pipes. Water was running down one of the
bare pipes; higher up. above the ceiling, it must be leaking heavily. Fred
Fine put his hand on the third pipe and found that it was neither hot nor
cool, and did not seem to be carrying a current. A firehose supply pipe? No,
they were supposed to be bright red. He puzzled over it, rubbing his hand
over the long thin whiskers that straggled down his cheeks when he had been
computing for a week or more.
As he watched, the hiss of running water lowered and died away and a few
seconds later the leak from above was stemmed. There was the KLONK of an air
hammer in a pipe. Fred Fine put his hand on the mystery pipe, and began to
feel the gentle vibration of running water underneath, and a sensation of
coolness spreading out from the interior.
The hackers saw him wandering slowly toward the Janus, which rose like an
ancient glyph from the tumbled, sodden blocks of paper. He had a distant look,
and was consumed in thought.
"These are the End Times," he was heard to say. "The Age draws to a close."
He was no weirder than they were, so they ignored him.
Tiny landed on a burning sofa not far from my window. The impact forced much
excess lighter fluid out of the foam cushions and created a burst of flame
whose origin we did not know until later. Once the water had come back on, and
we had soaked the elevator and the Christmas tree, we aimed the fire hose out
my living-room window and drenched the heap of dimly burning furniture that
was Tiny the Terrorist's funeral pyre. It was a few minutes past midnight, the
second strangest midnight I have ever known, and my first semester at the Big
U was at an end.
---------------------
-- Second Semester --
---------------------
--January--
The fog of war was real down here. The knee-deep gloom on the tunnel floor
exhaled it in sheets and columns, never disturbed by a clean wind or a breath
of dryness. Through its darkness moved a flickering cloud of light, and at the
center walked a tall thin figure with headphones sprouting long antennae. He
carried an eight-foot wizard's staff in one hand, a Loyal Order of Caledonian
Comrades ceremonial sword in the other, and wore hip waders, a raincoat, and a
gas mask. His headlamp's beam struck the fog in front of his eyes and stopped
dead, limiting his visibility to what he could see through occasional holes
in the atmosphere. From the twin filters of his gas mask came labored hissing
sighs as he panted with an effort of wading through the muck.
"I've come to the intersection of the Tunnel of Goblins and the Tunnel of
Dragon Blood," he announced. "This is my turnaround point and I will now
return to rendezvous with Zippy the Dwarf, Lord Flail and the White Priest in
the Hall of the Idols of Zarzang-Zed." True to his word, Klystron the Impaler
laboriously reversed direction by gripping his staff and making a five-point
turn, then paused for a rest.
A voice crackled from his headphones, a lush, tense introvert's voice made
tinny by the poor transmission quality.
"Roger, Klystron the Impaler, This is Liaison. Please hold." There was a brief
silence, but the flickering of her fingers on the computer keys up there, and
her ruffling of papers, kept her voice-operated mike open. She snickered,
unaware that Klystron, Zippy, Flail and the White Priest could hear her. "Oh
ho," she gloated, "are you in for trouble now. You don't hear anything yet."
More fingers on the keyboard. Klystron concluded that Shekondar had generated
a monster with many statistics and at least three attack modes, a monster
with which Consuela was not entirely familiar. Perhaps, for once, a worthy
opponent.
Klystron the Impaler drew his mask down to dangle on his chest. Taking care
not to breathe through his nose, he brought out his wineskin, opened the
plastic spigot and shot a long stream of warm Tab onto his tongue. God, it
stank down here. But Klystron could deal with far worse. Anything was better
than doing this in a safe light place, like the D & D players, and never
experiencing the darkness, claustrophobia and terror of reality.
Liaison was ready. "Klystron the Impaler, known to' -his allies as the Heroic,
High Lord of Plexor, Mage of the CeePeeYu and Tamer of the Purple Worm of
Longtunnel, is attacked by the ELECTRIC MICROWAVE LIZARD OF QUIZZYXAR!" She
nearly shrieked the last part of this, as frenzied as a priestess during a
solar eclipse. "You are not surprised, you have one turn to prepare defense.
Statement of intent, please."
Klystron corked the wineskin with his thumb and let it drop to his side,
sliding the mask back over his face. So, it was the electric microwave lizard
of Quizzyxar. Consuela's reaction had hinted it was something big. He was
ready.
"As you will recall, I took an anti-microwave potion six months ago, before
the Siege of Dud, and that has not worn off yet. As he will probably attack
with microwaves first, this gives me an extra turn. I begin by flipping down
the visor on my Helm of Courage. Is he charging?"
"No. She's advancing slowly."
"I stand my ground on the left side of the tunnel and fire a freeze-blast from
my Staff of Cold." He wheeled his staff into firingposition as though it were
a SAM-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile launcher and his body shook with
imagined recoil as he CHOONGed a couple of sound effects into the mike.
But why had Consuela specified the lizard was a she? With Consuela it could
not have been a mere Freudian slip. "Okay," Con said slowly, typing in
Klystron's actions, "your freeze-blast strikes home, hitting her in the
left head. It has no effect. The lizard's microwave blast does not hurt you
but explodes your wineskin, causing you two points of concussion damage. It
continues to advance at a walk."
"Touchи. " So much for Tab.
"Liaison, do we know about this yet?" It was Lord Flail. Liaison asked
Shekondar. "Yes. The lizard makes a lot of noise and you hear it."
"Okay!" cried Lord Flail. "We'll proceed at top speed toward the melee."
"Me too," added Zippy the Dwarf.
"It'll take us forever to get there," said the White Priest, who did not seem
to be very far into his character. "We're at least a thousand feet away."
Klystron the Impaler took advantage of these negotiations to do some planning.
Obviously the female type was immune to cold-- highly obnoxious to the male
type.
"In my quiver I have a fire arrow which I took from the dying Elf-Lord during
that one time when we space-warped into Middle Earth. I'll fire that. Which
head is it leading with?" "Left."
"Then I aim for the right head."
"The arrow finds its mark and burns fiercely," announced Consuela with relish.
"The lizard bites you on your left arm, which is now useless until the White
Priest can heal it. While you switch back to your sword it claws you with a
tentacle! claw appendage, doing five points of damage to your chest. The claw
is poisoned but... you make your saving throw."
"Good. I'll take a swipe at the appendage as it attacks."
"You miss."
"Okay, I'll make for the right head."
"The lizard has succeeded in clawing the fire arrow out of its hide. Now it
makes a right tongue strike, sticking you, and begins drawing you into its
mouth. Will you attack the tongue, or parry the poison claw attacks?"
Klystron considered it. This was a hell of a situation. As a last resort he
could use a wish from his wishing sword, but that could be risky, especially
with Consuela.
"I will defend myself from the claws, and deal with the mouth when I get to
it. I've been swallowed before."
"You parry three swipes. But now you are just inside the mouth and it is
exhaling poison gas, and you have lost half your strength." "Oh, all right,"
said Klystron in disgust. "I'll make a wish on my wishing sword. I'll say
"
"Wait a minute!" came the feminine squeal of Zippy the Dwarf. I just spotted
him!"
Snapping to attention, Klystron scanned the surrounding mist with the beam of
his headlamp and picked out Zippy's red chest waders. "Confirm contact with
Zippy the Dwarf. Estimated range ten meters."
"In that case," observed Consuela, "she is right behind the lizard. Your
action, Zippy?"
"Three double fireballs from my fireball-shooting tiara." "I duck," said
Klystron hastily. Shekondar was just clever enough to generate an accidental
hit on him. He sighed in relief and his pulse became leaden. It was going to
be fine.
"All fireballs strike in abdominal area. Lizard is now in bad shape and moving
slowly."
"I cut myself loose from the tongue."
"Done."
"Two more fireballs in the right head."
"As soon as I'm out of the way, that is."
"Okay. The lizard dies, Congratulations, people. That's ten thousand
experience points apiece."
Klystron and Zippy joined up, edging together against the tunnel wall to avoid
the imaginary lizard corpse sprawled between them. They shook hands robustly,
though Klystron had some reservations about being saved by a female dwarf,
"Good going, guys!" shouted Lord Flail, overloading his mike. "Yeah. Way to
go," the White Priest added glumly.
"Flail and Priest, give estimated distance from us." Klystron was concerned;
those two were the weakest members, even when they were together, and now
that one monster had been noisily eliminated others were sure to converge on
the area to clean up. "To be frank, I'm not sure," answered the White Priest.
"I kind of thought we'd be getting to an intersection near you by now, but
apparently not. The layout of these tunnels isn't what I saw on the Plex
blueprints."
Klystron winced at this gross violation of game ethics and exchanged
exasperated glances with Zippy. "You mean that the secret map you found was
incorrect," he said. "Well, don't continue if you're lost. We will proceed in
the direction of the Sepulchre of Keldor and hope to meet you there." He and
Zippy plugged off down the tunnel.
They wandered for ten minutes looking for one another, and every sixty seconds
Liaison had them stop while Shekondar checked for prowling monsters. Shortly,
Klystron overheard an exchange between the Priest and the Lord, who apparently
had removed their masks to talk.
"Take it easy! It doesn't take very long, you know," said the White Priest.
"I'll be right back. Stay here."
"I don't think we should separate, Your Holiness," pleaded Lord Flail. "Not
after a melee that'll attract other monsters." Klystron turned up the gain on
his mike and shouted, "He's right! Don't split up," in hopes that they would
hear it without earphones.
The Priest and Lord Flail conversed inaudibly for a few seconds. Then Flail
came back on, having apparently replaced his mask. "Uh, this is to notify
Shekondar that the White Priest has gone aside," he said, using the code
phrase for taking a leak. Klystron chuckled. A few seconds later came another
prowling monster check. Everyone tensed and waited for Shekondar's decree.
"Okay," said Liaison triumphantly, "we've got a monster, Lord Flail, now solo,
is attacked by... giant sewer rats! There are twelve of them, and they take
him by surprise."
"Well listen for his battle cry and try to locate him that way," announced
Klystron immediately, and pulled his headphones down to listen. Oddly, Flail
had not responded.
"Statement of intent! Move it!" snapped Consuela.
But no statement of intent was forthcoming from Flail. Instead, a ghastly
series of sound effects was transmitted through his mike. First came a whoosh
of surprise, followed by a short pause, and some confused interjections. Then
nothing was heard for a few seconds save ragged panting; and then came a
long, loud scream which obliged them to turn down the volume. The screaming
continued, swamping the others' efforts to make themselves heard on the line.
Finally Consuela's voice came through, angry and hurt. "You're jumping the
gun. The melee hasn't started yet." But Lord Flail was no longer screaming,
and the only sounds coming over his mike were an occasional scraping and
shuffling mixed with odd squeals that might have been radio trouble.
Klystron and Zippy, headphones down, could hear the screams echoing down the
tunnel a second after they came in on the radio. Flail's plan was clear; he
was making a god-awful lot of noise to assist the better fighters in tracking
him down. A good plan for a character with a fighting level of three and a
courage/psychostability index of only eight, but it was a little overdone.
The odd noises continued for several minutes as they tramped toward the scene
of the melee, which was in a higher tunnel with a much drier floor.
Ahead of them, Flail's headlamp cast an unmoving yellow blotch on the ceiling.
On the fringes of that cone of light moved great swift shadows. Klystron
slowed down and drew his sword. Zippy had dropped back several feet. "Making
final approach to Flail's location," Klystron mumbled, edging forward, falling
unconsciously into the squatting stance of the sabre fighter. At the end of
his lamp's beam he could see quickly moving gray and brown fur, and blood.
"At your approach the rats get scared and flee," said Consuela, franticly
typing, "though not without persuasion."
He could see them clearly now. They were dogs, like German shepherds, though
rather fat, and they had long, long bare tails. And round ears. And pointy
quivering snouts. Oh, my God. Several scurried away, some stood their ground
staring at his headlamp with beady black and red eyes, and one rushed him.
Reacting frantically he split the top of its skull with a blow of the dull
sword. The rest of the giant sewer rats turned and ran squealing down the
tunnel. Lord Flail was not going anywhere, and what remained of him, as
battle-hardened as Klystron was, was too disgusting to look at.
"You are too late," said Consuela. "Lord Flail has been gnawed to death by the
giant sewer rats."
"I know," said Klystron. Hearing nothing from Zippy, he turned around to see
her sitting there staring dumbly at the corpse. "Uh, request permission to
temporarily leave character."
"Granted. What's going on down there?"
"Consuela, this is Fred. It's Steve. Steven has been, uh, I supposed you could
say, uh, eaten, by a bunch of"
Fred Fine stepped forward and swept his beam over the brained animal at his
feet. "By giant sewer rats."
"Oh, golly!" said Zippy. "What about Virgil? He went off to go tinkle!"
"Jeez," said Fred Fine, and started looking around for footprints. "Liaison,
White Priest is solo in unknown location." The twelve giant sewer rats had run
right past the White Priest and ignored him. He was standing with his chest
waders around his thighs, relieving himself onto a decaying toilet paper core,
when the mass of squealing rodent fervor had hurtled out of the fog, parted
down the middle to pass around him, rejoined behind, their long tails lashing
inquisitively around his knees, and shot onward toward their rendezvous with
Lord Flail.
He stood there almost absentmindedly and finished his task, staring into the
swirling lights in front of his face, breathing deeply and thinking. Then
the screaming started, and he pulled up his waders and got himself together,
unslinging the Sceptre of Cosmic Force from its handy shoulder strap and
brandishing it. Fred Fine and Consuela had insisted he bring along convincing
props, so he had manufactured the Sceptre, an iron re-rod wrapped in aluminum
foil, topped with a xenon flash tube in a massive glass ball that was wired to
a power supply in the handle. When they had mustered for the expedition, he
had switched off the lights and "convinced" them by turning it on and bouncing
a few explosive purple flashes off their unprepared retinas. After he had
explained the circuitry to Fred Fine, they entered character and descended
a long spiral stair into the tunnels. In the ensuing three hours the White
Priest had used the Sceptre of Cosmic Force to blind, disorient and paralyze
three womp rats, a samurai, a balrog, Darth Vader and a Libyan hit squad.
He began to slog back toward Steven, and the screaming ended. Either the
rats had left or Steven was dead or someone had helped the poor bastard
out. Tramping down the tunnel, his lamp beam bounding over the discarded
feminine-hygiene products, condoms, shampoo-bottle lids and Twinkie wrappers,
Virgil tried to decide whether this was really happening or was simply part of
the game. The tunnels and the chanting of Consuela had made a few inroads on
his sense of reality, and now he was not so sure he had seen those rats. The
screams, however, had not sounded like the dramaturgical improvisations of an
escapist Information Systems major.
He stopped. The rats were coming back! He looked around for a ladder, or
something to climb up on, but the walls of the tunnel were smooth and
featureless. He turned and ran as quickly as he could in the heavy rubberized
leggings, soon discarding the gas mask and headphones so he could take deep
breaths of the fetid ammonia-ridden air.
The rats were gaining on him. Virgil searched his memory, trying to visualize
where this tunnel was and where it branched off; if he were right, there were
no branches at all-- it was a dead end. But the blueprints had been wrong
before.
A branch? He swept the left wall with his lamp, and discerned a dark patch ten
paces ahead. He made for it. The rats were lunging for his ankles. He kept his
left hand on the wall as he ran, flailing with the Sceptre in his right. Then
his left hand abruptly felt air and he dove in that direction, tripping over
his own feet and falling on his side within the branch tunnel.
A rat was on top of him before he had come to rest, and he stood up wildly,
using his body to throw the screaming beast against the wall. Grabbing the
Sceptre in both hands he swung it like a scythe. Whatever else it was, it was
first and foremost a rod with a heavy globe at one end, a fine mace.
Virgil stood with his back to the wall, kicking alternately with his feet like
a Crotobaltislavonian folk dancer to shake off the bites of the rats, lashing
out with the Sceptre at the same time. He was then blinded as his hand touched
the toggle switch that activated the powerful flasher at the end. He cringed
and looked away, and at the same time the rats fell back squealing. He shook
sweat and condensation from his eyes, snapped his wet hair back and waved
the Sceptre around at arms' length, surveying his opponents in the exploding
light. They were gathered around him in a semicircle, about ten feet away, and
with every flash their fur glistened for an instant and their eyeballs sparked
like distant brakelights. They were hissing and muttering to one another now,
their number constantly growing, watching with implacable hostility-- but none
dared approach.
Continuing to wave the Sceptre of Cosmic Force, Virgil felt down with his
other hand to the butt of the weapon, where he had installed a dial to adjust
the speed of the flashing. Turning it carefully up and down, he found that as
the flashes became less frequent, the circle tightened around him unanimously
so that he must frantically spin the dial up to a higher frequency. At
this the rats reacted in pain arid backed away in the flickering light in
stop-action. Now Virgil's vision was composed of a succession of still images,
each slightly different from the last, and all he saw was rats. dozens of
rats, and each shining purple rat-image was fixed permanently into his perfect
memory until he could remember little else. Encouraged by their fear, he
grasped the knob again and sped up the flasher, until suddenly they reached
some breaking-point; then they dissolved into perfect chaotic frenzy and
turned upon one another with hysterical ferocity, charging lustily together
into a great stop-action melee at the tunnel intersection. Bewildered and
disgusted, Virgil closed his eyes to shut it out, so that all he saw was
the red veins in his eyelids jumping out repeatedly against a yellow-pink
background.
Some of the rats were colliding with his legs. He lowered the Sceptre so that
the flasher was between his ankles, and, guiding himself by sound and touch,
moved away from the obstructed intersection and down the unmapped passageway.
He opened his eyes and began to run, holding the flasher out in front of
him like a blind man's cane. From time to time he encountered a rat who had
approached the source of the sound and fury and then gone into convulsions
upon encountering the sprinting electronics technician with his Sceptre. Soon,
though, there were no more rats, and he turned it off.
Something was tugging at his belt. Feeling cautiously, he found that it was
the power cord of the headlamp, which had been knocked off his head and had
been bouncing along behind him ever since. He found that the lens, once he had
wiped crud from it, cast an intermittent light-- a connection was weakened
somewhere-- that did, however, enable him to see.
This unmapped tunnel was relatively narrow. Its ceiling, to his shock, was
thick with bats, while its floor was clean of the stinking glom that covered
most of the tunnels in varying depths. Instead there was a thin layer of slimy
fluid and fuzzy white bat guano which stank but did not hinder. This was
probably a good sign; the passage must lead somewhere. He noted the position
of the Sceptre's dial that had caused the rats to blow their stacks, then
slung the weapon over his shoulder and continued down the passage, his feet
curiously light and free in the absence of deep sludge.
Before long he discerned a light at the end of the tunnel. He broke into a
jog, and soon he could see it clearly, about a hundred and fifty feet away: a
region at the end of the passage that was clean and white and fluorescently
lit. Nothing in the blueprints corresponded to this.
He was still at least a hundred feet away when a pair of sliding doors on
the right wall at the very end of the tunnel slid open. He stopped, sank
to a squat against the tunnel wall and then lay on his stomach as he heard
shouting.
"Ho! Heeeeyah! Gitska!" Making these and similar noises, three B-men peeked
out the door and up the passageway, then emerged, carrying weapons-- not just
pistols, but small machine guns. Two of them assumed a kneeling position on
the floor, facing up the tunnel, and their leader, an enormous B-man foreman
named Magrov, stood behind them and sighted down the tunnel through the bulky
infrared sight of his weapon. About halfway between Virgil and the B-men, a
giant rat had turned and was scuttling toward Virgil. There was a roar and a
flickering light not unlike that of Virgil's Sceptre, and two dozen automatic
rounds dissolved the rat into a long streak on the floor. Magrov shone a
powerful flashlight over the wreckage of the rodent, but apparently Virgil
was too small, distant and filthy to be noticed. Magrov belched loudly in a
traditional Croto expression of profound disgust, and the other two murmured
their agreement. He signaled to whoever was waiting beyond the sliding doors.
A large metal cylinder about a foot and a half in diameter and six feet long,
strapped to a heavy four-wheeled cart, was carefully pushed sideways into the
passage. Magrov walked to a box on the wall, punched a button with the barrel
of his weapon and spoke. "Control, Magrov once again. We have put it in normal
place like usual, and today only one of those goddamn pink-tailed ones, you
know. We taking off now. I guess we be back in a few hours."
"That's an A-OK. All clear to reascend, team." came the unaccented answer from
the box. The B-men walked through the sliding doors, which closed behind them,
and Virgil was barely able to make out a hum which sounded like an elevator.
After a few seconds, the end wall of the tunnel parted slowly and Virgil
saw that it wasn't the end at all, it was a pair of thick steel slabs that
retracted into the floor and ceiling. Beyond the doors was a large room,
brightly lit, containing several men walking around in what looked like
bright yellow rainsuits and long loose hoods with black plastic windows over
the eyes. Three of these figures emerged and quickly slid cart and cylinder
through the doors while two others stood guard with submachine guns. Then all
retreated behind the doors, and the steel slabs slid back together and sealed
the tunnel.
He remained motionless for a few minutes more, and noticed some other things:
wall-mounted TV cameras that incessantly swiveled back and forth on power
gimbals; chemical odors that wafted down the tunnel after the doors were
closed; and the many gnawed and broken rat bones scattered across the nearby
floor. Then Virgil Gabrielsen concluded that the wisest thing to do was to go