The ski masks had become very popular since the beginning of second semester, having proved spectacularly successful during fire drills. The Airheads found that they could pull them on at the first ringing of the bell and make it downstairs before all the bars filled up, and when they returned to their rooms they did not have to remove any makeup before going back to bed. Then one sartorially daring Airhead had worn her ski mask to a 9:00 class one January morning, and pronounced it worthwhile, and other Airheads had begun to experiment with the concept. The less wealthy found that ski masks saved heaps of money on cosmetics and hair care, and everyone was impressed with their convenience, ease of cleaning and unlimited mix-'n'-match color coordination possibilities. Blousy, amorphous dresses had also become the style; why wear something tight and uncomfortable when no one knew who you were?
Talking to Mari, Nicci and Toni was not that bad, of course, but Sarah felt unusually refreshed and clean, was having one of her favorite dinners, was going to a concert with Hyacinth that night and had hoped to make it a perfect day. Worse than talking to them was having to smile and nod at the stream of cologned and blow-dried Terrorists who came up behind the Airheads in their strange bandy macho walk, homing in on those ski masks like heat-seeking missiles on a house fire. Several sneaked up behind Mari and the others to goose them while they ate. Sarah knew that they did not want to be warned, so she merely rolled her manicotti around in her mouth and stared morosely over Mari's shoulder as the young bucks crept forward with exaggerated stealth and twitching fingers. So long as these people continued to lead segregated lives, she knew, it was necessary to do such things in order to have any contact with members of the other sex. They at least had more style than the freshman Terrorists, who generally started conversations by dumping beverages over the heads of freshman women. So there were many breaks in the conversation while Terrorist fingers probed deep into Airhead tenderloins and the requisite screaming and giggling followed.
Notwithstanding this, "the gals" did manage to have a conversation about their majors. Sarah was majoring in English. Mari had a cousin who majored in English too, and who had met a very nice Business student doing it. Mari was majoring in Hobbies Education. Toni was Undecided. Nicci was in Sociology at another school.
And then the food fight.
Between the opening salvo and the moment when their table was protectively ringed by Terrorists, the others were quite dignified and hardly moved. Sarah sat still momentarily, then came to her senses and slipped under the table. From this point of view she saw many pairs of corduroy, khaki, designer jean and chino pantlegs around the table, and saw too the folding partitions slide across.
Once the partitions were closed she emerged, mostly because she wanted to see who owned the brown polyester legs that had been dancing around the room in such agitation. The Terrorists grabbed her arms solicitously and hauled her to her feet, wanting to know if she had lost her ski mask in "all the action."
The man in the brown three-piecer was none other than Bartholomew (Wombat) Forksplit, Dean of Dining Services, who had been promoted to Dean Emeritus after his recovery from the nacho tortilla chip shard that had passed through his brain. No one knew where he came from— Tibet? Kurdistan? Abyssinia? Circassia? Since the accident, he had become known as Wombat the Marauder to his victims, mostly inconsiderate dorks who had broken Caf rules only to find this man gripping them in an old Bosnian or Tunisian martial arts hold that shorted out the major meridians of their nervous system, and shouting at them in a percussive accent that crackled like fat ground beef on a red-hot steam griddle. Some accused him of using the accident as an excuse to act like a madman, but no one doubted that he was pissed off.
When he saw the ex-President half-dragged from under a table by the beaming Terrorists, Forksplit released the knee of his current victim and speed-skated across the stained linoleum toward her, his tomato-sauce— spattered arms outstretched as if in supplication. Sarah pulled her arms free and backed up a step, but he stopped short of embracing her and cried, "Sarah! You, here? Indicates this that you are part of these— these asshole Terrorists? Please say no!" He stared piteously into her eyes, the little white scar on his forehead standing out vividly against his murderously flushed face. Sarah swallowed and glanced around the room, conscious of many ski masks and Terrorists looking at her.
"Oh, not really, I was just over here at another table. These guys were just helping me up. This is a real shame. I hope the B-men don't go on strike now."
A look of agony came over Wombat the Marauder's face at the mere mention of this idea, and he backed up, pirouetted and paced around their Cafeteria subdivision directing a soliloquy of anger and frustration at Sarah. "I joost— I don't know what the hell to do. I do everything in the world to deliver fine service. This is good food! No one believes that. They go off to other places and eat, come back and say, 'Yes Mr. Forksplit let me shake your hand your food is so good!! Best I have ever eaten!' But do these idiots understand? No, they throw barbells through the ceiling! All they can do with good food is throw it, like it is being a sports implement or something. You!"
Forksplit sprinted toward a tall thin fellow who had just slit one of the sliding partitions almost in half with a bayonet and plunged through, pulling a briefcase behind him. Under his arm this man carried a pistol-shaped flashlight, which he tried to pull out; but before Forksplit was able to reach him, several more people exploded through the slit, pointing back and complaining about high rudeness levels in the next room. With a bloodcurdling battle cry Forksplit flung his body through the breach and into the next compartment, where much loud smashing and yelling commenced.
Mari turned to Sarah, a big smile visible through her mouth-hole. "That was very nice of you, Sarah. It was sweet to think about Dean Forksplit's feelings."
"He put me in a hell of a spot," said Sarah, who was looking at Fred Fine and his light-gun and his bayonet. "I mean, what was I supposed to say?"
Mari did not follow, and laughed. "It was neat the way you didn't say something bad about the Terrorists just on his account." Fred Fine was stashing his armaments in his briefcase and staring at them. Sarah concluded that he had just come over to eavesdrop on their conversation and look at their secondary sex characteristics.
"Diplomatic? There's nothing I could say, Mari, that could be nasty enough to describe those assholes, and the sooner you realize that the better off you'll be."
"Oh, no, Sarah. That's not true. The Terrorists are nice guys, really."
"They are assholes."
"But they're nice. You said so yourself at Fantasy Island Nite, remember? You should get to know some of them."
Sarah nearly snapped that she had almost gotten to know some of them quite well on Fantasy Island Nite, but held her tongue, suddenly apprehensive. Had she said that on Fantasy Island Nite? And had Mar! known who she was? "Man, it is possible to be nice and be an asshole at the same time. Ninety-nine percent of all people are nice. Not very many are decent."
"Well, sometimes you don't seem terribly nice."
"Well, I don't wish to be nice. I don't care about nice. I've got more important things on my mind, like happiness."
"I don't understand you, Sarah. I like you so much, but I just don't understand you." Mari backed away a couple of paces on her spikes, gazing coolly at Sarah through her eye-holes. "Sometimes I get the feeling you're nothing but a clown." She stood and watched Sarah triumphantly.
DEATH TO CLOWN WOMAN! hung before Sarah's eyes. A knifing chill struck her and she was suddenly nauseated and lightheaded. She sat down on a table, assisted needlessly by Fred Fine.
"You'll be fine," he said confidently. "Just routine shock. Lie back here and we'll take care of you." He began making a clear space for her on the table.
Somehow, Sarah had managed to unzip the back pocket of her knapsack and wrap her fingers around the concealed grip of the revolver. Shocked, she forced herself to relax and think clearly. To scare the hell out of Mari was
neighborhood, the square had degenerated meteorically and become a chaotic intersection lined with dangerous discos, greasy spoons, tiny weedlike businesses, fast-food joints with armed guards and vacant buildings covered with acres of graffiti-festooned plywood and smelling of rats and derelicts' urine. The home office of the Big Wheel Petroleum Corporation had moved out some years ago to a Sunbelt location. It had retained ownership of its old twelve-story office building, and on its roof, thrust into the heavens on a dirty web of steel and wooden beams, the Big Wheel sign continued to beam out its pulsating message to everyone within five miles every evening. One of the five largest neon signs ever built, it was double-sided and square, a great block of lovely saturated cherry red with a twelve-spoked wagon wheel of azure and blinding white rotating eternally in the middle, underscored by heavy block letters saying BIG WHEEL that changed, letter by letter, from white to blue and back again, once every two revolutions. Despite the fact that the only things the corporation still owned in this area were eight gas stations, the building and the sign, some traditionalist in the corporate hierarchy made sure that the sign was perfectly maintained and that it went on every evening.
During the daytime the Big Wheel sign looked more or less like a billboard, unless you looked closely enough to catch the glinting of the miles of glass tubing bracketed to its surface. As night fell on the city, though, some mysterious hand, automatic or human, would throw the switch. Lights would dim for miles around and anchormen's faces would bend as enough electricity to power Fargo at dinnertime was sent glowing and incandescing through the glass tracery to beam out the Big Wheel message to the city. This was a particularly impressive sight from the social lounges on the east side of the Plex, because the sign was less than a quarter mile away and stood as the only structure between it and the horizon. On cloudless nights, when the sky over the water was deep violet and the stars had not yet appeared, the Big Wheel sign as seen from the Plex would first glow orange as its tubes caught the light of the sunset. Then the sun would set, and the sign would sit, a dull inert square against the heavens, and the headlights of the cars below would flicker on and the weak lights of the discos and the diners would come to life. Just when the sign was growing difficult to make out, the switch would be thrown and the Big Wheel would blaze out of the East like the face of God, causing thousands of scholarly heads to snap around and thousands of conversations to stop for a moment. Although Plex people had few opportunities to purchase gasoline, and many did not even know what the sign was advertising, it had become the emblem of a university without emblems and was universally admired. Art students created series of paintings called, for example, "Thirty-eight views of the Big Wheel sign," the Terrorists adopted it as their symbol and its illumination was used as the starting point for many parties. Even during the worst years of the energy crisis, practically no one at AM had protested against the idea of nightly beaming thousands of red-white-and-blue kilowatt-hours out into deep space while a hundred feet below derelicts lost their limbs to the cold.
The summit conference, the Meeting of Hearers, the Conclave of the Terrorist Superstars, was therefore held in the D24E lounge around sunset. About a dozen figures from various Terrorist factions came, including eight stereo hearers, two Big Wheel hearers, a laundry-machine hearer and a TV test-pattern hearer. Hudson Rayburn, Tiny's successor, got there last, and did not have a chair. So he went to the nearest room and walked in without knocking. The inhabitant was seated cross-legged on the bed, smoking a fluorescent red plastic bong and staring into a color-bar test pattern on a 21-inch TV. This was the wing of the TV test-pattern hearers, a variation which Rayburn's group found questionable. There were some things you could say about test patterns, though.
"The entire spectrum," observed Hudson Rayburn.
"Hail Roy G Biv," quoth the hearer in his floor's ritual greeting. Rayburn grabbed a chair, causing the toaster oven it was supporting to slide off onto the bed. "I must have this chair," he said. The hearer cocked his head and was motionless for several seconds, then spoke in a good-natured monotone. "Roy G Biv speaks with the voice of Ward Cleaver, a voice of great power. Yes. You are to take the chair. You are to bring it back, or I will not have a place for putting my toaster oven."
"I will bring it back," answered Rayburn, and carried it out. The hosts of the meeting had set up a big projection TV on one wall of the lounge, and the representatives of the Roy G Biv faction stared at the test pattern. One of them, tonight's emcee, spoke to the assembled Terrorists, glancing at the screen and pausing from time to time.
"The problem with the stereo-hearers is that everybody has stereos and so there are many different voices saying different things, and that is bad, because they cannot act together. Only a few have color TV5 that can show Roy G Biv, and only some have cable, which carries Roy G Biv on Channel 34 all the time, so we are unified."
"But there is only one Big Wheel. It is the most unified of all," observed Hudson Rayburn, staring out at the Big Wheel, glinting orange in the setting sun.
There was silence for a minute or so. A stereo-hearer, holding a large ghetto blaster on his lap, spoke up. "Ah, but it can be seen from many windows. So it's no better at all."
"The same is true of the stereo," said a laundry-machine hearer. "But there is only one dryer, the Seritech Super Big-Window 1500 in Laundry, which is numbered twenty-three and catches the reflection of the Astro-Nuke video game, and only a few can see it at a time, and I think it told me just the other day how we could steal it."
"So what?" said Hudson Rayburn. "The dryer is just a little cousin of the Big Wheel. The Big Wheel is the Father of all Speakers. Two years ago, before there were any hearers, Fred and I— Fred was the founder of the Wild and Crazy Guys, he is now a bond analyst— we sat in our lounge during a power blackout and smoked much fine peyote. And we looked out over the city and it was totally dark except for a few headlights. And then the power came back on, like with no warning, out of nowhere, just like that, and instantly, the streets, buildings, signs, everything, were there, and there is the Big Wheel hanging in space and god it just freaked our brains and we just sat there going 'Whooo!' and just being blown away and stuff! And then Big Wheel spoke to me! He spoke in the voice of Hannibal Smith on the A-Team and said, 'Son, you should come out here every time there is a blackout. This is fun. And if you buy some more of that peyote, you'll have more when you run out of what you have. Your fly is open and you should write to your mother, and I suggest that you drop that pre-calculus course before it saps your GPA and knocks you out of the running for law school.' And it was all exactly right! I did just what he said, he's been talking to me and my friends ever since, and he's always given great advice. Any other Speakers are just related to the Big Wheel."
There was another minute or two of silence. A stereo cult member finally said, "I just heard my favorite deejay from Youngstown. He says what we need is one hearer who can hear all the different speakers, who we can follow"
"Stop! The time comes!" cried Hudson Rayburn. He ran to the window and knelt, putting his elbows on the sill and clasping his hands. Just as he came to rest, the Big Wheel sign blazed out of the violet sky like a neutron bomb, its light mixing with that of Roy G Biv to make the lounge glow with unnatural colors. There was a minute or two of stillness, and then several people spoke at once.
"Someone's coming."
"Our leader is here."
"Let's see what this guy has to say."
Everyone now heard footsteps and a rhythmic slapping sound. The door opened and a tall thin scruffy figure strode in confidently. In one hand he was lugging a large old blue window fan which had a Go Big Red sticker stuck to its side. The grilles had been removed, exposing the blades, which had been painted bright colors, and as the man walked, the power cord slapped against the blades, making the sound that had alerted them. Wordlessly, he walked to the front of the group, put the fan up on the windowsill, drew the shades behind it to close off the view of the Big Wheel, and plugged it in. Another person had shut off Roy G Biv, and soon the room was mostly dark, inspiring a sleeping bat to wake up and flit around.
Once the fan was plugged in, they saw that its inside walls had been lined with deep purple black-light tubes, which caused the paint on the blades to glow fluorescently.
"Lo!" said the scruffy man, and rotated the fan's control to LO. The glowing blades began to spin and a light breeze blew into their faces. Those few who still bore stereos set them on the floor, and all stared mesmerized into the Fan.
"My name is Dex Fresser," said the new guy. "I am to tell you my story. Last semester, before Christmas break, I was at a big party on E31E. I was there to drink and smoke and stare down into the Big Wheel, which spoke to me regularly. At about midnight, Big Wheel spoke in the voice of the alien commander on my favorite video game. 'Better go pee before you lose it,' is what he said. So I went to pee. As I was standing in the bathroom peeing, the after-image of Big Wheel continued to hang in front of me, spinning on the wall over the urinal.
"I heard a noise and looked over toward the showers. There was a naked man with blood coming from his head. He was flopping around in the water. There was much steam, but the Go Big Red Fan blew the steam away, creeping toward him and making smoke and sparks of power. The alien commander spoke again, because I didn't know what to do. 'You'd better finish what you're doing,' it said, so I finished. Then I looked at the Fan again and the afterimage of the Big Wheel and the Fan became one in my sight and I knew that the Fan was the incarnation of the Big Wheel, come to lead us. I started for it, but it said, 'Better unplug me first. I could kill you, as I killed this guy. He used to be my priest but he was too independent.' So I unplugged Little Wheel and picked it up.
"It said, 'Get me out of here. I am smoking and the firemen will think I set off the alarm.' Yes, the fire alarm was ringing. So I took Little Wheel away and modified it as it told me, and today it told me I am to be your leader. Join me or your voices will become silent."
They had all listened spellbound, and when he was done, they jumped up with cheers and whoops. Dex Fresser bowed, smiling, and then, hearing a command, whirled around. The Fan had almost crept its way off the windowsill, and he saved it with a swoop of the hand.
In the middle of the month, as the ridges of packed grey snow around the Plex were beginning to settle and melt, negotiations between the administration and the MegaUnion froze solid and all B-men, professors, cletical workers and librarians went on strike. To detail the politics and posturings that led to this is nothing I'd like to do. Let's just say that when negotiations had begun six months before, the Union had sworn in the names of God, Death and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that unless granted a number of wild, vast demands they would all perform hara kiri in President Krupp's bedroom. The administration negotiators had replied that before approaching to within a mile of the bargaining table they would prefer to drink gasoline, drop their grandchildren into volcanoes, convert the operation into a pasta factory and move it to Spokane.
Nothing unusual so far; all assumed that they would compromise from those positions. All except for the B-men, that is. After some minor compromising on both sides, the Crotobaltislavonian bloc, which was numerous enough to control the Union, apparently decided to stand their ground. As the clock ticked to within thirty minutes of the deadline, the Administration people just stared at them, while the other MegaUnion people watched with sweaty lunatic grins, waiting for the B-men to show signs of reason. But no.
Krupp came on the tube and said that American Megaversity could not afford its union, and that there was no choice but to let the strike proceed. The corridors vibrated with whooping and dancing for a few hours, and the strike was on.
As the second semester lurched and staggered onward, I noted that my friends had a greater tendency to drop by my suite at odd times, insist they didn't want to bother me and sit around reading old magazines, examining my plants, leafing through cookbooks and so on. My suite was not exactly Grandma's house, but it had become the closest thing they had to a home. After the strike began, I saw even more of them. Living in the Plex was tolerable when you could stay busy with school and keep reminding yourself that you were just a student, but it was a slough of despond when your purpose in life was to wait for May.
I threw a strike party for them. Sarah, Casimir, Hyacinth, Virgil and Ephraim made up the guest list, and Fred Fine happened to stop by so that he could watch a Dr. Who rerun on my TV. We all knew that Fred Fine was weird, but at this point only Virgil knew how weird. Only Virgil knew that an S & S player had died in the sewers during one of Fred Fine's games, and that the young nerd-lord had simply disregarded it. The late Steven Wilson was still a Missing Person as far as the authorities were concerned.
Ephraim Klein was just as odd in his own way. We knew that his hated ex-roommate had died of a freak heart attack on the night of the Big Flush, but we didn't know Ephraim had anything to do with it. We were not alarmed by his strange personality because it was useful in parties— he would allow no conversation to flag or fail.
Virgil sat in a corner, sipping Jack Daniels serenely and staring through the floor. Casimir stayed near Sarah, who stayed near Hyacinth. Other people stopped in from time to time, but I haven't written them into the following transcript— which has been rearranged and guessed at quite a bit anyway.
HYACINTH. The strike will get rid of Krupp. After that everything will be fine.
EPHRAIM. How can you say that! You think the problem with this place is just S. S. Krupp?
BUD. Sarah, how's your forest coming along?
EPHRAIM. Everywhere you look you see the society coming apart. How do you blame S. S. Krupp alone for that?
SARAH. I haven't done much with it lately. It's just nice to have it there.
CASIMIR. Do you really think the place is getting worse? I think you're just seeing it more clearly now that classes are shut down.
HYACINTH. You were in Professor Sharon's office during the piano incident, weren't you?
FRED FINE. What do you propose we do, Ephraim?
EPHRAIM. Blow it up.
CASIMIR. Yeah, I was right there.
HYACINTH. So for you this place has seemed terrible right from the beginning. You've got a different perspective.
SARAH. Ephraim! What do you mean? How would it help any-thing to blow up the Big U?
EPHRAIM. I didn't say it would help, I said it would prevent further deterioration.
SARAH. What could be more deteriorated than a destroyed Plex?
EPHRAIM. Nothing! Get it?
SARAH. You do have a point. This building, and the bureaucracy here, can drive people crazy— divorce them from reality so they don't know what to do. Somehow the Plex has to go. But I don't think it should be blown up.
FRED FINE. Have you ever computed the explosive power necessary to destabilize the Plex?
EPHRAIM. Of course not!
CASIMIR. He's talking to me. No, I haven't.
HYACINTH. Is that nerd as infatuated with you as he looks?
SARAH. Uh… you mean Fred Fine?
HYACINTH. Yeah.
SARAH. I think so. Please, it's too disgusting.
HYACINTH. No shit.
FRED FINE. I have computed where to place the charges.
CASIMIR. It'd be a very complicated setup, wouldn't it? Lots of timed detonations?
BUD (drunk). So do you think that the decay of the society is actually built into the actual building itself?
SARAH. The reason he likes me is because he knows I carry a gun. He saw it in the Caf.
EPHRAIM. Of course! How else can you explain all this? It's too big and it's too uniform. Every room, every wing is just the same as the others. It's a giant sensory deprivation experiment.
HYACINTH. A lot of those science-fiction types have big sexual hangups. You ever look at a science-fiction magazine? All these women in brass bras with whips and chains and so on— dominatrices. But the men who read that stuff don't even know it.
EPHRAIM. Did you know that whenever I play anything in the key of C, the entire Wing vibrates?
FRED FINE. This one worked out the details from the blueprints. All you need is to find the load-bearing columns and make some simple calculations.
EPHRAIM. Hey! Casimir!
CASIMIR. Yeah?
SARAH. What's scary is that all of these fucked-up people, who have problems and don't even know it, are going to go out and make thirty thousand dollars a year and be important. Well all be clerk-typists.
EPHRAIM. You're in physics. What's the frequency of a low C? Like in a sixty-four-foot organ pipe?
CASIMIR. Hell, I don't know. That's music theory.
EPHRAIM. Shit. Hey, Bud, you got a tape measure?
CASIMIR. I'd like to take music theory sometime. One of my professors has interesting things to say about the similarity between the way organ pipes are controlled by keys and stops, and the way random-access memory bits are read by computers.
BUD. I've got an eight-footer.
FRED FINE. This one doesn't listen to that much music. It would be pleasant to have time for the luxuries of life. In some D & D scenarios, musicians are given magical abilities. Einstein and Planck used to play violin sonatas together.
EPHRAIM. We have to measure the length of the hallways!
The conversation split up into three parts. Ephraim and I went out to measure the hallway. Hyacinth was struck by a craving for Oreos and repaired to the kitchen with a fierce determination that none dared question. Casimir followed her. Sarah, Fred Fine and Virgil stayed in the living room.
FRED FINE. What's your major?
SARAH. English.
FRED FINE. Ah, very interesting. This one thought you were in Forestry.
SARAH. Why?
FRED FINE. Didn't host mention your forest?
SARAH. That's different. It's what I painted on my wall.
FRED FINE. Well, well, well. A little illegal room painting, eh? Don't worry, I wouldn't report you. Is this part of an other-world scenario, by any chance? SARAH. Hell, no, it's for the opposite. Look, this place is already an other-world scenario.
FRED FINE. No. That's where you're wrong. This is reality. It is a self-sustaining ecosociosystem powered by inter-universe warp generators.
(There is a long silence.)
VIRGIL. Fred, what did you think of Merriam's Math Physics course?
(There is another long silence.)
FRED FINE. Well. Very good. Fascinating. I would recommend it.
SARAH. Where's the bathroom?
FRED FINE. Ever had to pull that pepper grinder of yours on one of those Terrorist guys?
SARAH. Maybe we can discuss it some other time.
FRED FINE. I'd recommend more in the way of a large-gauge shotgun.
SARAH. I'll be back.
FRED FINE. Of course, in a magical universe it would turn into a two-handed broadsword, which would be difficult for a petite type to wield.
Meanwhile Casimir and Hyacinth talked in the kitchen. They had met once before, when they had stopped by my suite on the same evening; they didn't know each other well, but Casimir had heard enough to suspect that she was not particularly heterosexual. She knew a fair amount about him through Sarah.
HYACINTH. You want some Oreos too?
CASIMIR. No, not really. Thanks.
HYACINTH. Did you want to talk about something?
CASIMIR. How did you know?
HYACINTH (scraping Oreo filling with front teeth). Well, sometimes some things are easy to figure out.
CASIMIR. Well, I'm really worried about Sarah. I think there's something wrong with her. It's really strange that she resigned as President when she was doing so well. And ever since then, she's been kind of hard to get along with.
HYACINTH. Kind of bitchy?
CASIMIR. Yeah, that's it.
HYACINTH. I don't think she's bitchy at all. I think she's just got a lot on her mind, and all her good friends have to be patient with her while she works it out.
CASIMIR. Oh, yeah, I agree. What I was thinking— well, this is none of my business.
HYACINTH. What?
CASIMIR. Oh, last semester I figured out that she was dating some other guy, you know? Though she wouldn't tell me anything about him. Did she have some kind of a breakup that's been painful for her?
HYACINTH. No, no, she and her lover are getting along wonderfully. But I'm sure she'd appreciate knowing how concerned you are.
(Long silence.)
HYACINTH (slinging one arm around Casimir's waist, feeding Oreo into his mouth with other hand). Hey, it feels terrible, doesn't it? Look, Casimir, she likes you a hell of a lot. I mean it. And she hates to put you through this kind of pain— or she wishes you wouldn't put yourself through it. She thinks you're terrific.
CASIMIR (blubbering).Well what the hell does it take? All she does is say I'm wonderful. Am I unattractive? Oh, I forgot. Sorry, I've never talked to a, ah
HYACINTH. You can say it.
CASIMIR. Lesbian. Thanks.
HYACINTH. You're welcome.
CASIMIR. Why can she look at one guy and say, "He's a friend," and look at this other guy and say, "He's a lover?"
HYACINTH. Instinct. There's no way you can go against her instincts, Casimir, don't even think about it. As for you, I think you're kind of attractive, but then, I'm a dyke.
CASIMIR. Great. The only woman in the world, besides my mother, who thinks I'm good looking is a lesbian.
HYACINTH. Don't think about it. You're hurting yourself.
CASIMIR. God, I'm sorry to dump this on you. I don't even know you.
HYACINTH. It's a lot easier to talk when you don't have to worry about the sexual thing, isn't it?
CASIMIR. That's for sure. Good thing I've got my sunglasses, no one can tell I've been crying.
HYACINTH. Let's talk more later. We've abandoned Sarah with Fred Fine, you know.
CASIMIR. Shit.
Casimir pulled himself together and they went back to the living room. Shortly, Ephraim and I returned from the hallway with our announcement.
BUD. Isn't it interesting how the alcohol goes to your head when you get up and start moving around?
EPHRAIM. The hallway on each side of each wing is a hundred twenty-eight feet and a few inches long. But the fire doors in the middle cut it exactly in half— sixty-four feet!
BUD. And three inches.
EPHRAIM. So they resonate at low C.
FRED FINE. Very interesting.
VIRGIL. Casimir, when are you going to stop playing mum about Project Spike?
CASIMIR. What? Don't talk about that!
SARAH. What's Project Spike?
CASIMIR. Nothing much. I was playing with rats.
FRED FINE. What does this one hear about rats?
VIRGIL. Casimir was trying to prove the existence of rat parts or droppings in the Cafeteria food through a radioactive tracer system. He came up with some very interesting results. But he's naturally shy, so he hasn't mentioned them to anyone.
CASIMIR. The results were screwed up! Anyone can see that.
VIRGIL. No way. They weren't random enough to be considered as errors. Your results indicated a far higher level of Carbon-14 in the food than could be possible, because they could never eat that much poison. Right?
CASIMIR. Right. And they had other isotopes that couldn't possibly be in the rat poison, such as Cesium— 137. The entire thing was screwed up.
FRED FINE. How large are the rats in question?
CASIMIR. Oh, pretty much your average rats, I guess.
FRED FINE. But they are not— they were normal? Like this?
CASIMIR. About like that, yeah. What did you expect?
VIRGIL. Have you analyzed any other rats since Christmas?
CASIMIR. Yeah. Damn it.
VIRGIL. And they were just as contaminated.
CASIMIR. More so. Because of what i did,
SARAH. What's wrong, Casimir?
CASIMIR. Well, I sort of lost some plutonium down an elevator shaft in the Big Flush.
(Ephraim gives a strange hysterical laugh.)
FRED FINE. God. You've created a race of giant rats, Casimir. Giant rats the size of Dobermans.
BUD. Giant rats?
HYACINTH. Giant rats?
BUD. Virgil, explain everything to us, okay?
VIRGIL. I am sure that there are giant rats in the sewer tunnels beneath the Plex. I am sure that they're scared of strobe lights, and that strobes flashing faster than about sixteen per second drive them crazy. This may be related to the frequency of muzzle flashes produced by certain automatic weapons, but that's just a hypothesis. I know that there are organized activities going on at a place in the tunnels that are of a secret, highly technological, heavily guarded nature. As for the rats, I assume they were created by mutation from high levels of background radiation. This included Strontium-90 and Cesium— 137 and possibly an iodine isotope. The source of the radiation could possibly have been what Casimir lost down the elevator shaft, but I suspect it has more to do with this secret activity. In any case, we now have a responsibility. We need to discover the source of the radioactivity, look for ways to control the rats and, if possible, divine the nature of the secret activity. I have a plan of attack worked up, but I'll need help. I need people familiar with the tunnels, like Fred; people who know how to use guns— we have some here; big people in good physical condition, like Bud; people who understand the science, like Casimir; and maybe even someone who knows all about Remote Sensing, such as Professor Bud again.
An advantage of the Plex was that it taught you to accept any weirdness immediately. We did not question Virgil. He memorized a list of equipment he'd have to scrounge for us, and Hyacinth grilled us until we had settled on March 31 as our expedition date. Fred Fine said he knew where he could get authentic dumdums for our guns, and tried to tell us that the best way to kill a rat was with a sword, giving a lengthy demonstration until Virgil told him to sit down. Once we had mobilized into an amateur commando team, we found that our partying spirit was spent, and soon we were all home trying vainly to sleep.
The strike itself has been studied and analyzed to death, so I'm spared writing a full account. For the most part the picketers stayed within the Plex. Their intent was to hamper activities inside the Plex, not to seal it off, and they feared that once they went outside, S. S. Krupp would not let them back in again. Some protesters did work the entrances, though. A delegation of B-men and professors set up an informational picket at the Main Entrance, and another two dozen established a line to bar access to the loading docks. Most of these were Crotobaltislavonians who paraded tirelessly in their heavy wool coats and big fur hats; with them were some black and Hispanic workers, dressed more conventionally, and three political science professors, each wearing high-tech natural-tone synthetic-insulated expedition parkas computer-designed to keep the body dry while allowing perspiration to pass out. Most of the workers sported yellow or orange work gloves, but the professors opted for warm Icelandic wool mittens, presumably to keep their fingers supple in case they had to take notes.
The picket's first test came at 8:05 A.M., when the morning garbage truck convoy arrived. The trucks turned around and left with no trouble. Forcing garbage to build up inside the Plex seemed likely to make the administration more openminded. Therefore the only thing allowed to leave the Plex was the hazardous chemical waste from the laboratories; run-of-the-mill trash could only be taken out if the administration and Trustees hauled it away in their Cadillacs.
A little later, a refrigerated double-bottom semi cruised up, fresh and steaming from a two-day, 1500-mile trek from Iowa, loaded with enough rock-frozen beef to supply American Megaversity for two days. This was out of the question, as the people working in the Cafeteria now were all scabs. The political science professors failed to notice that their comrades had all dropped way back and split up into little groups and put their signs on the ground. They walked toward the semi, waving their arms over their heads and motioning it back, and finally the enormous gleaming machine sighed and slowed. An anarcho-Trotskyite with blow-dried hair and a thin blond mustache stepped up to the driver's side and squinted way up above his head at a size 25 black leather glove holding a huge chained rawhide wallet which had been opened to reveal a Teamsters card. The truck driver said nothing. The professor started to explain that this was a picket line, then paused to read the Teamsters card. Stepping back a little and craning his neck, he could see only black greased-back hair and the left lens of a pair of mirror sunglasses.
"Great!" said the professor. "Glad to see you're in solidarity with the rest of us workers. Can you get out of here with no problem, or shall I direct you?" He smiled at the left-hand lens of the driver's sunglasses, trying to make it a tough smile, not a cultured pansyish smile.
"You AFL-CIO," rumbled the trucker, sounding like a rough spot in the idle of the great diesel. "Me Teamsters. I'm late." The professor admired the no-nonsense speech of the common people, but sensed that he was failing to pick up on some message the trucker was trying to send him. He looked around for another worker who might be able to understand, but saw that the only people within shotgun-blast range of the truck had Ph.D.'s. Of these, one was jogging up to the truck with an impatient look on his face. He was a slightly gray-tinged man in his early forties, who in consultation with his orthopedist had determined that the running gait least damaging to his knees was a shuffling motion with the arms down to the sides. Thus he approached the truck. "Turn it around, buster, this is a strike. You're crossing a picket line."
There was another rumble from the truck window. This sounded more like laughter than words. The trucker withdrew his hand for a moment, then swung it back out like a wrecking ball. Balanced on the tip of his index finger was a quarter. "See this?" said the trucker.
"Yeah," said the professors in unison.
"This is a quarter. I put it in that pay phone and there's blood on the sidewalks."
The professors looked at each other, and at the third professor, who had stopped in his space-age hiking-boot tracks. They all retreated to the other end of the lot for a discussion of theory and praxis as the truck eased up to the loading dock. They watched the trucker carry his two-hundred pound steer pieces into the warehouse, then concluded that a policy decision should be made at a higher level. The real target of this picket ought to be the scabs working the warehouse and Cafeteria. All the Crotobaltislavonians had gone inside, and the professors, finding themselves in an empty lot with only the remains of a few dozen steers to keep them company, decided to re-deploy inside the Plex.
There things were noisier. People who never engage in violence are quick to talk about it, especially when the people they are arguing with are elderly Greek professors unlikely to be carrying tire chains or knives. Of course, the Greek professors, who tried to engage the picketers in Socratic dialogue as they broke the picket lines, were not subject to much more than occasional pushing. Among younger academics there were genuine fights. A monetarist from Connecticut finally came to blows with an Algerian Maoist with whom he'd been trading scathing articles ever since they had shared an office as grad students. This fight turned out to be of the tedious kind held by libidinous orthodontists' sons at suburban video arcades. The monetarist tried to break through the line around the Economics bloc, just happening to attack that part of the line where the Maoist was standing. After some pushing the monetarist fell down with the Algerian on top of him. They got up and the monetarist missed with some roundhouse kicks taken from an aerobic dance routine. The Maoist whipped off his designer belt and began to whirl the buckle around his head as though it were dangerous. The monetarist watched indecisively, then ran up and stuck out his arm so that the belt wrapped around it. As he had his eyes closed, he did not know where he was going, but as though guided by some invisible hand he rammed into the Algerian's belly with his head and they fell onto a stack of picket signs and received minor injuries. The Algerian grabbed the monetarist's Adam Smith tie and tried to strangle him, but the latter's gold collar pin prevented the knot from tightening. He grabbed the Maoist's all-natural-fiber earthtone slacks and yanked them down to midthigh, occasioning a strange cry from his opponent, who removed one hand from the Adam Smith tie to prevent the loss of further garments; the monetarist grasped the Algerian's pinkie and yanked the other hand free. Finding that they had made their way to the opposite side of the picket line, he got up and skipped away, though the Maoist hooked his foot with a picket sign and hindered him considerably.
Students wanting to attend classes in the ROTC bloc found that they need only assume fake Kung Fu positions and the skinny pale fanatics there would get out of their way. Otherwise, students going to classes taught by nonunion professors worried only about verbal abuse. Unless they were aggressively obnoxious, like Ephraim Klein, they were in no physical peril. Ephraim went out of his way to cross picket lines, and unleashed many awe-inspiring insults he had apparently been saving up for years. Fortunately for him he spent most of his time around the Philosophy bloc, where the few picketing professors devoted most of their time to smoking cigarettes, exchanging dirty jokes and discussing basketball.
The entrance to the Cafeteria was a mess. The MegaUnion could never agree on what to do about it, because to allow students inside was to support S. S. Krupp's scab labor, and to block the place off was to starve the students. Depriving the students of meals they had already paid for was no way to make friends. Finally the students were encouraged to prepare their own meals as a gesture of support. In an attempt at plausibility, some efforts were mounted to steal food from Caf warehouses, but to no avail. The radicals advocated conquering the kitchen by main force, but all entrances were guarded by private guards with cudgels, dark glasses and ominous bulges. The radicals therefore used aerial bombardment, hurling things from the towers in hopes that they would crash through Tar City and into the kitchens. This was haphazard, though, and moderate MegaUnion members opposed it violently; as a result, students who persisted in dining at the Caf were given merely verbal abuse. As for the scabs themselves, they were determined-looking people, and activists attempting to show them the error of their ways tried not to raise their voices or to make any fast moves.