March (missing text)
   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.
   Then, seven days into the strike, it really happened: what the union had never dreamed of, what I, sitting in my suite reading the papers and plunging into a bitter skepticism, had been awaiting with a sort of sardonic patience. The Board of Trustees announced that American Megaversity was shutting down for this year, that credit would be granted for unfinished courses and that an early graduation ceremony would take place in mid-April. Everyone was to be out of the Plex by the end of March.
   "Well," said S. S. Krupp on the tube, "I don't know what all the confusion's about. Seems to me we are being quite straightforward. We can't afford our faculty and workers. We can't meet our commitment to our students for this semester. About all we can do is clean the place out, hire some new faculty, re-enroll and get going again. God knows there are enough talented academics out there who need jobs. So we're asking all those people in the Plex to clear out as soon as they can."
   The infinite self-proclaimed cleverness of the students enabled them to dismiss it as a fabulous lie and a ham-fisted maneuver. Once this opinion was formed by the few, it was impossible for the many to disagree, because to believe Krupp was to proclaim yourself a dupe. Few students therefore planned to leave; those who did found it perilous.
   The Terrorists had decided that leaving the Plex was too unusual an idea to go unchallenged, and the Big Wheel backed them up on it. So the U-Hauls and Jartrans stacked up in the access lot began to suffer dents, then craters, then cave-ins, as golf balls, chairs, bricks, barbell weights and flaming newspaper bundles zinged out of the smoggy morning sky at their terminal velocities and impacted on their shiny tops. Few rental firms in the City had lent vehicles to students in the first place; those that did quickly changed their policies, and became dour and pitiless as desperate sophomores paraded before their reception desks waving wads of cash and Mom-and-Dad's credit cards.
   The Plexodus, as it was dubbed by local media, dwindled to a dribble of individual escapes in which students would sprint from the cover of the Main Entrance carrying whatever they could hold in their arms and dive into the back seats of cars idling by on the edge of the Parkway, cars which then would scurry off as fast as their meager four cylinders could drag them before the projectiles hurled from the towers above had had time to find their targets.
   I had seen enough of Krupp to know that the man meant what he said. I also had seen enough of the Plex to know that no redemption was possible for the place– no last-minute injection of reason could save this patient from its overdose of LSD and morphine. Lucy agreed with me. You may vaguely remember her as Hyacinth's roommate. Lucy and I hit it off pretty well, especially as March went on. The shocks and chaos that took everyone else by surprise were just what we had been expecting, and both of us were surprised that our friends hadn't foreseen it. Of course our perspectives were different from theirs; we both had slaves for great-grandparents and the academic world was foreign to our backgrounds. Through decades of work our families had put us into universities because that was the place to be; when we finally arrived, we found we were just in time to witness the end result of years of dry rot. No surprise that things looked different to us.
   Lucy and I began making long tours of the Plex to see what further deterioration had taken place. By this time the Terrorists outnumbered their would-be victims. The notion that the strike might be resolved restrained them for a while, but then came the pervasive sense that the Big U was dead and the rumor that it had already been slated for demolition. Obviously there was no point in maintaining the place if destruction loomed, so all the Terrorists had to worry about were the administration guards.
   The Seritech Super Big-Window 1500 in Laundry soon disappeared, carted off by its worshipers. Unfortunately the machine didn't work on their wing, which lacked 240-volt outlets. Using easy step-by-step instructions provided by its voice, they tore open the back and arranged a way of rotating it by hand whenever they needed to know what to make for dinner or what to watch on TV.

   In those last days of March it was difficult to make sense of anything. It was hinted that the union was splitting up, that the faculty had become exasperated by the implacable Crotobaltislavonians and planned to make a separate peace with the Trustees. This caused further infighting within the decaying MegaUnion and added to the confusion. Electricity and water were shut off, then back on again; students on the higher floors began to throw their garbage down the open elevator shafts, and fire alarms rang almost continuously until they were wrecked by infuriated residents. But we thought obsessively about Virgil's reference to secret activities in the sewers and developed the paranoid idea that everything around us was strictly superficial and based on a much deeper stratum of intrigue. It's hard enough to follow events such as these without having to keep the mind open for possible conspiracies and secrets behind every move. This uncertainty made it impossible for us to form any focused picture of the tapestry of events, and we became impatient for Saturday night, tired of having to withhold judgment until we knew all the facts. What had been conceived as an almost recreational visit to the Land of the Rats had become, in our minds, the search for the central fact of American Megaversity.
   A hoarse command was shouted, and a dozen portable lamps shone out at once. Forty officers of MARS found themselves in a round low-ceilinged chamber that served as the intersection of two sewer mains. They stood at ease around the walls as Fred Fine, in the center, delivered his statement.
   "We've never revealed the existence of this area before. It's our only Level Four Security Zone large enough for mass debriefings. "All of you have been in MARS for at least three years and have performed well. Most of you didn't understand why we included physical fitness standards as part of our promotion system. Things got a little clearer when we introduced you to live-action gaming. Now, this– this is the hard part to explain."
   All watched respectfully as he stared at the ceiling. Finally he resumed his address, though his voice had become as harsh and loud as that of a barbarian warlord addressing his legions. The officers now began to concentrate; the game had begun, they must enter character.
   "You know about the Central Bifurcation that separates Magic and Technology. Some of you have probably noticed that lately Leakage has been very bad. Well, I've got tough news. It's going to get a lot worse. We are approaching the most critical period in the history of Plexor. If we do what needs to be done, we can stop Leakage for all time and enter an eternal golden age. If we fail, the Leakage will become like a flood of water from a broken pipe. Mixture will be everywhere, Purification will be impossible, and mediocrity will cover the universes for all time like a dark cloud. Plexor will become a degenerate, pre-warp-drive society.
   "That's right. The responsibility for this universe-wide task falls on our shoulders. We are the chosen band of warriors and heroes called for in the prophecies of Magic-Plexor, foretold by JANUS 64 itself. That means you'll need a crash course on Plexor and how it works. That's why we're here.
   "Consuela, known in Magic-Plexor as the High Priestess Councilla, is a top-notch programmer in Techno-Plexor. She therefore knows all there is to know about the Two Faces of Shekondar. Councilla, over to you."
   "Good evening," came the voice from Fred Fine's big old vacuum-tube radio receiver. She sounded very calm and soft, as though drugged. "This is Councilla, High Priestess of Shekondar the Fearsome, King of Two Faces. Prepare your minds for the Awful Secrets. Plexor was created by the Guild, a team consisting half of Technologists and half of Sorcerers who operated in separate universes through the devices of Keldor, the astral demigod whose brain hemispheres existed on either side of the Central Bifurcation. Under Keldor's guidance the colony of Plexor was created: a self-contained ecosystem capable of functioning in any environment, drawing energy and raw materials from any source, and resisting any magical or technological attack. When Plexor was completed, it was populated by selecting the best and the brightest from all the Thousand Galaxies and comparing them in a great tournament. The field of competition was split down the middle by the Central Bifurcation, and on one side the contestants fought with swords and sorcery, while on the other they vied in tests of intellectual skill. The champions were inputted to Plexor; we are their output.
   "The Guild had to place an overseer over Plexor. It must be the Operating System for the Technological side, and the Prime Deity for the Magic side, and in Plexor it must be omniscient and all-powerful. Thus, the Guild generated Shekondar the Fearsome/JANUS 64, the Organism that inhabits and controls the colony. The creation of this system took twice as long as the building of Plexor itself, and in the end Keldor died, his mind overloaded by massive transfers of data from one hemisphere to the other, the Boundary within his mind destroyed and the contents Mixed hopelessly. But out of his death came the King of Two Faced, that which in Techno-Plexor is JANUS 64 and in Magic Plexor, Shekondar the Fearsome.
   "Though the last member of the Guild died two thousand years ago, most Plexorians have revered the King of Two Faces. But in these dark days, at the close of this age, those who know the story of Shekondar/JANUS 64 are very few. We who have kept the flame alive have trained your bodies and minds to accept this responsibility. Today, our efforts output in batch. From this room will march the Grand Army celebrated in the prophecies and songs of Magic-Plexor, whose coming has been foretold even in the seemingly random errors of JANUS 64; the band of heroes which will debug Plexor, which will fight Mixture in the approaching crisis. And for those of you who have failed to detect Mixture, who scoff that Magic might have crossed the Central Bifurcation:
   Behold!"
   The listeners had now allowed themselves to sink deep into their characters, and Councilla's words had begun to mesmerize them. Though a few had grinned at the silliness spewing out of the big speakers, the oppressive seriousness and magical unity that filled this dank chamber had silenced them; soon, cut off from the normal world, they began to doubt themselves, and heeded the Priestess. As she built to a climax and revealed the most profound secrets of Plexor, many began to sweat and tingle, fidgeting with terrified energy. When she cried, "Behold!" the spell was bound up in a word. The room became silent with fear as all wondered what demonic demonstration she had conjured up.
   A sssh! was heard, and it avalanched into a loud, general hiss. When that sound died away, it was easy to hear a soft, cacophonous noise, a jumble of sharp high tones that sounded like a distant kazoo band. The sound seemed to come from one of the tunnels, though echoes made it hard to tell which one. It was approaching quickly. Suddenly and rapidly, everyone cleared away from the four tunnel openings and plastered against the walls. Only when all the others had found places did Klystron the Impaler move. He walked calmly through the center of the room, leaving the radio receiver and speakers in the middle, and found himself a place in front of a hushed squadron of swordsmen. The roar swelled to a scream; a bat the size of an eagle pumped out of a tunnel, took a fast turn around the room, sending many of the men to their knees, then plunged decisively into another passage. As the roar exploded into the open, in the garish artificial light the Grand Army saw a swarm of enormous fat brown-grey lash-tailed bright-eyed screaming frothing rats vomit from the tunnel, veer through the middle of the room and compress itself into the opening through which the giant bat had flown. Some of them smashed headlong into the old boxy radio, sending it sprawling across the floor, and before it had come to rest, five rats had parted from the stream and demolished it, scything their huge gleaming rodent teeth through the plywood case as though it were an orange peel, prying the apparatus apart, munching into its glass-and-metal innards with insane passion. Their frenzy lasted for several seconds; their brothers had all gone; and they emitted piercing shrieks and scuttled off into the tunnel, one trailing behind a streak of twisted wire and metal

   Most everyone save Klystron sat on the floor in a fetal position, arms crossed over faces, though some had drawn swords or clubs, prepared to fight it out. None moved for two minutes, lest they draw another attack. When the warriors began to show life again, they moved with violent trembling and nauseated dizziness and the most perfect silence they could attain. No one strayed from the safety of the walls except for Klystron the Impaler/Chris the Systems Programmer, who paced to a spot where a thousand rat footprints had stomped a curving highway into the thin sludge. Hardly anyone here, he knew, had been convinced of the Central Bifurcation, much less of the danger of Mixture. That was understandable, given the badly Mixed environment which had twisted their minds. Klystron/Chris had done all he could to counter such base thinking, but the rise of the giant rats, and careful preparation by him and Councilla and Chip Dixon, had provided proof.
   He let them think it over. It was not an easy thing, facing up to one's own importance; even he had found it difficult. Finally he spoke out in a clear and firm voice, and every head in the room snapped around to pay due respect to their leader.
   "Do I have a Grand Army?"
   The mumbled chorus sounded promising. Klystron snapped his sword from its scabbard and held it on high, making sure to avoid electrical cables. "All hail Shekondar the Fearsome!" he trumpeted.
   Swords, knives, chains and clubs crashed out all around and glinted in the mist. "All hail Shekondar the Fearsome!" roared the army in reply, and four times it was answered by echoes from the tunnels. Klystron/Chris listened to it resonate, then spoke with cool resolve: "It is time to begin the Final Preparations."
   An advantage of living in a decaying civilization was that nobody really cared if you chose to roam the corridors laden with armfuls of chest waders, flashlights, electrical equipment and weaponry. We did receive alarmed scrutiny from some, and boozy inquiries from friendly Terrorists, but were never in danger from the authorities. A thirty-minute trek through the deepening chaos of the Plex took us to the Burrows, which were still inhabited by people devoted to such peaceful pursuits as gaming, computer programming, research and Star Trek reruns.
   From here a freight elevator took us to the lowest sublevel, where Fred Fine led us through dingy hallways plastered with photos of nude Crotobaltislavonian princesses until we came to a large room filled with plumbing. From here, Virgil used his master key to let us into a smaller room, from which a narrow spiral staircase led into the depths.
   "I go first," said Virgil quietly, "with the Sceptre. Hyacinth follows with her .44. Bud follows her with the heavy gloves, then Sarah and Casimir with the backpacks, and Fred in the rear with his sixteen-gauge. No noise."
   After one or two turns of the stair we had to switch on our headlamps. The trip down was long and tense, and we seemed to make a hellacious racket on the echoing metal treads. I kept my beam on the blazing white-gold beacon of Virgil's hair and listened to the breathing and the footsteps behind me. The air had a harsh damp smell that told me I was sucking in billions of microbes of all descriptions with each breath. Toward the bottom we slipped on our gas masks, and I found I was breathing much faster than I needed to.
   The rats were waiting a full fifty feet above the bottom. One had his mouth clamped over Virgil's lower leg before he had switched on the Sceptre of Cosmic Force. The flashing drove away the rest of the rats, who tumbled angrily down the stair on top of one another, but the first beast merely clamped down harder and hung on, too spazzed out to move. Fortunately, Hyacinth did not try to shoot it on the spot. I slipped past, flexed my big elbow-length padded gloves, and did battle with the rat. The rodent teeth had not penetrated the soccer shinguards Virgil wore beneath his waders, so I took my time, relaxing and squatting down to look into the animal's glowering white-rimmed eye. His bared chisel teeth, a few inches long and an inch wide, flickered purple-yellow with each flash of the strobe. Having sliced through Virgil's waders to expose the colorful plastic shinguard, the rat now tried to gnaw its way through the obstacle without letting go. I did not have the strength to pull its mouth open.
   "A German shepherd can exert hundreds of pounds of jaw force," said Fred Fine, standing above and peering over Casimir's shoulder with scientific coolness.
   The rat was not impressed by any of this.
   "Let's go for a clean kill," suggested its victim with a trace of strain, "and then we'll have our sample."
   I bashed in the back of its head with an oaken leg I had foresightedly unscrewed from my kitchen table for the occasion. The rat just barely fit into a large heavy-duty leaf bag; Virgil twist-tied it shut and we left it there.
   And so into the tunnels. The sewers were unusually fluid that night as thousands of cubic feet of beer made its traditional way through the digestive tracks of the degenerates upstairs and into the sanitary system. Hence we stuck to the catwalks along the sides of the larger tunnels– as did the rats. The Sceptre was hard on our eyes, so Virgil waited until they were perilously close before switching it on and driving them in squalling bunches into the stream below. We did not have to use the guns, though Fred Fine insisted on shooting his flash gun at a rat to see how they liked it. Not at all, as it happened, and Fred Fine pronounced it "very interesting."
   Casimir said, "Where did my radioactive source fall to? Are we going anywhere near there?"
   "Good point," said Fred Fine. "Let's steer clear of that. Don't want blasted 'nads."
   "I know where it went, but it's not there now," said Virgil. "The rats ate everything. Some rat obviously got a free surprise in with his paraffin, but I don't know where he ended up.' Fred Fine began to point out landmarks: where he had left the corpse of the Microwave Lizard, long since eaten by you know what; where Steven Wilson had experienced his last and biggest surprise; the tunnel that led to the Sepulchre of Keldor. His voice alternated between the pseudo-scientific dynamo hum of Fred Fine and the guttural baritone of the war hero. We had heard this stuff from him for a couple of weeks now, but down in the tunnels it really started to perturb us. Most people, on listening to a string of nonsense, will tend to doubt their own sanity before they realize that the person who is jabbering at them is really the one with the damaged brain. That night, tramping through offal, attacking giant rats with a strobe light and listening to the bizarre memoirs of Klystron, most of us were independently wondering whether or not we were crazy. So when we asked Fred Fine for explanations, it was not because we wanted to hear more Klystron stories (as he assumed); it was because we wanted to get an idea of what other people were thinking. We were quickly able to realize that the world was indeed okay, that Fred Fine was bonkers and we were fine.
   Hundreds of cracked and gnawed bones littered one intersection, and Virgil identified it as where he had discovered the useful properties of the Sceptre. This area was high and dry, as these things went, and many rats lurked about. Virgil switched the Sceptre on for good, forcing them back to the edge of the dark, where they chattered and flashed their red eyes. Hyacinth stuffed wads of cotton in her ears, apparently in case of a shootout.
   "Let's set up the 'scope," Virgil suggested. Casimir swung off his pack and withdrew a heavily padded box, from which he took a small portable oscilloscope. This device had a tiny TV screen which would display sound patterns picked up by a shotgun microphone which was also in the pack. As the 'scope warmed up, Casimir plugged the microphone cord into a socket on its front. A thin luminous green line traced across the middle of the screen.
   Virgil aimed the mike down the main passageway and turned it on. The line on the screen split into a chaotic tangle of dim green static. Casimir played with various knobs, and quickly the wild flailing of the signal was compressed into a pattern of random vibes scrambling across the screen. "White noise," said Fred Fine. "Static to you laymen."
   "Keep an eye on it," said Virgil, and pointed the mike down the smaller side tunnel. The white noise was abruptly replaced by nearly vertical lines marching across the screen. Casimir compressed the signal down again, and we saw that it was nothing more than a single stationary sine wave, slightly unruly but basically stable.
   "Very interesting," said Fred Fine.
   "What's going on?" Sarah asked.
   "This is a continuous ultrasonic tone," said Virgil. "It's like an unceasing dog whistle. It comes from some artificial source down that tunnel. You see, when I point the mike in most directions we get white noise, which is normal. But this is a loud sound at a single pitch. To the rats it would sound like a drawn-out note on an organ. That explains why they cluster in this particular area; it's music to their ears, though it's very simple music. In fact, it's monotonous."
   "How did you know to look for this?" asked Sarah.
   Virgil shrugged. "It was plausible that an installation as modern and carefully guarded as the one I saw would have some kind of ultrasonic alarm system. It's pretty standard."
   "Very interesting," said Fred Fine.
   "It's like sonar. Anything that disturbs the echo, within a certain range, sets off the alarm. Here's the question: why don't the rats set it off?"
   "Some kind of barrier keeps them away," said Casimir.
   "I agree. But I didn't see any barrier. When I was here before, they could run right up to the door– they had to be fought off with machine guns. They must have put up a barrier since I was last down here. What that means to us is this: we can go as far as the barrier, whatever it may be, without any fear of setting off the alarm system."
   We moved down the tunnel in a flying wedge, making use of table leg, Sceptre and sword as necessary. Soon we arrived at the barrier, which turned out to be insubstantial but difficult to miss: a frame of angle-irons welded together along the walls and ceiling, hung with dozens of small, brilliant spotlights. At this point, any rat would find itself bathed in blinding light and turn back in terror and pain. Beyond this wall of light there was only a single line of footprints– human– in the bat guano. "Someone's been changing the light bulbs," concluded Sarah.
   The fifty feet of corridor preceding the light-wall were littered almost knee-deep in glittering scraps of tinfoil and other bright objects, including the remains of Fred Fine's radio. "This is their hangout," said Hyacinth. "They must like the music."
   "They want to make a nice, juicy meal out of whoever changes those light bulbs," suggested Fred Fine.
   Sarah's pack contained a tripod and a pair of fine binoculars. Once we had set these up in the middle of the tunnel we could see the heavy doors, TV cameras, lights and so on at the tunnel's end. As we took turns looking and speculating, Virgil set up a Geiger counter from Sarah's pack.
   "Normally a Geiger counter would just pick up a lot of background and cosmic radiation and anything meaningful would be drowned out. But we're so well shielded in these tunnels that the only thing getting to us should be a few very powerful cosmic rays, and neutrinos, which this won't pick up anyway." The Geiger counter began to click, perhaps once every four seconds.

   Sarah had the best eyes; she sat crosslegged on the layers of foil and gazed into the binoculars. "In a few minutes a hazardous waste pickup is scheduled for the loading dock upstairs," said Virgil, checking his watch. "My theory is that, in addition to taking hazardous wastes out of the Plex, those trucks have been bringing something even more hazardous into the Plex, and down into this tunnel."
   We waited.
   "Okay," said Sarah, "Elevator door opening on the right." We all heard it.
   "Long metal cylinder thingie on a cart. Now the end of the tunnel is opening up– big doors, like jaws. Now some guys in yellow are rolling the cylinder into a large room back there." The Geiger counter shouted. I looked at Casimir.
   "Skip your next chest X-ray," he said. "If this place is what it looks like, it's just Iodine-131. Half-life of eight days. It'll end up in your thyroid, which you don't really need anyway."
   "I'm pretty fond of my thyroid," said Hyacinth. "It made me big and strong."
   "Doors closing," said Sarah over the chatter of us and the Geiger counter. "Elevator's gone. All doors closed now." "Well! Congratulations, Virgil," said Fred Fine, shaking his hand. "You've discovered the only permanent high-level radioactive waste disposal facility in the United States."
   Most of us didn't have anything to say about it. We mainly wanted to get back home.
   "Fascinating, brilliant," continued Fred Fine, as we headed back. "In today's competitive higher education market, there has to be some way for universities to support themselves. What better way than to enter lucrative high-technology sectors?"
   "Don't have to grovel for the alumni anymore," said Sarah. "You really think universities should be garbage dumps for the worst by-products of civilization?" asked Hyacinth.
   "It's not such a bad idea, in a way," said Casimir. "Better the universities than anyone else. Oxford, Heidelberg, Paris, all those places have lasted for centuries longer than any government. Only the Church has lasted longer, and the Vatican doesn't need the money."
   We paused for a rest in the spiral staircase, near our rat body. Casimir, Fred Fine and Virgil went back down to the bottom for an experiment. Virgil had brought an ultrasonic tone generator with him, and they used it to prove– very conclusively– that the rats loved the ultrasound as much as they hated the strobe. They ran back upstairs, Sceptre flashing, and I slung the rat over my shoulder and we all proceeded up the stairs as fast as our lungs would allow.
   The dissection of the rat was most informal. We did it in the sink of Professor Sharon's old lab, amid the pieces of the railgun. Fred Fine laid into the thorax with a kitchen knife and a single-edged razor. We were quick and crude; only Casimir had seen the inside of a rat before. The skin peeled back easily along with thick pink layers of fat, and we looked at the intestines that could digest such amazing meals. Casimir scrounged a pair of heavy tin snips and used them to cut the breastbone in half so we could get under the ribcage. I shoved my hands between the halves of the breastbone and pulled as hard as I could, and finally with a crack and a spray of blood one side snapped open like a stubborn cabinet door and we looked at the lungs and vital organs. The heart was not immediately visible.
   "Maybe it's hidden under this organ here," suggested Fred Fine, pointing to something between the lungs.
   "That's not an organ," said Casimir. "It's an intersection of several major vessels."
   "So where's the heart?" asked Hyacinth, just beginning to get interested.
   "Those major vessels are the ones that ought to go into, and come out of, the heart," said Casimir uncertainly. He reached down and slid his hand under the bundle of vessels, and pulling it up and aside, revealed– nothing.
   "Holy Mother of God," he whispered. "This animal doesn't have a heart."
   Our own thumped violently. For a long time we were frozen, disturbed beyond reason; then a piercing beep emanated from Fred Fine and we jumped and gasped angrily.
   Unconcerned, he pressed a button on his digital calculator/watch, halting the beep. "Sorry. That's my watch alarm."
   We looked at him; he looked at his watch, We were all sweating.
   "I set it to go off like that at midnight, the beginning of April first, every year. It's sort of a warning, so that this one remembers, hey, April Fools' Day, anything could happen now.

April
   While we sewer-slogged, E13S held a giant party in honor of Big Wheel. It was conceived as your basic formless beer blowout, but the ever-spunky Airheads had insisted upon a theme: Great Partiers of the Past. The major styles in evidence were Disco, Sixties, Fifties and Toga. A team of sturdy Terrorists had lugged Dex Fresser's stereo up to the social lounge, which was the center of Disco activity. A darkened room down the hail featured a Sixties party, at which participants roughed up their perms, wore T-shirts, smoked more dope than usual and said "groovy" at the drop of a hat. The study lounge was Fifties headquarters, and was identical to all the other Fifties parties which had been held since about 1963 by people who didn't know anything about the Fifties. The Toga people were forced to adopt a wandering, nomadic partying existence; they had no authentic toga music to boogie to, though someone did experiment by playing an electronic version of the "1812 Overture" at full blast. Mostly these people just stood sheepishly in the hallways, draped in their designer bedsheets, clutching cups of beer and yelling "toga!" from time to time.
   The Disco lounge was filled with women in lollipop plastic dresses and thick metallic lipstick under ski masks, and heavily scented young men in pastel three-piecers and shiny hardware-laden shoes. The smell was deafening, and when the doors were open, excess music spilled out and filled nearby rooms to their corners. These partiers were a generation whose youth had been stolen. They had prepared all through their adolescence for the day when they could go to college and attend real discos, adult discos where they had alcohol and sex partners you could take home with no pay-rental hassles. Their hopes had been dashed in the early eighties when Disco had flamed out somewhere over New Jersey, like a famous dirigible. But the nostalgic air here made them feel young again. Dex Fresser even showed up in a white three-piecer and took several opportunities to boogie right down to the ground with shapely females in clingy synthetic wraps.
   On the windowsill, the Go Big Red Fan, held in place with bricks, spun and glowed in its self-made halo of black light. Overhead, a mirrored ball cast revolving dots of light on the walls, and more stoned or imaginative dancers could imagine that they were actually standing inside a giant Big Wheel. Whoooo! The picture windows were covered with newspaper, as the panes had long since been smashed and the curtains long since burned.
   After Dex Fresser had consumed sixteen hits of acid (his supplier had never really grasped the idea of powers of two), five bongloads of hashish rolled in mescaline, a square of peyote Jell-O, a lude, four tracks, a small handful of street-legal caffeine pep pills, twelve tablespoons of cough syrup, half a can of generic light wine and a pack of Gaulois cigarettes, he began to toy with a strobe light that was being used to establish the Disco atmosphere. He turned it up faster and faster until the lounge was wracked with delighted freakedout screams and the dancers had begun to hop randomly and smash into one another, as though they had been time-warped into Punk. Meanwhile, what passed for Dex's mind wandered over to the Go Big Red Fan, and though the time-warp effect was really blowing his tubes, he thought the fan might be slowing down; continuing to turn up the strobe, he was able to make the Little Wheel stop revolving altogether– either that, or time itself had come to a halt! Dex spazzed out to the max. All became quiet as the propulsion reactors of a passing Sirian space cruiser damped out his stereo (the DJ had turned down the volume), and all heard Dex announce that at midnight Big Wheel would say something very important to him. He relaxed, the music was cranked back up, the strobe light hurled out a nearby window and the Fan began to rotate again.
   Midnight could hardly come soon enough. The partiers packed into the social lounge, sitting in rows facing the window. Dex Fresser stood before the shrouded window with his back to the crowd, and priests stood ready to tear the papers away. A few minutes before midnight, the DJ put on "Stairway to Heaven," timed so that the high-energy sonic blast section would begin at 12:00 sharp.
   The newspapers ripped apart, the red-white-and-blue power beams of Big Wheel exploded into the room, and the heavy beat of the rock and roll made their thoraxes boom like empty kegs. But Dex Fresser was impressively still. He stared into the naked face of the Big Wheel for fifteen minutes before he moved a muscle. Then he relayed the message to the huddled students. Speaking through a mike hooked to his stereo, he sounded loud and quadraphonic. "Tonight the Big Wheel has plans for us, man. We're going to have a fucking war." The Terrorists cheered and whooped and the Airheads oohed and aahed. "The outside people, who are all hearing-impaired to the voice of Big Wheel and Roy G Biv and our other leaders, will come tomorrow to the Plex with guns to kill us. They want to put short-range tactical nuclear weapons on the roof of D Tower in order to threaten Big Wheel and make him do as they wish.
   "We have friends, though, like Astarte, the Goddess, who is the sister of Big Wheel and who is going to like help us out and stuff. The Terrorists and the SUB will cooperate just like Big Wheel and Astarte do. Also, the B-men are our friends too.
   "We've got shitloads of really powerful enemies, says Big Wheel. Like the Administration and the Temple of Unlimited Godhead and a bunch of nerds and some other people. We have to kill all of them.
   "This is going to take cooperation and we have to have perfect loyalty from everyone. See, even if you think you have friends among our enemies, you're wrong, because Big Wheel decides who our friends are, and if he says they're your enemies, they're your enemies, just like that. Everything's very simple with Big Wheel, that's how you can be sure he's telling the truth. So we've got to join together now and there can't be any secrets and we can't cover up for our enemies or have mercy for them."
   Mari Meegan, sitting in the front row, legs tucked demurely to the side, listened intensely, eyes slitted and lips parted as she thought about how this applied to her.
   At this point a few people came to their senses and made a run for it. One of these, a none-too-bright advisee of mine who had been going along for the good times, realized that these people were nuts, sprinted to the nearest fire stair, and escaped unharmed, later to tell me this story. What happened after his exit is vague; apparently, Yllas Freedperson, High Priestess of Astarte, showed up, and the leaders of the SUB and of the Terrorists did a lot of planning and organizing in those next few hours.
   By contrast, Bert Nix celebrated the evening by incinerating himself in a storage room on C22W. He had been using it as a hideout for some time, and had gotten along well with the students, except for one problem: Bert Nix's obsession with collecting garbage. It was partly a practical habit, as he got most of his food and clothing from the trash. Far beyond that, however, he could not bring himself to throw out anything, and so in his little rooms scattered around the Plex the garbage was packed in to the ceiling, leaving only a little aisle to the door. Out of gratitude to his protectors, Bert Nix stuffed oily rags under the doors to seal the odor in.
   This sufficed until the evening of March 31, when he happened to open the door while a fastidious student from Saskatoon was walking by. She watched as half a dozen cockroaches over three inches long lumbered out between the derelict's bare feet and approached her, waving their antennae affably. No Airhead, she stomped them to splinters and called Security on the nearest telephone. Between then and the time they arrived five hours later, however, the fire started. It could have been spontaneous combustion, it could have been the heating system, or a suicidal whim or wayward cigarette from Bert Nix. In any event, the room became a tightly sealed furnace, and when the flames had died, all that remained were a charred corpse in the aisle and drifts of cockroach bodies piled up in front of the door.
   At the northern corner of the Plex's east wall, north of the Mall loading docks, the docks for student use, the mail, Cafeteria, general supply, Burrows and wide-load docks was the Refuse Area. Six loading docks opened on an enormous room with six giant trash compactors and six great steel chutes which expelled tons of garbage from their foul, stained sphincters every few minutes. When there wasn't a strike on, the compactors would grind away around the clock and a great truck would be at one dock or another at any given time, bringing back an empty container and hauling off a full one.
   North of the Refuse Area, in the very corner of the Flex, was the Hazardous Waste Area with its steel doors and explosion-proof walls. When scientists produced any waste that was remotely hazardous, they would seal it into an orange container, mark down its contents and take it to the Refuse Area, where they could deposit it in a chute that led into the HWA. If the container was too large for this, they could simply leave it on a dolly by the door, and the specially trained B-men would then wheel it through when it was time for a pickup. When the Hazardous Waste truck arrived, three times a day, all the containers were then loaded into its armor-plated back and hauled away. This was usually done in the dead of night, to lessen the danger of traffic accidents. So extraordinary was this disposal system that American Megaversity had won awards from environmental groups and acclaim from scientists.
   At 4:30 on the morning of April 1, when I should have been drinking or sleeping, I was sitting in my suite staring at the telephone. Virgil Gabrielsen, even more ambitious, was sitting by the door to the HWA in a huge orange crate about the shape of a telephone booth. "HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE," its label read, "CONTAINS UNIVERSAL SOLVENT. DO NOT PUT ON SIDE OR EXPLOSION WILL RESULT." The same concepts were repeated by means of ideograms which we had hastily painted on the sides, showing a Crotobaltislavonian stick figure being blown to bits after putting the crate on its side. Instructions to telephone Dr. Redfield, and giving my telephone number, were added in several places.
   "The nuke waste has to be coming in through the HWA," Virgil had insisted, as he and I and the disemboweled rat relaxed in Sharon's lab. "I counted my steps down there in the tunnels. As far as I can tell, that elevator shaft should go right up into the northeast corner of the building. The HWA is locked and alarmed within an inch of its life, but I know how to get inside."
   At quarter to five, the enormous Magrov and half a dozen other Crotobaltislavonians entered the Refuse Area. As Virgil watched through strategically placed peepholes, they began with some unusual procedures. First they opened the southernmost of the six metal doors to the Access Lot. Shortly after, an old van backed up to this dock and threw open its rear doors. Two men jumped out into the Refuse Area in protective clothing, gas masks dangling on their chests, and exchanged hearty Scythian greetings with the B-men. Much equipment was now hauled out of the van, including a long metal cylinder– an exact replica of a nuclear waste container– and a huge tripod-mounted machine gun. Then came numerous small machine guns, what appeared to be electronic equipment and crates of supplies. These were piled on a cart and wheeled over to Virgil's position.
   Virgil had realized by now that this was not a business-as-usual day. At least the situation appealed to his sense of humor. The fake nuke waste cylinder opened like a casket and the two gas-masked men climbed in and lay one atop the other. The others handed them weapons and closed the lid. This cylinder was also placed next to Virgil. In the meantime, B-men bolted the big gun's tripod directly into the concrete floor at the loading dock, apparently having already drilled the holes in preparation. The weapon was aimed into the Access Lot, and loaded and checked over with an experienced air unusual among janitors.
   Virgil's crate was the source of a long and emotional discussion in Scythian. Occasionally Magrov or one of the others would shout something about telefon while pounding on the crate with his index finger.
   "Hoy!" shouted a B-man back at the machine gun. Virgil saw a glint of headlights outside. It was 4:59. A hellacious roar ensued as the determined janitors sprayed several thousand rounds per minute out the door. Magrov cut off debate by seizing Virgil's crate and wheeling it into the HWA.
   The gunfire was over before Virgil was all the way through the door. Once the crate was stopped and he was able to get his bearings again, he could see that he was in a somewhat smaller room with a segmented metal door in the outside wall and a large red rectangle painted in the middle of the floor. A dozen or so bright orange waste containers had been slid through the chute and were waiting on a counter to be hauled away.
   My phone rang at 5:01.
   "Profyessor Rettfeelt? Sorry, getting you up early in mornink. Magrov here. You put humongous waste container by HWA, correct?"

   "Yes, that's correct. Universal Solvent. Very dangerous."
   "Ees too tall for goink inside of vaste truck. Ve must put on her side."
   "No! That's dangerous. You will be blown to little bits."
   "Then what to do with it?"

   "I'll have to put it in a different container. You must leave it in the HWA overnight. I will come to the Refuse Area tomorrow night, at the time of the next pickup, and get the crate and take it away." "Good." Magrov hung up.
   Back in the HWA, Magrov checked his watch, then turned and shouted at a swiveling TV camera on the wall. "Ha! Those profyessors! Say! Where is truck? Very late today."
   "Roger, team leader, we read four minutes late," said an Anglo voice over a loudspeaker. "Maybe some trouble with those strikers. Hey! Let's cut the idle chitchat."
   Finally the great steel door rolled open. Through one of his peepholes, Virgil could see a hazardous waste truck backing into the brilliantly lit, fenced-in area outside. He could also see a pair of half-inch bullet holes through the outside rear-view mirror. The tiny black-and-white monitors, he knew, would never pick up this detail. When it had come to rest, the B-men unlocked the back with Magrov's keys and pulled open armored doors to reveal a stainless steel cylinder on a cart. This they rolled into the HWA, placing it in the middle of the red rectangle on the floor.
   Other B-men set about hauling the small orange containers into the back of the truck and strapping them down. Magrov removed guns from a locked cabinet and distributed them to himself and two others. There three took up positions in the red area around the cylinder. "Hokay, ready for little ride," said Magrov. "Roger, team leader. Stand by." A deep hum and vibration commenced. The men and the cylinder began to sink, and Virgil could see that the red rectangle was actually an elevator platform. Within seconds only a black hole remained.
   In five minutes the platform returned, with the B-men but without the cylinder. Displaying frank contempt for safety regulations, the B-men began to smoke profusely.
   The intercom crackled alive. "Crotobaltislavonia aiwa!" came the exhilarated shout.
   "Crotobaltislavonia aiwa!" howled the B-men, leaping to their feet. There was much whoopee-making and cigarette-throwing, and then they opened the door to the Refuse Area and carried in crate after crate of supplies and put them on the elevator platform. The platform, laden with Crotobaltislavonians, guns and food, sank into the earth once again, then returned in a few minutes carrying nine bleeding bodies in yellow radiation suits.
   Virgil had been expecting TV cameras. If they had them down in the tunnels, they must have them upstairs in the HWA. So after a few minutes, when Virgil was sure that the B-men were down there for the long haul, he opened a small panel in the side of his crate and stuck out a long iron rod with a magnesium tip. The important thing about the magnesium rod was that Virgil had just set it on fire, and when magnesium burns, it makes an intolerably brilliant light. Virgil soon squirmed out through the panel, a welding mask strapped over his face. Even through the dark glass, everything in the room was blindingly lit– certainly bright enough to overload, or even burn out, the television cameras. Any camera turned his way would show nothing but purest white. To make sure, he lit two more magnesium rods and placed them on the floor around the room. Satisfied that all three cameras were now blinded, he withdrew a can of spray paint from his crate and used it to paint over their lenses. The mikes were easy to find and he destroyed these simply by shoving burning magnesium rods into them. Then he called me on the phone. "I was right," he said, "I'm safe, and you can go to sleep. But look out. Trouble is brewing." Alas, I was already asleep before he got to that last part.
   While the magnesium rods burned themselves out, Virgil climbed into the cab of the truck, where the corpses of its late drivers had been stretched out on the floor. The Crotos' plan was daring and their aim excellent; they needed to penetrate the truck's armored cab and kill the occupants without wiping out the engine or the gas tank. The driver's window was splattered all over the seat, the door itself deeply buckled and perforated by the thumb-sized shells. Virgil hit the ignition and drove it far enough out to wedge the electrical gates open while leaving enough space for other vehicles to pass.
   Back in the Plex, he made phone calls to several readymix concrete companies. Returning to the Burrows, he found a cutting torch and wheeled it back to the HWA. The red platform was nothing more than thick steel plate, and once he had gotten the torch fired up and the red paint burned away, it cut like butter. As he sliced a hole in the platform, he reviewed his reasoning:
   1) Law is opinion of guy with biggest gun.
   2) Biggest "gun" in U.S. held by police and armed forces.
   3) Hypothesis: someone wants to break the law, or more generally, render U.S. law null and void in a certain zone.
   4) This necessitates a bigger gun.
   5) Threat of contamination of urban area with nuclear waste ought to fill the bill.
   6) This provides a motive for taking over Nuke Dump. 7) Crotobaltislavonians have taken over Nuke Dump.
    They either want to contaminate the city, or take over this area– the Plex– by threat of same.
   9) Either we will all be poisoned, or else representatives of the People's Free Social Existence Node of Crotobaltislavonia will dictate their own law to people in this area.
   10) This does not sound very nice either way.
   11) Maybe we can destroy their gun by blocking the possible contamination routes. The elevator would be their preferred route, as it would provide direct access to the atmosphere.
   A rough steel circle about two feet across pulled loose and dropped into the blackness. Virgil pulled back his mask and peered down. The circle's edge was still red hot, and as it fell through the blackness, he could see it spinning and diminishing until it smashed into the bottom. The clang reached his ears a moment later. Through the hole he could smell the odor of the sewers and hear occasional arguments among rats.
   Hearing the whine of a down-shifting truck, he shut off the torch and ran out into the Access Lot. Virgil directed the cement truck through the jammed gate and up to the loading dock. He directed the driver to swing his chute around and dump the entire load into the freshly cut hole.
   The driver was young, a philosophy Ph.D. only two years out of the Big U. He obviously knew Virgil was asking him to commit an illegal act. "Give me a rational reason to dump my cement down that hole," he demanded.
   Virgil thought it over. "The reasons are very unusual, and if I were to explain them, you would only be justified in thinking I was crazy."
   "Which doesn't give me my rational reason."

   "True," admitted Virgil. "However, let's not forget the conventional view of craziness. Our media are filled with images of the crazy segment of society as being an exceptionally dangerous, unpredictable group. Look at Hinckley! Watch any episode of T. J. Hooker! So if you thought I was crazy, the reaction consistent with your social training would be to do as I say in order to preserve your own safety."
   "That would be true with your run-of-the-mill truck driver," said the truck driver after agonized contemplation, "who tends to be an M.A. in sociology or something. But I can't make an excuse based on failure to think independently of the media."
   "True. Follow me." Virgil walked across the HWA, leading the truck driver over to the heavy door that led into the Refuse Area. Here he paused, allowing the truck driver to notice the long red streaks on the floor. Virgil then opened the door and pointed at the nine bloody corpses, which he had dragged there to get them off the platform. "Having seen the remains of several savagely murdered people, you might conclude that my showing them to you so dramatically constituted a nonverbal threat. You might then decide– " but the truck driver had already decided, and was running for the controls at the back of the truck. The concrete was down the hole in no time. The truck driver did not even wait to be given an official American Megaversity voucher.
   After that, trucks arrived every fifteen minutes or so for the rest of the morning. Subsequent truckers, seeing wet cement slopped all over the place, impressed by Virgil's official vouchers, were much less skeptical. By lunchtime, twenty truckloads of cement were piled up behind the sliding doors at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
   The first Refuse Area dock was still open. After blowing the crap out of the hazardous waste truck, the B-men had hauled the real radioactive waste cylinder out and left it there in the doorway. Virgil had the last driver bury the cylinder in cement where it sat. He smoothed out a flat place with his hand and inscribed: DANGER. HIGH LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE. TRESPASSERS WILL BE STERILIZED. His day's work was done.
   Unbeknownst to anyone else, the two most important battles of the war had already been fought. The Crotobaltislavonians had won the first, and Virgil the second.
   Once the actual war got started, things happened quickly. In fact, between the time that S. S. Krupp and two of his associates and I had got on an elevator and the time we escaped from it, the situation had changed completely.
   S. S. Krupp felt compelled to visit E13S after its riot/party of the night before, somewhat in the spirit of Jimmy Carter visiting Mount Saint Helens. Naturally, as faculty-in-residence for E Tower, I was asked to serve as tour guide. It was preferable to washing dung off my boots, but only just.
   Krupp arrived at the base of E Tower at 11:35 A.M., fresh from a tour of Bert Nix's cremation site. Considering the gruesome circumstances, not to mention the journalists and the SUBbie screaming directly into his ear, he looked relaxed. With him were Hyman Hotchkiss, Dean of Student Life, and Wilberforce (Tex) Bracewill, Administrator of Student Health Services. Hyman looked young, pale and ill. Tex had seen too much gonorrhea in too many strange places to be shocked by anything. They were so civilized that they viewed my Number 27 BILL'S BREWS softball jersey as though it were a jacket and vest, and shook my hand as though I had saved their families from death sometime in the distant past.
   Here in the lobby the sixteen elevators and four fire stairs of E Tower emptied together into a desert of vandalized furniture, charred bulletin boards and overflowing wastebaskets. I didn't know about events on E13S yet, and my guests were doubtless still considering the charred remains of Bert Nix, so we were not suspicious when elevators 2, 4 and 1 remained frozen at the thirteenth floor for ten minutes. Only number 3 moved. When it got to us, it was packed with students. Two got off, but the rest explained in dull voices that they had missed their floor and were staying on for the return trip. Therefore the journalists and protesters found no room in the compartment; only the four of us could squeeze in.
   This chummy group rode to the Terrorist-controlled ninth floor, where everyone else got off. As the doors slid shut, a burnout who had just disembarked turned around to say, "Sweet dreams, S. S. Krupp."
   We started up again. "Shit!" said Krupp. "We've got a problem. Everyone get on the floor. Tex, you got your .44?"
   Of course he did. Much to the concern of the SUB, Tex was massively armed at all times, on the theory that you never knew when degens might come and shoot up the clinic looking for purer highs. He was prepared to go out like a true AM administrator. Dropping stiffly to the floor, he paused on his knees to whip a humongous revolver out of his briefcase and hand it to Krupp.
   "Hope we don't have to shoot it out on thirteen," he said. We agreed. Krupp tore from Tex's briefcase a medicine bottle, struggled with the childproof cap, yanked out the cotton wad, tore it in half and stuffed it into his ears. At this point I began to experience terror, more of Krupp than of whatever he was planning to dismember with that howitzer.
   We passed the twelfth floor and the elevator crashed to a stop. Above us, from the elevators still halted on thirteen, we heard excited yelling.
   "I get it." Krupp cocked the revolver and we all plugged our ears as he pointed it at the ceiling, The bullet vaporized the latch on the trap door and flipped the door open as well. We saw light above us. Krupp's second shot annihilated the light in our car. I felt as though my fingers had been driven three inches deep into my ears; my eyelids fluttered in shock and my nose complained of dense smoke. Krupp now stood up in the darkness and fired the remaining three rounds through the trapdoor. With a sigh and a thump, a corpse crashed into our roof.
   At a great distance I heard Tex say, "Sep. Here's a speed loader." After some clicking and cursing, Krupp fired two more rounds– the natives were getting restless– and tugged at my shirt, "Leg up!" he shouted.
   I stood and made a step of my hands, and he used it to propel himself through the trap door. Once he had scrambled through, I jumped and dragged myself to the roof after him. The only thing I was scared of was touching the corpse; other than that, one place was as dangerous as another. Krupp, who did not share my fear, retrieved a revolver from the body and handed it to me.
   He began scaling the emergency ladder on the shaft wall. When he got to thirteen, he pounded the wall switch and the doors slid open. Seeing him jump through the aperture onto thirteen, I began to follow him up the ladder, not really thinking about what I'd do when I arrived. The two adjacent elevators began to head down, and as they passed, someone on a roof fired off a wild shot in my direction.
   A tremendous roar rang up and down the shaft. It came in three bursts, and not until the third one did I realize it was machine-gun fire. I had been dimly aware of it– "Oh, that's a machine gun being fired"– but it was not for a few moments that I comprehended that machine guns were in use at my institution of higher learning. There were also three WHAMs, and then silence.
   Taking this as a good sign, I dove through onto thirteen and lay there dazed, looking at an elevator lobby dotted with strings of machine-gun fire and blood pools, tracked and smeared by hasty tennis-shoe footprints that converged on the two elevators. I sat up timidly. Krupp went to the far side of a large pillar and retrieved an assault rifle from a dead soldier. "See," he said, pounding hollowly on the pillar with the butt of the rifle, "these pillars are just for show. Just a little girder in the middle and the rest is plaster and chicken wire. Don't want to hide behind them." Judging from the bullet holes in the pillar and the unmoving legs and feet on the other side, someone had recently been in dire need of Krupp's architectural knowledge. "Can't believe they're handing out loaded Kalashnikovs to cretins like that, whoever it is that's running this show," he grumbled. "These youths need ROTC training if they're going to pack ordnance like this,"
   "Maybe this is someone's ROTC program," I suggested, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Krupp frowned. "Maybe this is someone's ROTC," I shouted, remembering the cotton. He nodded in deep thought. "Very good. What's your field again?"
   "Remote sensing. Remote sensing. Involves geography, geology and electrical engineering."
   "I'm listening," Krupp assured me in the middle of my sentence, as he walked to the two corners of the lobby to peer down the hallways. "But you'll have to speak up," he added, squeezing off a half-second blast at something. There was an answering blast, muffled by the fire doors between the combatants, but it apparently went into the ceiling. Impressed, Krupp nodded.
   "Well, we've got two basic tactical options here," he continued, ejecting the old clip and inserting a fresh one taken from the dead SUBbie, "We can seize the wing, or retreat. Based on what we've seen of these sandbox insurrectionists, I don't doubt we can stage a takeover. The question is: is this wing a worthwhile strategic goal in and of itself, or is my strong inclination to seize it singlehandedly– almost, excuse me– just what we call a macho complex these days? Not that I'm trying to draw us into psychobabble." He glared at me, one eyebrow raised contemplatively.