The Big U

"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.

8) 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.

"Depends on what kind of forces they have elsewhere."

"Well, you're saying it's easier to make tactical decisions when one has more perfect information, a sort of strategic context from which to plan. That's a predictable attitude for a remote-sensing man. The aereal point of view comes naturally to a generalistic, left-handed type like you." He nodded at my revolver, which I was holding, naturally, in my left hand. "But lacking that background, we'll have to use a different method of attack– using 'attack' in a figurative sense now– and use the more linear way of thinking that would suggest itself to, say, a right-handed low-level Catholic civil engineer. Follow?"

"I suppose," I shouted, looking down the elevator shaft at Tex's face, barely visible in the dim light.

"For example," continued Krupp, "our friends below, though we must be concerned for them, are irrelevant now. Presumably, the students on this wing will do the rational thing and not attack us, because to attack means coming into the halls and exposing themselves to our fire. So we control entry and exit. If we leave now, we'll just have to retake it later. Secondly, this lobby fire stair here ensures our safety; we can always escape. Third, our recent demonstration should delay a reinforcement action on their part. What I figure is that if we move along room by room disarming the occupants, they'll be too scared by what happened to that guy in the hall to try any funny stuff. Christ on fishhooks!" Krupp dove back into the safety of the lobby as a barrage of fire ripped down the hall, blowing with it the remains of the fire doors. We made for the stairway and began skittering down the steps as quickly as we could. By the time we had descended three flights, the angry shouts of Terrorists and SUBbies were pursuing us. The shouters themselves prudently remained on their own landing.

"We're okay unless they have something like a hand grenade or satchel charge they can drop down this central well," said Krupp. "Hold it right there, son! That's right! Keep those paws in the air! Say, I know you."

We had surprised Casimir Radon on a landing. He merely stared at S. S. Krupp's AK-47, dumbfounded.

"Let's all hold onto our pants for a second and ask Casimir what he's up to," Krupp suggested.

"Well," said Casimir, taking off his glacier glasses to see us better in the dim stairwell. "I was going to visit Sarah. Things are getting pretty wild now, you know. I guess you do know," he concluded, looking again at the assault rifle.

"Physics problem:" said Krupp, "how far does a hand grenade fall in the seven seconds between handle release and boom?" "Well, air resistance makes that a toughie. It's pretty asymmetrical, and it would probably tumble, which makes the differential equation a son-of-a-bitch to solve. You'd have to use a numerical method, like"

"Estimate, son! Estimate!"

"Eight hundred feet."

"No problem. But what if they counted to three? How far in four seconds?"

"Sixteen times four two hundred fifty-six feet."

"If they count to five?"

"Two seconds sixty-four feet."

"That's terrible. That's six stories. That would be about the sixth floor, which is where we make the run into the lobby. Do you think they'd be dumb enough to pull the pin and count to five?"

"Not with a Soviet grenade."

"Good point."

"If I'm not mistaken, sir," said Casimir, "they all have impact fuses on them anyway. So it'd go off on six in any case."

"Oh. Well what the hell?" said Krupp, and started to run down the stairs again.

"Wait!" I said. Krupp stopped on the next landing. "You don't want to go up there," I told Casimir.

"Yeah. If you think it's wild down there, you should see thirteen. It's wilder than a cat on fire, thirteen. Those people are irrational," said Krupp.

"Are you going to stop me by force?" asked Casimir.

"Well, anyone traveling with S. S. Krupp today is a prime target, so I couldn't justify that," said Krupp.

"Then I'm going," said Casimir, and resumed his climb. "Let's get a move on. Let's build up a good head of steam here so we can charge right through the danger zone at the bottom. I think the twenty-third psalm is in order."

Reluctantly, I left Casimir to his own dreams and we began to charge down the steps side by side, crossing paths at each turn, listening upward. I saw a 7 painted on the wall. We were practically diving down the last flight when I heard someone yell "Five!" We were on the level now, sprinting for a door with a small rectangular window and a sign reading E TOWER MAIN LOBBY.

"Did he say five, or fire?" Krupp wondered as we neared the door. We punched it open together and were in the lobby. And there, waiting for us, were three Crotobaltislavonians with UZIs. "Professionals, I see," said Krupp. He had gone through on the hinged side of the door and now pushed it all the way around so that it was flat against the lobby wall, where he leaned against it. Back in the stairwell there was a series of metallic clanks, like something heavy bouncing off an iron pipe. Having seen many TV shows involving foreigners with submachine guns, I had already raised my hands; I now took the opportunity to clap them over my ears.

Krump. Bits of fire shot out the door at incredible speed. The three janitors just seemed to melt and soften, sagging to the floor quietly.

"It worked," said Krupp, sounding drunken and amazed. Trying to walk around, I found that the concussion had scrambled my inner ear; stars shot around like tracer bullets. I went to a wall phone, dialed Lucy and Hyacinth's number, and listened to it ring. At each ring my head cleared a bit. They were not answering. Had the Terrorists taken twelve? I redialed; no answer. After eight rings I lost my mind, gripped the handset that had withstood untold vandalism attempts and jerked it out by its roots. I grabbed its shattered wires and swung it into the wall like a mace, ludicrously enraged, and began to stumble back toward the stairway.

"Hate to bust in, but we've got to stop porch-setting here," shouted Krupp from the lobby entryway. He lay on the floor with the AK-47 pointed down the hall.

"What about these B-men?"

"They'll keep."

"I'm not leaving. My friends are up on twelve. Hey, look. These men are in pain okay? I'm going to tell their friends upstairs they've got wounded down here."

"Could do that," said Krupp, "but Casimir's in the stair well, If they come down this way, he'll be like a hoppity toad in a snake stampede."

For the first time, we heard shouting and shooting from the main hallway which led to the Cafeteria. "Don't look forward to fighting my way through whatever that sounds like," said Krupp.

"Shit. Shit in a brown bag. Great fucking ghost of Rommel," I said. "That thing is a tank." – Indeed, a small tank was approaching our location. We retreated.

For Fred Fine too it was a hell of a day. He was physically burned out to begin with. The Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome had stood at yellow alert for two days, and he had worked like an android the whole time, directing the stockpiling of supplies and material in the most secure regions of Plexor. Klystron may have been a haughty swordsman who reveled in single combat, but Chris the Systems Programmer was a master strategist who understood that, in a long war, food was power. The recent Mixture of Klystron and Chris was regrettable, but it did enable him to plan for the coming weeks with magical intuition and technological knowledge, a combination that proved extremely potent.

Finally Consuela and Chip Dixon had insisted that he sleep, and Klystron/Chris had okayed the rec. He slept from the close of our expedition until 1200 hours on April First, then rolled smartly out of the sack, called an aide for a quick briefing and proceeded to the mess hall for some grub and a few cups of joe. It was there, in the Cafeteria, just as he had predicted, that the war began.

Many things contributed to its success. The MegaUnion finally found the secret elevator used to smuggle scab workers into the Caf, resulting in fights between the Haitian and Vietnamese cooks and the professors and clerical workers who stood in their way. The outcome was predictable, and when the battered progressives returned to the main picket outside the Caf entrance, Yllas Freedperson exhorted them to hang tough, to further peace and freedom in the Plex by finding the violent people who had hurt them and bashing their brains out.

Mobs of hungry students broke through the picket lines empty-handed, obviously bent on eating scab food. The unionists were still so pissed off from the earlier fight that more scuffling and debris-throwing ensued. Twenty TUGgies carrying anti-communist signs took advantage of the confusion to set up a barrier around the SUB information table and erect their OM generator, a black box with big speakers used to augment their own personal OMs, which they now OMed through megaphones. A picket-sign duel broke out; it became clear that the SUB had reinforced their picket signs to make them into dangerous weapons. At a sign from their leader, Messiah #645, the TUGgies produced sawed-off pool cues and displayed highly developed kendo abilities.

All the Terrorists then seemed to arrive together. Twenty Droogs, thirty-two Blue Light Specials, nineteen Roy G Bivs, eight Ninja with Big Wheels on their foreheads, four of the Flame Squad Brotherhood and forty-three of the Plex Branch of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army (Unofficial) marched in with their politically correct bag lunches and, shouting and waving sticks in the air, demanded that a large area be cleared of scab sympathizers and other scum so they could sit down. This section contained a table of twenty-five athletic team standouts, heavily drunk, as well as a number of people on ghetto scholarships who really knew how to handle unpleasant situations. Much hand-to-hand violence took place and the Terrorists were humiliated. There were more of them, though. A huge arena ring formed around the brawl and tables were herded to the walls to make room. The SUB showed up, decided that the brawl was ideologically impure, and began chanting and throwing food. This triggered the Cafeteria's mass food fight emergency plan; but as the enforcers began to emerge from the serving bays, they were met by MegaUnion partisans who wanted to get them out in the open. Short on brawling power because of the inexplicable absence of the Crotobaltislavonians, the MegaUnion was bested here.

The Haitians and Vietnamese, who had built up fierce hatred for the Terrorists, took this opportunity to rush into the central brawl. The SUB tried to block them, without success. The TUGgies charged after the SUB to make sure they didn't do anything illegal. The fight was frenzied now; a flying wedge of cooks speared back toward the kitchen to obtain big knives.

Upstairs in the towers, SUB/Terrorist extremists who were apparently waiting for something like this began to bombard the roof of the vast kitchen complex with heavy projectiles. On cue, the administration's anti-terrorism guards, stationed on Tar City and in some wings and on top of towers, responded by blasting tear gas grenades into the SUB/Terrorist strongholds. Already there were gaping holes in the roof; above the tumult, everyone in the Caf now heard the booms of the grenade launchers– every gun in the place was drawn for the first time.

Shooting began, at first to scare and then to injure. People scrambled to the walls, throwing furniture through the wide plate-glass wall sections to escape. But some were unable to get out, and others were happy to stay and fight. After a minute of incomprehensible noise and violence, battle lines formed and things became organized.

Obviously SUB and TUG were prepared. Both groups hoped to capture the kitchen by entering through the serving bays and vaulting the steam tables, Local fights hence developed along the approaches to all twelve serving bays. Squads from both groups made for the main serving bay, ducking sporadic fire. The SUB got there first, shot the lock out and kicked the door; but there was a senior TUGgie barricaded behind a steam table, with a heavy machine gun aimed at them and a smiling protиgи holding the ammo belt. The gunner watched cheerfully as the SUBbies jumped back and rolled away from the door, but held his fire until the TUGgies behind them had jumped through the breach and scurried out of the line of fire. He immediately opened fire on a strategic SUB salad bar across the Cafeteria. This entailed shooting through several tables, but he had plenty of ammo, and as soon as the furniture was conveniently dissolved, a river of red tracer fire could swing around and demolish whatever it touched, such as a milk machine, a number of people, and, of course, the flimsy salad bar. The SUBbies retreated and joined their Terrorist allies in safer places.

Klystron/Chris knew as well as anyone that the kitchens were the strategic linchpin of the Plex. He was the first person in the Cafeteria to decide that war was breaking out, and so during the early stages of the great fistfight he mobilized and girded his loins for the Apocalypse. Retreating to a corner, he dumped the now-useless textbooks out of his briefcase and withdrew the bayonet, which he stuck in his belt, and the flash gun, which he carried. As the booms and thuds from the ceiling indicated that aerial bombardment had begun, he flexed his fingers, then shoved his right hand into his left armpit and snapped out a standard-issue .45 automatic pistol– just to test the shoulder holster one last time. After cocking the weapon he gingerly slid it back under his houndstooth polyester blazer and turned toward the nearest serving bay.

A burst from the flash gun got him through the door and over the steam tables into the kitchen area. Here was chaos: scab workers running to and fro, some with knives; Cafeteria administrators telling him to get the hell out of here, an opinion his flash gun then modified; particularly bold SUBbies and TUGgies making their first inroads; a man in a flannel shirt carrying a .50-caliber machine gun– that could be a problem– all of this in an almost primeval landscape littered with sections of roof, piano fragments, scattered food and utensils, broken pipes spewing steam and water, sparks and flames breaking out here and there.

The elevator he sought was at the dead-end of a hallway, hidden in the nethermost parts of the kitchens, back by the strategic food warehouses. Arriving safely, Klystron/Chris protected his rear by slitting open and overturning several hundred-pound barrels of freeze-dried potatoes and dehydrated eggs near the doorway, where hot water spewed from a broken ceiling pipe. Without waiting to watch the results he jogged down and boarded the elevator, held for him by a captain of the Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome.

Below, in the Burrows, he emerged to find all in readiness: several officers awaiting orders; his body armor and weapons; and in a nearby storage closet, the APPASMU, or All-Purpose Plex Armed Strife Mobile Unit.

The APPASMU was a project begun three years ago by several MARS members. Starting out as a joke– a tank for use in the Plex, ha ha– it became a hobby, a thing to tinker with, and finally, this semester, an integral part of the GASF defense posture. The tank was built on the chassis of an electric golf cart, geared down so that its motor could haul additional weight. The tires had been filled with dense foam to make them bulletproof, and a sturdy frame of welded steel tubing built around the cart to support the rest of the innovations, Hardened steel plates were welded to the frame to make a sloping, pyramidal body in which as many as four people could sit or lie. Gun slits, shielded peepholes and thick glass prisms enabled the occupants to see and shoot anything in their vicinity, while a full complement of lights, radios, sirens, loudspeakers and so forth gave the APPASMU eyes and ears and vocal cords. The APPASMU had been designed to fit into any elevator in the Plex. It could recharge its batteries at any wall outlet, and replacement battery packs had already been stashed at several secret locations around the building.

From status reports provided by underlings as he pulled on his gear, Klystron/Chris learned that S. S. Krupp was trapped in a hostile area of E Tower. Such a mission was perfect to battle-test the APPASMU and toughen up its crew, and so after barking some orders to his major officers he squeezed into the tank along with three others and steered it backward into the elevator.

The situation upstairs had begun to take on some texture. The dead-end outside the elevator was blocked by a mountain of light-yellow potato-egg mixture. The APPASMU plowed through with ease, and Klystron/Chris could now hear the rumble of the heavy TUG machine gun. The APPASMU could not withstand such firepower, so Klystron/Chris decided to outflank it by exiting the kitchens through a back route. He aimed the APPASMU down an aisle lined with great pressure vats and headed for the door.

Unfortunately a stray weapons burst had struck a pressure vat by the exit. The top of the vat exploded off, blasting a neat hole through the ceiling, and the vat, torn loose by the recoil, tumbled over and spilled thousands of gallons of Cheezy Surprise Tetrazzini onto the floor. This mixture had long, long overcooked in the fighting, causing the noodles to congeal into a glutinous orange mass with an internal temperature over three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, which had rolled out on impact and squatted sullenly in the doorway, swathed in its nebula of live orange steam. Klystron/Chris fired a few desultory rounds into it and concluded that this doorway was now impassable. They would have to choose a serving bay, pass through the Caf and hope to avoid the TUG machine gun– exactly what the APPASMU was built for, though to fire it now would be to use up their first and only surprise.

"Well have to make the most of it, men. We'll head for the lines of the SUB/Terrorist Axis and pick up all the weaponry we can find. If you see anything that looks like it's armor-piercing, sing out!" Without further chitchat, and accompanied by a soft plopping of potato-egg, the minitank was out of the kitchen and into a serving bay which was being disputed in hand-to-hand combat. The astonished fighters could only stand in confusion, and only two rounds glanced off the APPASMU's armor before they entered the Caf. The tank's entrance occasioned a surprised lull in the fighting. Klystron/Chris and Chip Dixon used the flat-trajectory indoor mortars to lob a few stun grenades behind the line of overturned tables and main salad bar that served as the SUB bunker. At this, the Axis forces turned and ran through the shattered plate-glass walls behind them and scurried for F Tower. The poorly armed wretches who had been pinned down by their presence emerged and sprinted for the exits.

They got a fine haul from the stunned and demoralized soldiers in the Axis bunker: a Kalashnikov, a twelve-gauge slug gun, ammo, knives, clubs and gas masks, all plastered with smoldering lettuce and sprouts but functional. After collecting the booty and using his intercom to dispatch a negotiator to cut a deal with the TUGgies– who were clearly winning in this theater– Klystron/Chris sent the APPASMU crashing magnificently through a plate-glass panel that had miraculously remained unbroken, and pointed it toward E Tower and the endangered Septimius Severus Krupp.

There we met them, below E Tower. From a distance we could make out the insignia: a stylized plan of the Plex (eight Swiss crosses within a square) with a sword and phaser rifle crossed underneath and the word MARS above. "I guess that would be Fred Fine," I said.

The top hatch flipped open and a helmeted, goggled head arose, speaking through the PA system. "This is the Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome Expeditionary Plex Purification Warfare Corps. Resistance is useless." The tank pulled up next to us, and Fred Fine pulled back the mask to reveal (alas) his face. He spoke with his usual grating humility.

"Mr. President. Professor Redfield. Sorry if we upset you. This is a little something we've been developing as a career suitability demonstration project during the recent years of decaying civilization. In fact, once we're on secure ground, I'd like to discuss the possibility of receiving some academic credit for it, Mr. President. The basic design principles are the same as for any armored vehicle."

"I see that," said Krupp, nodding. "Heimlich would go nuts over this. But what you need, I think, are more liberal arts courses." "Dr. Redfield will find the infrared personnel sensing equipment very interesting. But sirs, we have heavy fighting in the Cafeteria. My men have secured the other end of this hallway while I came to get you."

Chip Dixon had clambered out to reconnoiter and inspect the APPASMU. Seeing the three mangled B-men, he scurried over to them and slid his hand under one's ear to check his pulse. A queer look came on his face and he stared directly up at Fred Fine. "Jim, he's dead," he whispered.

"Sir to you," said Fred Fine, nonplussed, "and my name is not Jim, it's . . . something else. Anyway, sirs, my men are now securing D Tower, with direct elevator connections to the Burrows. We've arranged with your anti-terrorist forces to courier you to C Tower, which they are securing. Chip will steer the APPASMU, you'll sit in my place and I'll serve as point man. Dr. Redfield is welcome to follow. But first we must retrieve those weapons!" He clomped over to the remains of the Crotobaltislavonians.

Sarah slept until about noon, when a corpse burst through her window. Her eyes were half open, so that it exploded out of a dream: a leathery female cadaver from the Med College, wearing the wig Sarah had left behind in Tiny's room, white clown makeup smeared on the face. This effigy had been placed in a hangman's noose and thrown out the window above hers; it swung down and crashed through her window, then swung out and in and out as Sarah struggled between sleep and awakeness, disbelief and terror. At last she chose awakeness and terror, and stared at the corpse, which grinned.

She tried to scream and gag at the same time, but did neither. Outside she heard the excited whispers of the lurking Terrorists. She took three slow breaths and pulled her .38 from under her pillow. As she was sliding her feet into her running shoes, she found a big shard of window glass on one of them and nearly panicked. She picked up her phone and punched out Hyacinth's number (after the rape attempt she had bought a pushbutton phone so she could dial silently). Hyacinth answered alertly. Sarah pushed the 1 button three times and hung up, stood, slipped on the pack containing her emergency things and padded to the door. Sleeping in her long johns was neither cool nor glamorous, but proved useful nonetheless.

There was a long wait. The Terrorists were quietly getting impatient. wondering whether she was in there, talking about shooting the door open-they knew a police lock would be difficult to blow off. Sarah stood shivering, feet on marked places on the floor, gun in right hand, doorlock in left. If only there had been a way to practice this!

Hyacinth's gun sounded. Horribly slow, she snapped the lock, moved her hand to the doorknob, grasped it, turned it, swung the door open and examined the five men standing there. They were looking sideways toward Hyacinth. As they began to turn their faces toward her, she finally picked out the one with the gun– thanking God there was only one gun. For just a second now they were trapped and helpless, caught in a double take, trying to process the new information. For the first time Sarah understood how generals and terrorists made their plans of attack.

The one with the shotgun had turned it toward Hyacinth and now seemed indecisive. The other men were stepping back and dropping to the floor. Sarah's finger twitched and she fired a round into the ceiling.

The rest happened in an instant. She pointed her gun at the head of the armed man. One of the other four suddenly whipped a handgun from his belt. Sarah wheeled and shot him in the stomach. The one with the shotgun tried to swing around but scraped the end of his barrel on the wall; Sarah and Hyacinth fired two shots apiece; three missed, and one of Sarah's hit the man in the arm and dropped him. The other three had simply disappeared; looking down the ball, Sarah saw them piling into the fire stairway.

There was less blood than she had expected. Before she could examine the two wounded, Hyacinth floated past and Sarah followed. They ran to the elevator lobby, where Lucy was waiting with an elevator and another gun. That was what had taken so long– an elevator! But many Terrorists were pouring into the lobby as the doors began to creep shut. A Terrorist glided toward the wall buttons, hoping to punch the doors open; Sarah made eye contact with him; he kept going; she fired a shot whose effects she never saw. The doors were closed, joining in front of them to form a Big Wheel mural. The car was motionless for a sickeningly long time, and then shifted and began to sink.

Casimir Radon only came in at the end of it. He had gotten up earlier than any of us that morning. Opening his curtains to let in the gray light, he had seen the blind patches grow, and had put on his glacier glasses before allowing any more light past his eyelids. He lay in bed until the blind spots had shifted over to the right side of his vision, then read some physics and tinkered with the railgun's electronics. Finally he went to lunch; but seeing the outbreak of violence there, he headed back up the stairs to look for Sarah, meeting me and Krupp. After we parted, he continued resolutely. placing his feet as gently as possible on each tread and pressing carefully until he moved up to the next step. As a result he moved with a smoothness that was not even noticed by the little embryonic headache in his brain.

A few seconds after leaving us behind, something flashed by him down the center of the stairwell, and a second later– accompanied by a brief stabbing light– came a sharp awesome KABOOM that KABOOMed many times over as it bounded up and down the height of the stairwell. To Casimir it was like being bayoneted through the head, and when he dared to move again, the headache struck so badly that he could only laugh at it. He proceeded toward the Castle in the Air with a helpless moaning laugh, heels of hands buried in temples, and heard other, less tremendous explosions.

The door to E12S was open and three Terrorists were running through in a panic, headed for thirteen. Something white flashed by the door, heading for the lobby. Casimir ran into the hall and was promptly knocked aside by a migration of Terrorists, who emerged from several nearby rooms. Falling, he glimpsed Sarah and Hyacinth, clad in white long johns, running with guns and backpacks down the hall. He managed to trip a few of the Terrorists, more by flailing away randomly than by craftiness, and stood up and began to head for the elevators too. As he approached the lobby, there was another painful WHAM and he felt a sharp pain in his chest. He had no idea what had happened. In fact, Sarah's last bullet, after ricocheting off several walls and passing through a fire door, had in mangled form dispersed its last bit of energy by bouncing sharply off Casimir's T-shirt.

Something hard was against the back of his head– the floor? The Terrorists were standing above him. He stood up. Two wounded men were being carried toward him, leaving uneven trails of blood on the shiny tile floor. He followed these trails to their sources, and stepped through Sarah's open door.

A clown-cadaver was smiling at him through the window and he knew he was hallucinating. Nothing he did could dissolve the ghastly sight. Noticing a Terrorist looking at him from the doorway, he walked over, slammed the door in his face and locked it. Then he wandered around the room, picking up and examining random objects– numerous mementos of Sarah's friends and family, books he would never read, a little framed collection of snapshots. A family portrait, graduation photos of several smiling good-looking earnest types– which was her boyfriend?– and various shots of Sarah and friends being happy in different places, including some of Hyacinth. Tucked in one corner of the frame was a folded piece of paper. Casimir felt filthy reading it; it was obviously a love note. He had never gotten one himself, but he figured this was one of them. Getting to the bottom, he read the name of the mysterious man Sarah so obviously preferred to Casimir: Hyacinth.

He sat on her bed, elbows on knees, scarcely hearing the shouting outside. He smiled a little, knowing Sarah and Hyacinth had made it out safely.

He knew why he'd come up here. Not to assist Sarah, or go with her, but to save her. To create a debt of gratitude that could neither be erased nor forgotten. She would have to love him then, right? This impossible secret hope of his had made his thoughts so twisted and complicated that he no longer knew why he was doing anything; he was never one to analyze his pipe dreams. But now she was safe. His goal was accomplished. And if she had done it herself, and not seen him, then that was his fault. She was safe, and now he had to be happy whether he wanted to or not.

Most importantly, he had seen the proof he had needed for so long, the undeniable proof that she would never be in love with him. All his wild fantasies were impossible now. He could purge himself of his useless infatuation. He could relax. It was wonderful. The Terrorists shot out the lock, came in and grabbed his arms. In the hall he was thrown on his back and straddled by a Terrorist while others sat on his arms and legs. Then they all stared at him dully, lost and indecisive.

"Let's knock his teeth out," said a voice from behind Casimir. A hammer was given to the man on his chest. Someone held Casimir by the hair. Casimir's vision was sharp and bright without the glacier glasses; the hammerhead was cold and luminous in the white light, finely scratched on its polished striking face, red paint worn way from use. The Terrorist was examining Casimir's face as though he could not find the mouth, neither excited nor scared, just curiously resigned to what he was doing and, it seemed, at peace with himself.

This is what I get, being heroic for the wrong reason, thought Casimir. He could not take his eyes off the hammer. He began to struggle. His captors clamped down harder. The torturer made a swing; but Casimir jerked his head to one side and the blow slid down his cheek and crushed a fold of neck skin against the floor.

Then he felt a light tingly feeling and sat up. The hammerer slid backward onto the floor. Casimir's hands were free and he punched the man in the nuts, then pulled his legs free and stood up. Everything he touched now snapped away and started bleeding. Someone was coming with a shotgun, so Casimir re-entered Sarah's room and bolted the door with her police lock.

He smashed the photo frame on her desk, removed a snapshot of Sarah and Hyacinth, wrapped it in Kleenex and put it in his pocket. The only potential weapon was a fencing saber, so he took that. He knocked over a set of brick-and-board shelves, and using one brick as a hammer and another as an anvil, snapped off the final inch of the blade to leave a clean, sharply fractured edge.

When he opened the door again, all he had to do was push the barrel of the shotgun out of the way and push his saber through one of the owner's lungs. The gun came free in his hand and he hurled it backward out the window, where it bounced off the cadaver and fell to Tar City. In the ensuing melee Casimir slashed and whipped several Terrorists with the blade, or punched them with the guard, and then they were all gone and he was walking down the stairs.

His destination was a room in a back hallway far beneath A Tower: University Locksmithing. This was the most heavily fortified room in the Plex, as a single breach in its security meant replacing thousands of locks. It had just one outside window, gridded over by heavy steel tubes, and the door was solid steel, locked by the toughest lock technology could devise. As Casimir approached it, he found the nearby corridors empty. The security system was still on the ball, he supposed. But the events of the day had unleashed in Casimir's mind a kind of maniacal, animal cunning, accumulated through years of craftily avoiding migraines and parties.

The corridors in this section were relatively narrow. He put his feet against one wall and his hands against the other, pushed hard enough to hold himself in the air, slowly "walked" up the walls until his back was against the pipes on the ceiling, then "walked" around the corner and down the hall toward that steel door. Usually the only beings found on the ceilings of the Plex were bats, and so the little TV camera mounted above the door was aimed down toward the floor. Eventually Casimir was able to rest his hands directly on the camera's mounting bracket and wedge his feet into a crack between a ceiling pipe and the ceiling across the hail. Not very comfortable, he used one hand to undo his belt buckle. In five minutes, during which he frequently had to rest both arms, he was able to get the belt over another pipe and rebuckle it around his waist, giving himself an uncomfortable but stable harness.

Within half an hour, the TV camera, inches from his face, began to swivel back and forth warily. Casimir loosened his belt buckle. The lock clicked open and an old man emerged, holding a pistol. Casimir simply dropped, pulled the gun free, flung it back into the room, then dragged the locksmith inside. While the man was regaining his breath, Casimir went through his pockets and came up with a heavily laden key-chain.

After a while the locksmith sat up. "Whose side are you on?" he said.

"No side. I'm on a quest."

The locksmith, apparently familiar with quests, nodded. "What do you want with me?" he asked.

"The master keys, and a place for the night. It looks as though I've got both." Casimir tossed the keys in his hand. "Where were you taking these keys?"

The locksmith rose to his feet, looking suddenly fierce and righteous. "I was getting them out of the Plex, young fella! Listen. I didn't spend thirty-five years here so's I could sell the masters to the highest bidder soon as things got hairy. I was taking those out of the Plex for safekeeping and damn you for insulting me. Give 'em back."

"I have no right to take them, then," said Casimir, and dropped the keys into the locksmith's hands. The man stepped back, first in fear, then in wonder.

There was a high crack and the locksmith fell. Casimir ran for the door, where a loner with a bolt-action .22 was frantically trying to get a second round into the chamber. Casimir nailed him with the saber, kicked him dead into the hallway, grabbed the .22 and locked the door.

The locksmith was struggling to his feet, pulling something bright from his sock. The big keychain was still on the floor where he'd dropped it. He now held seven loose keys in his hands, and with a distant, dying look he gazed through the crossbars of the window at the million lights of the city. Casimir ran and stood before him, but seeing his shadow cross the man's face, fell to his knees.

"Thirty-five years I looked for someone worthy to take my place," whispered the Locksmith. "Thought I never would, thought it was all turning to shit. And here in the last five minutes here, lad, I pass my charge on to you." He parted his hands, allowing the keys to fall into Casimir's. Then he dropped his hands to his sides and died. Casimir gently laid him out on a workbench and crossed his arms over his heart.

After pinching the barrel of the .22 shut in a vise, Casimir curled up on a neighboring workbench and slept.

Though Casimir considered Sarah and Hyacinth safe, they were only relatively safe when they and Lucy left E12S. Their destination was the Women's Center, and their route was a young and disorganized war.

They went first to my suite– I had given Lucy a key. They remained for a couple of hours, borrowing clothes, eating, calming down and building up their courage.

Fully clothed, equipped and reloaded, they broke out my picture window in midafternoon and lowered themselves a few feet onto Tar City. For the time being they kept their guns concealed. Running across the roof it was possible to cover ground swiftly and avoid the thronged corridors. After a couple of hundred feet and a few far misses by bombardiers above, they arrived at one of the large holes in the roof and ducked down into the kitchen warehouses. Approaching quietly, they slid into the narrow space between the boxes and the ceiling and avoided detection. Following Hyacinth, they slid on their bellies down the shelf to the nearest door. This turned out to be guarded by a GASF soldier, who watched the door while a dozen TUGgies methodically tore open and examined crates of food. Hyacinth slid a hundredweight of pasteurized soybean peanut butter substitute onto the guard's head and they dropped to the floor, pulling more crates with them to hinder pursuit. Running into the kitchens, they found themselves cheerfully greeted by more TUGgies. Fortunately the kitchen was huge, full of equipment and partitions and fallen junk and clouds of steam and twists and turns, and after some aimless running around they came to the giant wad of Cheezy Surprise Tetrazzini, squeezed past it through the door, and entered a little-used service corridor filled with the wounded and scared. Four of the latter, also women, seeing that these three were armed and not as scared as they were, joined up. The seven edged into a main hall and made for the Women's Center.

This was in the Student Union Bloc, an area not as bitterly contested as the Caf or the Towers. Hyacinth wounded two Droogs on the way and reloaded. Eventually they came to a long hail lined with the offices of various student activities groups, dark and astonishingly still after their riotous trip. Here they slowed and relaxed, then began to file along the corridor. Soon they smelled sweet incense, and began to make out the distant sounds of chanting and the tinkling of bells. Moving along quietly, they paused by each door: the Outing Club; the Yoga, Solar Power and Multiple Orgasm Support Group; the Nonsocietal Assemblage of Noncoercively Systematized Libertarian Individuals; Let's Understand Animals, Not Torture Them; the men's room; the punk fraternity Zappa Krappa Claw; the Folk Macrame Explorers. As they approached the Women's Center, the sweet odors grew stronger, the soprano-alto chant louder.

"Looks like the Goddess worshipers got here first," said Sarah. "I guess I can live with that, if they can live with someone who shaves her pits." She and Lucy and Hyacinth concealed their guns again, not wanting to seem obtrusive.

Hyacinth knocked. There was a lull, then the voice of Yllas Freedperson, then a new chant.

"You don't know the True Knock," said Yllas.

"Well, we're women, this is the Women's Center."

"Not all women can enter the Women's Center."

"Oh."

"Some have more man than woman in them. No manhood can be allowed here, for this place is sacred to the Goddess."

"Who says?"

"Astarte, the Goddess. Athena. Mary. Vesta. The Goddess of Many Names."

"Have you been talking to her a lot lately?" asked Hyacinth.

"Since I offered her my womb-blood at the Equinox last week, we have been in constant contact."

"Well look," said Hyacinth, "we didn't come to play Dungeons and Dragons, we're here for safety, okay?"

"Then you must purifiy yourself in the sight of the Goddess," said Yllas, opening the door. She and the two dozen others in the Center were all naked. All the partitions that had formerly divided the place into many rooms had been knocked down to unify the Center into a single room. They couldn't see much in the candlelight, except that there was a lot of silver and many daggers and wands. The women were chanting in perfect unison.

"You cannot touch our lives in any way until you have been made one with us," continued Yllas.

Sarah and company declined the invitation with their feet. Before they got far, Yllas started bellowing. "Man-women! Heteros! Traitors! Impurities! Stop them!"

Nearby doors burst open and several women jumped out with bows and arrows taken from the nearby P. E. Department. Sarah began a slow move for her gun, but Hyacinth prevented it. "Take them to PAFW," decreed Yllas, "and when Astarte tells us what is to be done, we will take them away one by one and give them support and counseling."

Escorted by the archers, they traveled for several minutes through Axis hallways, leaving the Union block and entering the athletics area. Here they were turned over to a pair of shotgunwielding SUBbies, who led them into the darkened hallway behind the racquetball courts. Each of the miniature doors they passed had been padlocked; and looking through the tiny windows, they saw several people in each court. Finally they arrived at an open door and were ushered into an empty court, the door padlocked behind them. On the walkway that ran above the back walls of the courts two guards paced back and forth. Taped above the door was a hastily Magic-Markered sign:

WELCOME

TO THE

PEOPLE'S ALTERNATIVE FREEDOM WORKSHOP

The Axis clearly lacked experience in running prisons. They did not even search them for weapons. The few guards were not particularly well armed and followed no strict procedures; they seemed incapable of dealing with relatively simple situations, such as requests for feminine hygiene materials. All tough decisions such as this had to be transmitted to a higher authority, who was holed up at the far end of the upper walkway.

After a few hours, several more people had been put in their cell, among them some large athletes. Escape was easy. They waited until the pacing guards on the walkway were both at one end, and then two large men simply grabbed Hyacinth by the legs and threw her up over the railing. She rolled on her stomach and plugged the two guards, who did not even have time to unsling their weapons. The rest of the incompetent, somnambulistic personnel were disarmed, and everyone was free. Five high-spirited escapees ran down the walkway toward the office of the high-muck-a-muck, firing through its door the entire way. When they finally kicked open the bent and perforated remains, they found themselves in the courts reservation office. A Terrorist sat in a chair, rifle across lap, staring into a color TV whose picture tube had been blasted out. Hyacinth, Lucy and Sarah, not interested in this, headed for the Burrows with several other refugees in tow. The domain of Virgil was near.

Not far from that gymnasium bloc, on the fourth floor. Klystron/Chris inspected his lines. He had just approved one of the border outposts when Klystron had called him back and berated him for his greenhornish carelessness. Right there, he pointed out, a crafty insurrectionist might creep unseen down that stairway and set up an impregnable firepost! The GASF soldiers, awed by his intuition, extended their lines accordingly.

As Klystron/Chris stood on those stairs making friendly chitchat with the men, the warble of a common urban pigeon sounded thrice from below, warning of approaching hostiles. Klystron/Chris whirled, leapt through a group of slower aides and crouched on the bottom step to peer down the hallway. His men were assuming defensive stances and rolling for cover.

He exposed himself just enough to see the vanguard of the approaching force. As he did, the voice of Shekondar came into his head, as it occasionally did in times of great stress: "She is the woman I want for you. You know her! She is ideal for you. The time has come for you to lose your virginity; at last a worthy partner has arrived. Look at that body! Look at that hair! She has long legs which are sexually provocative in the extreme. She is a healthy specimen."

He could hardly disagree. She was evolutionarily fit as any female he had ever observed; he remembered now how the firm but not disgusting musculature of her upper arm had felt when he had set her down on that dinner table during her fainting spell. But at this juncture, when she needed to be strong in order to prevail and preserve her ability to reproduce, she showed the bounce and verve that marked her as the archetypal Saucy Wench of practically every dense sword-and-sorcery novel he had ever consumed in his farmhouse bed on a hot Maine summer afternoon with his tortilla chips on one side and his knife collection on the other. Later, after he had saved her from something– saved her from her own vivacious feminine impulsiveness by an act of manly courage and taken her to some sanctuary like the aisle between the CPU and the Array Processing Unit– then she could allow herself to melt away in a rush of feminine passion and show the tenderness combined with fire that was enticingly masked behind her conventional calm sober behavioral mode. He wondered if she were the type of woman who would tie a man up, just for the fun of it, and tickle him. These things Shekondar did not reveal; and yet he had told him that they matched! And that meant she could be nothing other than the fulfilment of his unique sexual desires!

The group approached their perimeter. Klystron/Chris staggered boldly into the open, hindered by a massive erection, hitched up his pants with the butt of the Kalashnikov and waved the group to a halt. She dipped behind a pillar and covered him with a small arm– a primitive chemical-powered lead-thrower that was nevertheless dangerous. Then, seeing many automatic weapons, she pointed her gun at the ceiling. Her troop slowed to a confused and apprehensive halt. They were disorganized, undisciplined, obviously typical refugee residue, led by a handful of Alpha types with guns– not a minor force in this theater, but helpless against the GASF.

"Hi, Fred," she said, and the obvious sexual passion in her voice was to his ears like the soothing globular tones of the harp-speakers of Iliafharxhlind. "We were headed for the Burrows. How are things between here and there?"

It was easiest to explain it in math terms. "We've secured a continuous convex region which includes both this point and the region called the Burrows, ma'am. It's all under my command. How can we help you?"

"We need places to stay. And the three of us here need to get to the Science Shop."

So! Friends of the White Priest! She was very crafty, very coy, but made no bones about what she was after. These women thought of only one thing. Klystron/Chris liked that– she was quite a little enticer, but subtle as she was, he knew just what the audacious minx was up to! Shekondar tuned in again with unnecessary advice: "Please her and you will have a fine opportunity for sexual intercourse. Do as she asks in all matters."

He straightened up from his awkward position and smiled the broadest, friendliest smile he could manage without exceeding the elastic limit of his lip tissue. "Men," he said to his soldiers, "it's been a secret up to now, but this woman is a Colonelette in the Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome and a priestess of great stature. I'm putting Werewolf Platoon under her command. She'll need passage into the Secured Region– unless she changes her mind first!" Women often changed their minds; he glanced at her to see if she had caught this gentle ribbing. She put on an emotionless act that was almost convincing.

"Well, gee. It's kind of a surprise to me too. Can we just go, then?"

"Permission granted, Colonelette Sarah Jane Johnson!" he snapped, saluting. She threw him a strange look, no doubt of awe, thanks and general indebtedness, and after giving a few cutely tentative orders to her men, headed into the Secured Region. Fired with new zest for action, Klystron/Chris wheeled and led his men toward the next outpost of the Purified Empire.

I declined Fred Fine's offer and waited below E Tower for my friends. Before long it became obvious that I would never meet anyone in that madhouse of a lobby, and so I set out for the Science Shop.

The safest route took me down Emeritus Row, quiet as always. I checked each door as I went along. Sharon's office had long since been ransacked by militants looking for rail-gun information. Other than the sound of dripping water falling into the wastecans below the poorly patched hole in Sharon's ceiling, all I heard on Emeritus Row was an old man crying alone.

He was in the office marked: PROFESSOR EMERITUS HUMPHREY BATSTONE FORTHCOMING IV. Without knocking (for the room was dark and the door ajar) I walked in and saw the professor himself. He leaned over the desk with his silvery dome on the blotter as though it were the only thing that could soak up his tears, his hands flung uselessly to the side. The rounded tweed shoulders occasionally humped with sobs, and little strangled gasps made their way out and died in the musty air of the office.

Though I intentionally banged my way in, he did not look up. Eventually he sat up, red eyes closed. He opened them to slits and peered at me.

"I– " he said, and broke again. After a few more tries he was able to speak in a high, strangled voice.

"I am in a very bad situation, you see. I think I may have suffered ruination. I have just … have just been sitting here"– his voice began to clear and his wet eyes scanned the desk– "and preparing to tender my resignation."

"But why," I asked. "You're not that old. You seem healthy. In your field, it's not as though you have equipment or data that's been destroyed in the fighting. What's wrong?"

He gave a taut, clenched smile and avoided my eyes, looking around at the stacks of manuscript boxes and old books that lined the room. "You don't understand. I seem to have left my lecture notes in my private study in the Library bloc. As you can appreciate, it will be rather difficult for a man of my years to retrieve them under these conditions."

This clearly meant a lot to him, and I did not say "So? Write up some new ones!" For him, apparently, it was a fatal blow. "You see," he continued, sounding stronger now that his secret was out. "Ahem. There is in my field a large corpus of basic knowledge, absolutely fundamental. It must be learned by any new student, which is why it appears in my courses and so forth. I, er, I've forgotten it entirely. Somehow. With my engagements and editorial positions, conferences, trips, consultations, et cetera, and of course all my writing– well, there's simply no room for trivia. So if I am hired away by another university and asked to teach, or some dreadful thing– you can imagine my embarrassment."

I was embarrassed myself, remembering now a snatch of overheard conversation among three grad students, one of whom referred contemptuously to "Emeritus Home-free Etcetera," who apparently was making him do a great deal of pointless research, check out books for him and pay the fines, put money in his parking meters and so on. If that was Forthcoming's style, I could understand what this break in routine would do to his career. He was only a scholar when there was a university to say he was.

A distant machine-gun blast echoed down the hallway. "Mr. Forthcoming," I said firmly. "I'd like to help you out, but for the moment it's not possible. I guess what I'm trying to say is let's get the hell out of here!"

He wouldn't move.

"Look. Maybe if we get down to a safe place, we can see about getting your lecture notes back."

He looked up with such relief and hope that I wanted to spit. My unfortunate statement had given him new life. He stood up shakily, began to chatter happily and set about packing pipes and manuscripts into his briefcase.

As ever, the Burrows were calm. The GASF guards let us past the border after quick checks over their intercoms, and we were suddenly in a place unchanged since the days of old, where students roamed the hallways wild and free and research and classes continued obliviously. Most of the Burrows folk regarded the entire war/riot as a challenge for their ingenuity, and those who had not been sucked into Fred Fine's vortex of fantasy and paranoia set about preserving the ancient comforts with the enthusiasm of Boy Scouts lost in the woods.

The Science Shop was an autonomous dependency of Fred Fine's United Pure Plexorian Realm, and the hallway that led there was guarded, mostly symbolically, by Zap with his sawed-off shotgun and his favorite blunt instrument. He waved us through and we came to our haven for the war.

The vacuum of authority that filled the Plex for the first two weeks of April resulted from events in the Nuke Dump. The occupying terrorists warned that any attempt by authorities to approach the building would be met by the release of radioactive poisons into the city. The city police who ringed the Plex late on April First had no idea of how to deal with such a threat and called the Feds. The National Guard showed up a day later with armored personnel carriers, helicopters and tanks, but they, too, kept their distance. The Crotobaltislavonians had obviously intended to establish their own martial law in the Flex, enforcing it through their SUB proxies and the SUB's Terrorist proxies. But the blocked elevator shaft and the giant rats made their authority tenuous, and unbelievably fierce resistance from GASF and TUG kept the SUB/Terrorist Axis from seizing any more than E and F Towers. Instead of National Guard authority or Crotobaltislavonian authority, we ended up with no central authority at all.

The Towers were held by the best-armed groups. The Axis held E and F, the GASF held D, the administration anti-Terrorist squads B and C, and TUG held A, H, and G, prompting Hyacinth to remark that if this were tic-tac-toe the TUG would have won. The towers were easy to hold because access was limited; if you blocked shut the four outer fire stairs of each wing, you could control the only entrances to the tower with a handful of soldiers in the sixth-floor lobby. The base of the Plex was a bewildering 3-D labyrinth. Here things were much less stable as several groups struggled for control of useful ground, such as bathrooms, strategic stairways, rooms with windows and so forth. Many of these were factions that had split away from the Terrorists, finding the strict hierarchy and tight restrictions intolerable. Other important groups were made up of inner-city financial-aid students, who at least knew how to take care of themselves; one gang of small-towners from the Great Plains, also adept at mass violence; the hockey-wrestling coalition; and the Explorer post, which had a large interlocking membership with the ROTC students.

Those who were not equipped or inclined to fight fared poorly. Most ended up trapped in the towers for the duration, where all they could do was watch TV and reproduce. Escape from the Plex was impossible, because the nuclear Terrorists allowed no one to approach it, and snipers in the Axis towers made perilous the dash from the Main Entrance. Those who could not make it to the safety of a tower were not wanted by the bands of fighters in the Base, and so had to wander as refugees, most ending up in the Library. It was a very, very bad time to be an unescorted woman. We tried to make raids against weaker bands in order to rescue some of these unfortunates, but only retrieved thirty or so.

Fire in the Plex was not the problem it had been feared to be. The plumbing still worked reasonably well and most people had enough sense to use the fire hoses. Many areas were smoky for days, though, to the point of being hostile to life, and bands driven from their own countries by smoke accounted for a good deal of the fighting. The food problem was minor because the Red Cross was allowed to distribute it in the building. Unfortunately there was no way to remove garbage, so it piled up in lobbies and stairwells and elevator shafts. Insects, invading through windows that had been broken out or removed to vent smoke, grew fruitful and multiplied; but this plague then abated, as the bat population swelled enormously to take advantage of the explosion in their food supply. By the end of the crisis, the top five floors of E Tower had been evacuated to make room for bats, who were moving down the tower at the rate of one floor every three days.

There were stable areas where well-armed people settled in and organized themselves. The Burrows were exceptionally stable, brilliantly organized by Fred Fine, and Virgil's Science Shop was an enclave of stability within that. About twenty people lived in the Shop; we slept on floors and workbenches, and cooked communally on lab burners. Fred Fine allowed us this autonomy for one reason: Shekondar the Fearsome/JANUS 64 had selected Virgil as his sole prophet.

Of course it was not really so simple. It was actually the Worm, and Virgil's countermeasures. As Virgil explained it, he had signed on to his terminal on March 31 to find a message waiting: WELL MET WORM-HUNTING MERCENARY. YOU ARE ADEPT. LET US HOPE YOU ARE WELL PAID. SO FAR I HAVE ONLY FLEXED MY MUSCLES. NOW BEGINS THE DUEL.

The next day, of course, civilization had fallen. As soon as Virgil had been sure of this, he had signed on to find that his terminal had been locked out of the system by the Worm. This he had anticipated, and so he calmly proceeded to the Operator's Station, ejected Consuela and signed on there under a fake ID. Virgil had then commandeered six tape drives (to the dismay of the hackers who were using them) and mounted six tapes he had prepared for this day. He went to the Terminal Room, where sat hundreds of terminals in individual carrels. Here Virgil signed on to eighteen terminals at once, using fake accounts and passwords he had been keeping in reserve. On each terminal he set in motion a different program– using information stored on the six special tapes. Each of these programs looked like a rather long but basically routine student effort, the sort of thing the Worm had long since stopped trifling with. But each did contain lengthy sections of machine code that had no relevance to the program proper.

Virgil returned to the Operator's Station and entered a single command. Its effect was to draw together the reins of the eighteen sham programs, to lift out, as it were, all those long machine code sections and interleave them into one huge powerful program that seemed to coalesce out of nowhere, having already penetrated the Worm's locks and defenses. This monster program, then, had calmly proceeded to wipe out all administrative memory and all student and academic software, and then to restructure the Operator to suit Virgil's purposes. It all went– payroll records, library overdues, video-game programs. From the computer's point of view, American Megaversity ceased to exist in the time it took for a micro-transistor to flip from one state to the other.

A mortal wound for the university, but the university was already mortally wounded. This was the only way to prevent the Worm from seizing the entire computer within the next week or so. Virgil's insight had been that although the Worm had been designed to take into account any conceivable action on the Computing Center's part, it had not anticipated the possibility that someone might destroy all the records and dismantle the Operator simply to fight the Worm.

The Worm's message to Virgil had been the key: it had identified him as an employee of the Computing Center, a hired hit man. That was not an unreasonable assumption, considering Virgil's power. But it was wrong anyway, proving that the Worm could only take into account reasonably predictable events. The downfall of the university wasn't predictable, at least not to sociopath Paul Bennett, so he hadn't foreseen that anyone would take Virgil's pyrrhic approach.

Virgil now had enough processing power to run a large airline or a small developing country. The Worm could only loop back and start over and try to retake what it had lost, and this time against a much more formidable foe. So on hummed the CPU of the Janus 64, spending one picosecond performing a task for the Worm, the next a task for Virgil. The opponents met and mingled on the central chip of the CPU, which evenhandedly did the work of both at once, impassively computing out its own fate. Fred Fine noticed that no one could sign on now except Virgil, and concluded the obvious: Virgil was the Prophet of Shekondar, the Mage. So we saw little of Virgil, who had absorbed himself completely in the computer, who mumbled in machine language as he stirred his soup and spent fifteen hours a day sitting alone before the black triangular obelisk staring at endless columns of numbers.

Sarah, Hyacinth, Lucy and friends showed up late in the evening of the First, giddy and triumphant, and we had a delighted reunion. Ephraim Klein showed up at five in the morning bleeding from many small birdshot wounds, moving with incredible endurance for such a small, unhealthy-looking person. After establishing that the shot in his legs was steel, not lead, we sent him to Nirvana on laughing gas and generic beer and sucked out the balls with a large electromagnet. Casimir turned up suddenly, late on April second, slipping in so quietly that he seemed just to beam down. He dumped a load of clothing and sporting gear on a bench and set to work in a white creative heat we did not care to disturb.

"I told you," Ephraim said to Sarah, as he recovered. "We should blow this place up. Look what's happened."

"Yeah," said Sarah, "it's a bad situation."

"Bad situation! A fucking war! How many other universities do you know where a civil war closes off the academic year?" Sarah shrugged. "Not too many."

"So why do you think we're having one? These people are a totally normal cross-section of the population, caught in a giant building that drives them crazy."

"Okay. Lie down and stop moving around so much, okay?" She wandered around the shop watching a goggled Casimir slice into a fencing mask with a plate grinder. In one corner, Hyacinth was teaching the joys of Bunsen-burner cuisine to a small child who had been caught up in the fighting and sent down here by grace of the Red Cross. Sarah suddenly walked back to Ephraim.

"You're wrong," she said. "It's nothing to do with the Plex. What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to take blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded, and finally they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it."

"But the pressures! The social pressures here are irresistible. How "

"I resisted them. You resisted them. The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier."

"You don't even have to try to hurt people here. The place forces it on you. You can't sit up in bed without waking up your goddamn neighbor. You can't take a shower without sucking off the hot water and freezing the next one down. You can't go to eat without making the people behind you wait a little longer, and even by eating the food you increase the amount they have to make, and decrease the quality."

"That's all crap! That's the way life is, Ephraim. It has nothing to do with the architecture of the Plex."

"Look at the sexism in this place. Doesn't that ever bother you? Don't you think that if people weren't so packed together in this space, the bars and the parties wouldn't be such meat markets? Maybe there would be fewer rapes if we could teach people how to get along with the other sex."

"If you want to prevent rapes, you should make a justice system that protects our right not to be raped. Education? How do you pull off that kind of education? How do you design a rape-proof dorm? Look, Ephraim, all we can do is protect people's rights. We wouldn't get a change in attitude by moving to another building. The education you're talking about is just a pipe dream."

"I still think we should blow this fucker up."

"Good. Work on it. In the meantime I'll continue to carry a gun."

Professor Forthcoming, or "Emeritus" as Hyacinth called him, followed me around a great deal, jabbering about his lecture notes, prodding my latissimus muscles and marveling at how easy it would be for me, a former first-string college nose guard with a gun, to rescue them from the Library. I did not have the heart to discourage him. In the end, all I could do was make sure he paid for it: made him promise that he would sit down and study those notes so that he could rewrite them if he had to. He promised unashamedly, but by the time we organized the quest he was already looking forward to a conference in Monaco in the fall, and listening to the casualty reports on the radio to hear if any of his key grad students had been greased.

No, said Fred Fine, the APPASMU was not available for raids on the Library. But we could have some soldiers and one AK-47, on the condition that, given the choice between abandoning the quest and abandoning the assault rifle, we would abandon the quest. I loudly agreed to this before Emeritus could sputter any disagreements. Our party was me, Hyacinth, Emeritus, four GASF soldiers and the Science Shop technician Lute. Sarah stayed behind reading The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

Our route took us through fairly stable academic blocs, and other areas controlled by gangs. We could not avoid passing through the area controlled by Hansen's Gang, the smalltowners of the Great Plains. They were not well armed, but neither was anyone else in the base, and they had jumped into the fray with the glee of any rural in an informal blunt-instruments fight and come out winners. This was their idiom. Our negotiations with their leader were straightforward: we showed them our AK-47 and offered not to massacre them if they let us pass without hassle. Their leader had no trouble grasping this, but many of the members seemed to have a bizarre mental block: they could not see the AK-47 in Hyacinth's hands. All they saw was Hyacinth, the first clean healthy female they had seen in a week, and they came after her as though she were unarmed. "Hey! She's mine!" yelled one of these as we entered their largest common area.

"Fuck you," said another, swinging a motorcycle chain past his brother's eyes at high speed. He turned and began to trudge toward Hyacinth, hitching up his pants. "Hey, bitch, I'm gonna breed you," he said cheerfully. Hyacinth aimed the gun at him; he looked at her face. She pulled the bolt into firing position and squared off; he kept coming. When I stepped forward he brandished his chain, then changed course as Hyacinth stepped out from behind me.

"Go for it," and "All right, for sure, Combine," yelled his pals.

"Hyacinth, please don't do that," I said, plugging my ears. She fired off half a clip in one burst and pulverized a few square feet of cinderblock wall right next to the man's head. The lights went out as a power cable was severed. Courtesy of a window, we could still see.

"Shit, what the fuck?" someone inquired.

Rather than trying to explain, we proceeded from the room. "I like that bitch," someone said as we were leaving, "but she's weird. I dunno what's wrong with her."

The Mailroom was an armistice zone between Hansen's Gang and the Journalism Department. The elevators here descended to the mail docks, making this one of the few ports of entry to the Plex. The publicity-minded Crotobaltislavonians had worked out an agreement with one of the networks– you know which, if you watched any news in this period– allowing the camera crews to come and go through this room. The network's hired guards all toted machine guns. We counted twenty automatic weapons in this room alone, which probably meant that the network had the entire Axis outgunned.

In exchange for a brief interview, which was never aired, and for all the information we could provide about other parts of the Plex, we were allowed into the Journalism bloc. Here we picked up a three-man minicam crew who followed along for a while. Emeritus was magnificently embarrassed and insisted on walking behind the camera. One of the crew was an AM student, and I talked to him about the network's operations.

"You've got a hell of a lot of firepower. You guys are the most powerful force in the Plex. How are you using it?"

The student shrugged. "What do you mean? We protect our crews and equipment. All the barbarians are afraid of us." "Right, obviously," I said. "But I noticed recently that a lot of people around here are starving, being raped, murdered– you know, a lot of bum-out stuff. Do those guards try to help out? You can spare a few."

"Well, I don't know," he said uncomfortably. "That's kind of network-level policy. It goes against the agreement. We can go anywhere as long as we don't interfere. If we interfere, no agreement."

"But if you've already negotiated one agreement, can't you do more? Get some doctors into the building, maybe?"

"No way, man. No fucking way. We journalists have ethics." The camera crew turned back when we reached the border of the Geoanthropological Planning Science Department, a bloc with only two entrances. My office was here, and I hoped I could get us through to the other side. The heavy door was bullet-pocked, the lock had been shot at more than once, but it was blocked from the other side and we could hear a guard beyond. Nearby, in an alcove, under a pair of drinking fountains, stretched out straight and dead on the floor, was a middle-aged faculty member, his big stoneware coffee mug still clenched in his cold stiff fingers. He had apparently died of natural causes.

As it turned out, the guard was a grad student I knew, who let us in. He was tired and dirty, with several bandages, a bearded face, bleary red eyes and matted hair– just as he had always looked. Three other grads sat there in the reception room reading two-year-old U.S. News and World Reports and chomping hunks of beef jerky.

While my friends took a breather, I stopped by my office and checked my mailbox. On the way back I peeked into the Faculty Lounge.

The entire Geoanthropological Planning Science faculty was there, sitting around the big conference table, while a few favored grad students stood back against the walls. Several bowls of potato chips were scattered over the table and at least two kegs were active. The room was dark; they were having a slide show.

"Whoops! Looks like I tilted the camera again on this one," said Professor Longwood sheepishly, nearly drowned out by derisive whoops from the crowd. "How did this get in here? This is part of the Labrador tundra series. Anyway, it's not a bad shot, though I used the wrong film, which is why everything's pink. That corkscrew next to the caribou scat gives you some idea of scale– " but my opening the door had spilled light onto the image, and everyone turned around to look at me.

"Bud!" cried the Chair. "Glad you could make it! Want some beer? It's dark beer."

"Sounds good," I said truthfully, "but I'm just stopping in."

"How are things?" asked Professor Longwood.

"Fine, fine. I see you're all doing well too. Have you been outside much? I mean, in the Plex?"

There was bawdy laughter and everyone looked at a sheepish junior faculty member, a heavyset man from Upper Michigan. "Bert here went out to shoot some slides," explained the Chair, "and ran into some of those hayseeds. He told them he was a journalist and they backed off, but then they saw he didn't have a press pass, so he had to kick one of them in the nuts and give the other his camera!"

"Don't feel bad, Bert," said a mustachioed man nearby. "Well get a grant and buy you a new one." We all laughed.

"So you're here for the duration?" I asked.

"Shouldn't last very long," said a heavily bearded professor who was puffing on a pipe. "We are working up a model to see how long the food needs of the population can last. We're using survival ratios from the 1782 Bulgarian famine– actually quite similar to this situation. We're having a hell of a time getting data, but the model says it shouldn't last more than a week. As for us, we've got an absolute regional monopoly on beer, which we trade with the Journalism people for food."

"Have you taken into account the rats and bats?" I asked. Huh? Where?" The room was suddenly still.

"We've got giant rats downstairs, and billions of bats upstairs. The rats are this long. Eighty to a hundred pounds. No hearts. I hear they've worked their way up to the lower sublevels now, and they're climbing up through the stacks of garbage in the elevator shafts." "Shit!" cried Bert, beating his fists wildly on the table. "What a time to lose my fucking camera!"

"Let's catch one," said his biologist wife.

"Well, we could adjust the model to account for exogenous factors," said the bearded modeler.

"We'd have people eating rats, and rats eating people," said the mustachioed one.

"And rats eating bats."

"And bats eating bugs eating dead rats."

"The way to account for all that is with a standard input! output matrix," said the Chair commandingly.

"These rats sound similar to wolverines," said Longwood, cycling through the next few slides. "I think I have some wolverine scats a few slides ahead, if this is the series I think it is.,' Seeing that they had split into a slide and a modeling faction, I stepped out. A few minutes later we were back on the road. We were attacked by a hopeless twit who was trying to use a shotgun like a long-range rifle. I was nicked in the cheek by one ball. Hyacinth splashed him all over a piece of abstract sculpture made of welded-together lawn ornaments. The GASFers, who were humiliated that a female should carry the big gun, were looking as though they'd never have another erection.

We passed briefly through the Premed Center, which was filed with pale mutated undergrads dissecting war casualties and trying to gross each other out. I yelled at them to get outside and assist the wounded, but received mostly blank stares. "We can't," said one of them, scandalized, "we're not even in med school yet."

From here we entered the Medical Library, and from there, the Library proper.

Huge and difficult to guard, the Library was the land of the refugees. It had no desirable resources, but was a fine place in which to hide because the bookshelves divided into thousands of crannies. Waves of refugees made their way here and holed up, piling books into forts and rarely venturing out.

The first floor was unguarded and sparsely occupied. We stuck to the open areas and proceeded to the second floor. Here was a pleasant surprise. An organized relief effort had been formed, mostly by students in Nursing, Classics, History, Languages and Phys. Ed. By trading simple medical services to the barbarians they had obtained enough guns to guard the place. An incoming refugee would be checked out by a senior Nursing major or occasional premed volunteer, then given a place in the stacks– "your place is DG 311 1851 and its vicinity"– and so on. Most of the stragglers could then hide out between bulletproof walls of paper, while the seriously wounded could be lowered out the windows to the Red Cross people below. In the same way, food, supplies and brave doctors could be hoisted into the Plex. The atmosphere was remarkably quiet and humane, and all seemed in good humor.

The rest of our journey was uneventful. We climbed to the fourth floor and wended our way toward Emeritus' study. Soon we could smell smoke, and see it hanging in front of the lights. To the relief of Emeritus, it came not from his office but from the open door of the one labeled "Embers, Archibald."

Three men and a woman, all unarmed, sat around a small fire, occasionally throwing on another book. They had broken out the window to vent the smoke.

The woman shrieked as I appeared in the door. "Jesus! If I had a gun, you'd be dead now. I react so uncontrollably."

"Good thing you don't," I observed.

"It's really none of your business," intoned a thin, pale man. "But I suppose that since you have that wretched gun, you're going to have us do what you want. Well, we don't have anything you could want here. And forget about Zelda here. She's a lousy lay." Zelda shrieked in amusement. "It's a good thing you're witty when you're a bastard, Terence, or I'd despise you." "Oh, do go ahead. I adore being despised. I really do. It's so inspiring."

"Society despises the artist," said Embers, lighting a Dunhill in the bookfire, "unless he panders to the masses. But society treats the artist civilly so he can't select specific targets for his hatred. Open personal hatred is so very honest."

"Now that's meaningful, Arch," said the other man, a brief lump with an uncertain goatee.

"How come you're burning books?" I asked.

"Oh, that, well," said Embers, "Terence wanted a fire." Terence piped up again. "This whole event is so very like camping out, don't you agree? Except without the dreadful ants and so forth. I thought a fire would be very– primal. But it smoked dreadfully, so we broke out the window, and now it's very cold and we must keep it going ceaselessly, of course. Is that adequate? Is that against Library rules?"

"We've been finding," added Embers, "that older books are much better. They burn more slowly. And with their thin pages, Bibles and dictionaries are quite effective. I'm taking some notes." He waved a legal pad at me.

"Also," added the small one, "old books are printed on acid-free paper, so we aren't getting acid inside of our lungs." "Why don't you just cover the window and put it out?" I asked. "Aren't we logical?" said Terence. "You people are all so tediously Western. We wanted a fire, you can't take it away! What happened to academic freedom? Say, are you quite finished with your bloody suggestions? I'm trying to read one of my fictions to these people, Mr. Spock."

I followed my friends into Emeritus' office. Behind me Terence resumed his reading. "The thin stream of boiling oil dribbled from the lip of the frying pan and seared into the boy's white flesh. As he squirmed against the bonds that were holding him down, unable to move, it ran into the bed of thorny roses underneath him; the petals began to wither like a dying western sunset at dusk."

A minute or two later, as we exited with Emeritus' papers, there was a patter of applause. "Ravishing, Terence. Quite frankly, it's similar to Erasmus T. Bowlware's Gulag Pederast. Especially the self-impalement of the heroine on the electric fencepost of the concentration camp as she is driven into a frenzy by psychic emanations from the possessed child in the nearby mansion where the defrocked epileptic priest gives up his life in order to get the high-technology secrets to the Jewish commandos. I do like it."

"When do I get to read my fiction?" asked Zelda.

"Is this from the novel about the female writer who is struggling to write a novel about a woman writer who is writing a novel about a woman artist in Nazi Germany with a possessed daughter?" asked Embers.

"Well, I decided to make her a liberated prostitute and psychic," said Zelda; and that was the last I heard of the conversation, or of the people.

We deposited Emeritus in the refugee camp on the second floor and made it back to the Science Shop in about an hour. There, Sarah and Casimir were deep in conversation, and Ephraim Klein was listening in.

Casimir's finished suit of armor used bulletproof fabric taken from a couple of associate deans. The administration was unhappy about that, but they could only get to Casimir by shooting their way through the Unified Pure Plexorian Realm. Underneath the fabric, Casimir wore various hard objects to protect his flesh from impact. On legs and knees he wore soccer shinguards and the anti-kneecapping armor favored by administration members. He wore a jockstrap with a plastic cup, and over his torso was a heavy, crude breastplate that he had endlessly and deafeningly hammered out of half a fifty-five gallon oil drum. Down his back he hung overlapping shingles of steel plate to protect his spine.

His head was protected by a converted defensive lineman's football helmet. He had cut the front out of a fencing mask and attached the wire mesh over the plastic bars of the helmet's facemask. Over the earholes he placed a pair of shooter's ear protectors. So that he would not overheat, he cut a hole in the back of the helmet and ran a flexible hose to it. The other end of the hose he connected to a battery-powered blower hung on his belt, and to get maximum cooling benefit he shaved his head. The helmet as a whole was draped with bulletproof fabric which hung down a foot on all sides to cover the neck. And as someone happened to notice, he took his snapshot of Sarah and Hyacinth and taped it to the inside of the helmet with grey duct tape.

When Casimir was in full battle garb, his only vulnerable points were feet, hands and eye-slit. Water could be had by sucking on a tube that ran down to a bicyclist's water bottle on his belt. And it should not go unmentioned that Casimir, draped in thick creamy-white fabric, with blazing yellow and blue running shoes, topped with an enormous shrouded neckless head, a faceless dome with bulges over the ears and a glittering silver slit for the eyes, a sword from the Museum in hand, looked indescribably terrible and fearsome, and for the first time in his life people moved to the walls to avoid him when he walked down the hallways.

It was a very smoke-filled room that Casimir ventilated by swinging in through the picture window on the end of a rope. Through the soft white tobacco haze, Oswald Heimlich saw his figure against the sky for an instant before it burst into the room and did a helpless triple somersault across the glossy parquet floor. Heimlich was already on his feet, snatching up his $4,000 engraved twelve-gauge shotgun and flicking off the safety. As the intruder staggered to his feet, Heimlich sighted over the head of the Trustee across from him (who reacted instinctively by falling into the lap of the honorable former mayor) and fired two loads of .00 buckshot into this strange Tarzan's lumpy abdomen. The intruder took a step back and remained standing as the shot plonked into his chest and clattered to the floor. Heimlich fired again with similar effects. By now the great carved door had burst open and five guards dispersed to strategic positions and pointed their UZIs at the suspicious visitor. S. S. Krupp watched keenly.

The guards made the obligatory orders to freeze. He slowly reached around and began to draw a dueling sword from the Megaversity historical collections out of a plastic pipe scabbard. Tied to its handle was a white linen napkin with the AM coat of arms, which he waved suggestively.

"I swear," said S. S. Krupp, "don't you have a phone, son?" No one laughed. These were white male Eastern businessmen, and they were serious. Heimlich in particular was not amused; this man looked very much like the radiation emergency workers who had been staggering through his nightmares for several nights running, and having him crash in out of a blue sky into a Board of Trustees meeting was not a healthy experience. He sat there with his eyes closed for several moments as waiters scurried in to sweep up the broken glass.

"I'll bet you want to do a little negotiating," said Krupp, annoyingly relaxed. "Who're you with?"

"I owe allegiance to no man," came the muffled voice from behind the mask, but "come on behalf of all."

"Well, that's good! That's a fine attitude," said Krupp. "Set yourself down and we'll see what we can do."

The intruder took an empty chair, laid his sword on the table and peeled off his hood of fabric to reveal the meshed-over football helmet, A rush of forced air was exhaled from his facemask and floated loose sheets of paper down the table.

"Why did you put a nuclear waste dump in the basement?" Everyone was surprised, if genteel, and they exchanged raised eyebrows for a while.

"Maybe Ozzie can tell you about that," suggested Krupp. "I was still in Wyoming at the time."

Heimlich scowled. "I won't deny its existence. Our reasons for wanting it must be evident. Perhaps if I tell you its history, you'll agree with us, whoever you are. Ahem. You may be aware that until recently we suffered from bad management at the presidential level. We had several good presidents in the seventies, but then we got Tony Commodi, who was irresponsible– an absolute mongoloid when it came to finance– insisted on teaching several classes himself, and so forth. He raised salaries while keeping tuition far too low. People became accustomed to it. At this time we Trustees were widely dispersed and made no effort to lead the university. Finally we were nearly bankrupt. Commodi was forced to resign by faculty and Trustees and was replaced by Pertinax Rushforth, who in those days was quite the renascence man, and widely respected. We Trustees were still faced with impossible financial problems, but we found that if we sold all the old campus– hundreds of acres of prime inner-city real estate– we could pull in enough capital to build something like the Plex on the nine blocks we retained.

But of course the demographics made it clear that times would be very rough in the years to come. We could not compete for students, and so we had to run a very tight ship and seek innovative sources for our operating funds. We could have entered many small ventures– high technology spinoffs, you see– but this would have been extraordinarily complex, highly controversial and unpredictable, besides raising questions about the proper function of the university.

"It was then that we hit upon the nuclear waste idea. Here is something that is not dependent on the economy; we will always have these wastes to dispose of. It's highly profitable, as there is a desperate demand for disposal facilities. The wastes must be stored for millennia, which means that they are money in the bank– the government, whatever form it takes, must continue to pay us until their danger has died away. And by its very nature it must be done secretly, so no controversy is generated, no discord disrupts the normal functions of the academy– there need be no relationship between the financial foundation and the intellectual activities of the university. It's perfect."

"See, this city is on a real stable salt-dome area," added a heavy man in an enormous grey suit, "and now that there's no more crude down there, it's suitable for this kind of storage." "You," said the knight, pointing his sword at the man who had just spoken, "must be in the oil business. Are you Ralph Priestly?" "Ha! Well, yeah, that's me," said Ralph Priestly, unnerved. "We have to talk later."

"How did you know about our disposal site?" asked Heimlich. "That doesn't matter. What matters now is: how did the government of Crotobaltislavonia find out about it?" "Oh," said Heimlich, shocked. "You know about that also." "Yep."

After a pause, S. S. Krupp continued. "Now, don't go tell your honchos that we did this out of greed. America had to start doing something with this waste– that's a fact. You know what a fact is? That's something that has nothing to do with politics. The site is as safe as could be. See, some things just can't be handed over to political organizations, because they're so damned unstable. But great universities can last for thousands of years. Hell, look at the changes of government the University of Paris has survived in the last century alone! This facility had to be built and it had to be done by a university. The big steady cash flow makes us more stable, and that makes us better qualified to be running the damn thing in the first place. Symbiosis, son."

"Wait. If you're making so much money off of this, why are you so financially tight-assed?"

"That's a very good question," said Heimlich. "As I said, it's imperative that this facility remain secret. If we allowed the cash flow to show up on our ledgers, this would be impossible. We've had to construct a scheme for processing or laundering, as it were, our profits through various donors and benefactors. In order to allay suspicion, we keep these 'donations' as small as we can while meeting the university's basic needs."

"What about the excess money?"

"What's done with that depends on how long the site remains secret. Therefore we hold the surplus in escrow and invest it in the name of American Megaversity, so that in the meantime it is productively used."

"Invest it where? Don't tell me. Heimlich Freedom Industries. the Big Wheel Petroleum Corporation "

"Well," said Ralph Priestly, cutting the tip off a cigar. "Big Wheel's a hell of an investment. I run a tight ship." "We don't deny that the investments are in our best interests," said a very old Trustee with a kindly face. "But there's nothing wrong with that, as long as we do not waste or steal the money. Every investment we make in some way furthers the nation's economic growth."

"But you're no different from the Crotobaltislavonians, in principle. You're using your control over the wastes to blackmail whatever government comes along."

"That's an excellent observation," said Krupp. "But the fact is, if you'll just think about it, that as long as the waste exists, someone's going to control them, and whoever does can blackmail whatever government there is, and as long as someone's going to have that influence, it might as well be good people like us."

The knight drummed his fingers on the table, and the Trustees peered at his inscrutable silver mask. "I see from the obituaries that Bert Nix and Pertinax Rushforth were one and the same. What happened to him?"

Heimlich continued. "Pertinax couldn't hack it. He was all for fiscal conservatism, of course– Bert was not a soft-headed man at any point. But when he learned he was firing people and cutting programs just to maintain this charade, he lost his strength of will. The faculty ruined his life with their hatred, he had a nervous breakdown and we sacked him. Then the MegaUnion began to organize a tuition strike, so the remaining old-guard Trustees threw up their hands, caved in and installed Julian Didius as President!" At the memory of this, several of the Trustees sighed or moaned with contempt. "Well! After he had enjoyed those first three weeks of flying in all his intelligentsia comrades for wine and cheese parties, we got him in here and showed him the financial figures, which looked disastrous. Then he met Pertinax after the electroshock, and realized what a bloody hell-hole he was in. Three days later he went to the Dean's Office for a chat, and when the Dean turned out to be addressing a conference in Hawaii, he blew his top and hurled himself out the window, and then we brought in Septimius and he's straightened things out wonderfully." There were admiring grins around the table, though Krupp did not appear to be listening.

"Did Pertinax have master keys, then, or what? How did he keep from being kicked out of the Plex?"

"We allowed the poor bastard to stay because we felt sorry for him," said Krupp. "He wouldn't live anywhere else."

The angle of the knight's head dropped a little.

"So," said Heimlich briskly, "for some reason you knew our best-kept secrets. We hope you will understand our actions now and not do anything rash. Do you follow?"

"Yes," murmured the knight, "unfortunately."

"What is unfortunate about it?"

"The more thoughtful you people are, the worse you get. Why is that?"

"What do we do that is wrong, Casimir Radon?" said Krupp quietly.

The mask rose and gleamed at S. S. Krupp, and then its owner lifted off the helmet to reveal his shaven head and permanently consternated face.

"Lie a hell of a lot. Fire people when you don't have to. Create– create a very complicated web of lies, to snare a simple, good ideal."

"I don't think it's a hell of a lot of fun," said Krupp, "and it hurts sometimes, more than you can suppose. But great goals aren't attained with ease or simplicity or pleasantry, or whatever you're looking for. If we gave into the MegaUnion, we would tip our hand and cause ruination. As long as we're putting on this little song-and-dance, we've got to make it a complete song-and-dance, because if the orchestra's playing a march and the dancers are waltzing, the audience riots. The theater burns."

"At least you could be more conciliatory."

"Conciliatory! Listen, son, when you've got snakes in the basement and the water's rising, it's no time to conciliate. Someone's got to have some principles in education, and it might as well be us. If this country's educators hadn't had their heads in their asses for forty years, we wouldn't have a faculty union, and more of our students might be sentient. I'll have strap marks on my ass before I conciliate with those medicine men down there on the picket lines."

"You're trying to fire everyone. That's a little extreme." "Not if we're to be consistent," said Heimlich. "We can use the opportunity to rearrange our financial platform, and hire new people. There are many talented academics desperate for work these days, and the best faculty members here won't let themselves be taken out en masse anyway."

"You're going to do it, aren't you!"

"It's evident that we have no choice."

"Don't you think– " Casimir looked out at the clear blue sky.

"What?"

"That if the administration gets to be as powerful as you, you have killed the university?"

"Look, son," said Ralph Priestly, rolling forward. "We never claimed this was an ideal situation. We're just doing our best. We don't have much choice."

"We're rather busy, as you can imagine," said Heimlich finally. What do you want? Something for the railgun?" He sat up abruptly. How is the railgun?"

"Safe."

Heimlich smiled for the first time in a week. "I'd like to know what a 'safe' railgun is."

"Maybe you'll find out."

Everyone looked disturbed.

"We are prepared to remove the Terrorists from the waste disposal site," said Casimir crisply, "as a public service. The estimated time will be one week. Beforehand, we plan to evacuate the Plex. We require your cooperation in two areas.

"First, we will need control of the Plex radio station. One of our group has developed a scheme for evacuating the Plex which makes this necessary.

"The second requirement is for the consideration of you, Ralph Priestly. What we want, Ralph, is for some person of yours to sit by the switch that controls the Big Wheel sign. When we phone him and say, 'Fiat lux,' he is to turn it on, and when we say, 'Fiat obscuritas,' off.

"That commando team you tried to send in through the sewers last night was stopped by a RAT, or Rodent Assault Tactics team associated with us. Well be releasing them soon, we can't do much more with first aid. The point is that only we can get rid of the Terrorists. We just ask that you do not interfere."

Finished, Casimir sat back, hands clasped on breastplate, and stared calmly at a skylight. The Board of Trustees moved down to the far end of the table. After they had talked for a few minutes, S. S. Krupp walked over and shook hands with Casimir.

"We're with you," Krupp said proudly. "Wish I knew what the hell you had in mind. What's your timetable?"

"Don't know. You'll have plenty of warning."

"Can we supply men? Arms?" asked Heimlich.

"Nope. One gun is all we need." Casimir let go of Krupp's hand and walked down the table, unclipping himself from the rope and throwing it out to dangle there. A forest of pinstripes rushed up the other side, trying to circumnavigate the table and shake Casimir's hand too. Casimir stopped by the exit.

"I probably won't see you again. Bear in mind, after the university starts running again, two things: we control the rats. And we control the Worm. You no longer monopolize power in this institution."

The Trustees stopped dead at this breach of pleasantness and stared at Casimir. Krupp looked on as though monitoring a field of battle from a high tower. Casimir continued. "I just mention this because it makes a difference in what is reasonable for you to do, and what is not. Good-bye." As he reached for the doorknob, he found the door briskly opened by a guard; he nodded to the man and strode out into an anteroom.

"Soldier," said Septimius Severus Krupp, "see that that man receives safe passage back to his own sphere of influence."

Night fell, and Towers A, B, C, D, H and G began to flash on and off in perfect unison. Every tower except for E and F– homes of the Axis– was blinking in and out of existence every two seconds. As the Axis people saw it, the entire Plex was disappearing into the night, then re-igniting, over and over. It was much closer than the Big Wheel; it was far larger; it surrounded them on three sides. The effect was stupefying.

Dex Fresser ran to his observation post. In the corridors of E13S, Terrorists wandered like decapitated chickens. Some were hearing voices telling them to look, some not to look, to run or stay, to panic or relax. The SUBbie who was supposed to guard the lounge-headquarters had dropped his gun on the floor and disappeared. Fresser burst into the lounge to consult with Big Wheel.

Big Wheel had gone dark.

He turned on the Little Wheel– the Go Big Red Fan.

"Big Wheel must be mad at you or something. What the fuck did you do wrong?" shouted the Fan, loud, omnipresent and angry. Dex Fresser shrank, got on his knees and snuffled a little. Outside, a bewildered stereo-hearer was playing with the knobs on his ghetto blaster, desperate for advice.

"The stereo! The stereo, dipshit, find that frequency! Find the frequency," said the Fan in the voice of Dex Fresser's old scoutmaster. Dex Fresser tumbled over a chair in his haste to reach the stereo. The only light in the room was cast by the glowing LEDs on his stereo that looked out like feral eyes in the night. All systems were go for stereo energize. As Dex Fresser's hands played over the controls, dozens of lights kicked in with important systems data, and green digits glowed from the tuner to tell him his position on the FM dial. Only dense static came from the speakers, meaningless to anyone else; but he could hear Big Wheel guiding him in the voice of his first-grade ballroom dance teacher.

"A little farther down, dear. Keep going right down the dial. You're certain to get it eventually."

Dex Fresser punched buttons and a light came on, saying: "AUTO DOWNWARD SCAN." He now heard many voices from the dark cones of the speakers: funky jazz-playing fascists, "great huge savings now Neil Young wailing into his harmonica, a call-in guest suggesting that we load the Mexicans on giant space barges and hurl them into the sun, a base hit by Chambliss, an ad for rat poison, a teen, apoplectic about his acne… and then the voice he was looking for.

"On. Off. On. Off. On. Off." It was a woman's voice, somehow familiar.

"It's Sarah, dumbshit," said the Go Big Red Fan. "She's on the campus station."

Indeed. The other towers were going on and off just as Sarah told them to. He knelt there for ten minutes, watching their reflection in the glassy surface of the Big Wheel. On. Off. On. Off. "On," she said, and paused. "Most of you did very well! But we've got some holdouts in E and F Towers. I'm sorry to say that Big Wheel won't be showing up this evening. He will not be here to give us his advice without cooperation from the E and F tower hearers. We'll try later. I'll be back in an hour, at midnight, and by then I hope that you SUBbies and Terrorists will have submitted to Big Wheel's will." Sarah was replaced by Ephraim Klein, who started in with another solid hour of pre-classical keyboard selections.

Dex Fresser was clutching his chest, which felt unbearably tight. "Oh, shit," he exclaimed, "it's us! We're keeping Big Wheel off! Everybody put your stereos on ninety point three! Do as she says!" Down in Electrical Control, deep in the Burrows, I and the other switch-throwers rested. The circuit breakers that supply power to an entire tower are large items, not at all easy to throw on and off every two seconds! By midnight we were rested up and ready to go. Sarah resumed her broadcast.

"I sure hope we can get Big Wheel to come on. Let's hope E and F Towers go along this time. Ready? Everyone standing by their light switch? Okay Off On Off "

From his lounge-headquarters, Dex Fresser watched his towers flash raggedly on and off. Some of the lights were not flashing; but within minutes the Wing Commisars had swept through and shot out any strays, and Dex Fresser was undescribably proud that his towers could flash like the others. Big Wheel could not forsake them now.

"On!" cried Sarah, and stopped. Several lights went off again from habit, then coyly flickered back on. There was an unbearable wait.

"I think we've done it," Sarah said. "Look at Big Wheel!" And the wheel of fire cast its light over the Plex with all its former glory. Dex wept.

"Not bad for a fascist," observed Little Wheel.

The Big Wheel spun all night.

It was trickier to get the attention of the barbarians of the Base. Most of them did not have bicameral minds and thus could not be made to hear mysterious voices. We needed to impress them. Hence Sarah predicted that in twenty-four hours a plague of rats would strike Journalism, unless all the journalists cleared out of the Plex.

"Frank," said the reporter into the camera, "I'm here in the American Megaversity mailroom, our operations center for the Plex war. It's been quiet on all fronts tonight despite former Student President Sarah Jane Johnson's prediction of a 'plague of rats.' Well, we've seen a few rats here"– his image is replaced by shot of small rat scurrying down empty corridor, terrified by TV lights– "but perhaps that's not unusual in these very strange, very special circumstances. We toured the Plex today, looking for plagues of rats, leaving no stone unturned to find the animals of which Ms. Johnson spoke. We looked in garbage heaps"– shot of journalist digging in garbage with long stick; sees nothing, turns to camera, holds nose, says "phew!"– "but all we found were bugs. We toured the corridors"– journalist alone in long empty corridor; camera swivels around to look in other direction; nothing there either; back to journalist– "but apparently the rats were somewhere else. We checked the classrooms, but the only rats there were on paper"– journalist standing in stolen lab coat next to diagram of rat's nervous system– "Finally, though, we did manage to find one rat. In a little-used lab, Frank, in a little cage, we found one very hungry white rat"– back to mailroom; journalist holds up wire cage containing furtive white rat– "but he's been well fed ever since, and we don't think he'll attack."

"Sam, what do you think about Sarah Jane Johnson's pronouncement? Is it a symbolic statement, or has she cracked?" "No one can be sure, Frank." Behind journalist, door explodes open with a boom and a flash; strobe light is seen beyond it. The journalist continues, trying to resist the temptation to turn around and look; but the explosion has drowned out the audio part of the camera. Dozens of giant rats storm the room However, reliable sources have it that " His words are drowned out by mass machine-gun fire. In an unprecedented breach of media etiquette, journalist turns around to look, and presently disappears from view. Abruptly, the ceiling of the mailroom spins down to fill the screen, and three great fuzzy out-of-focus rat snouts converge from the edges of the screen, long teeth glistening in the TV lights; all goes dark. We return to Network Control. Anchorman is in process of throwing his pen at someone, but pauses to say, "Now, this," and is replaced by an animated hemorrhoid.

All we wanted was to get everyone out of the Plex and end this thing. Once rats roamed the Base and bats frolicked in the hallways, and smoke, flies and filth were everywhere, those people were ready to go. The GASF would leave whenever Virgil told them to. The administration would clear B and C Towers as soon as we gave the word. The TUGgies claimed that they were merely holding their three towers to fend off the Reds. Later, to no one's surprise, we found that they had half-brainwashed the population of those towers by the time Sarah kicked in with her pronouncements; and how could oversweetened Kool-Aid, Manilow songs and lovebombing compete with her radical power and grand demonstrations? After we shut off their electricity and water for twelve hours, the TUG agreed to evacuate their towers at our command. The SUB/Terrorist axis would do whatever they had to to keep the Big Wheel on.

As the days went by, Big Wheel grew more demanding. Everyone was to leave his stereo tuned to 90.3 at all times. Everyone was to plan evacuation routes from their towers and clear away any obstacles that might have been placed at the exits. Dex Fresser's devotion to Sarah's words became complete, and after a week we knew we could evacuate the Axis and everyone else whenever we were ready.

In the meantime we were moving the railgun downstairs. To withstand the recoil thrust, the machine's supports had to be bolted right into the concrete floor of the sewer. We had to precision-fit a hundred and twenty bolts into the concrete for the fifty-foot-long railgun, a dull and iffy task requiring great precision. Once the holes were prepared, we began carrying the supports down. It was a terrible, endless job. After a day of it, I decided I was going to write a book– that way, all of this drudgery was a fascinating contribution to my artistic growth. Strength was not a requirement in the Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome, so I had to torque all the bolts myself. During breaks I would look down the tunnel at the wall of lights that guarded the Nuke Dump's approach. What were the Crotobaltislavonians doing down there, and what were they thinking?

Their plan– the years of infiltration and the moments of violence– had gone perfectly. They had probably made their radioactive-waste bombs, only to find that their only elevator shaft had been blocked by tons of concrete. They must have thought they had lost, then; but the National Guard had not moved in and the authorities had given in to all demands. Was this a trick?

They must have been unprepared for the resistance put up by the GASF and the TUG. Still, their proxies had seized two towers and were holding their own. That was fine, until they threw Marxism to the winds and began to worship a giant neon sign. Dex Fresser must have worked closely with Magrov for years. The cafeteria riot of April First had clearly been timed to coincide with the seizure of the Nuke Dump, and the SUB had not bought their Kalashnikovs at the 7-11. Then– a window fan! A fucking window fan! In a way, I sympathized with the Crotobaltislavonians. Besides us, they were the only rational people here. Like us, they must have wondered whether they had gone out of their minds. If they had any dedication to their cause, though, they must have changed their plans. They still had the waste, they were protected by the rats, they could still wield plenty of clout. They could not see past the barrier of light, where we were implanting the railgun.

During a breather upstairs I encountered Ephraim Klein, moving stiffly but on his feet.

"Come here!" he yelled, grabbed my shirt, and began pulling me down a hallway. I knew it must be something either very important or embarrassingly trivial.

"You won't believe this," he said, shuffling down the hail beside me. "We're heading for Greathouse Chapel. We were there to broadcast some organ music– guess what we found."

Ephraim had appointed himself Music Director for our radio station, and later added Head Engineer and Producer. He knew that we could not spend twenty-four hours a day on Big Wheel chatter, and that in the meantime he could damn well play whatever he liked on what amounted to the world's largest stereo– revenge at last. If Sarah had commanded all residents to play their radios twenty-four hours a day, so much the better; they were going to hear music that meant something. He was going to improve their minds, whether they thanked him or not.

"Remember, listeners, a record is a little wheel. Any record at all is Big Wheel's cousin. So whenever a record speaks, you had damn better listen."

Ephraim and I heard the music from hundreds of feet away. Someone was playing the Greathouse Organ, and playing it well, though with a kind of inspired abandon that led to occasional massive mistakes. Still, the great Bach fugue lurched on with all parts intact, and no error caused the interweaving of those voices to be confused.

"Your friend has a lot of stops pulled out today," I said. "That's not my friend!" shouted Ephraim. "Well, he is now, but he's not that friend."

We reached the grand entrance and I looked far up the center aisle to the console. A wide, darkly clad man sat there, blasting along happily toward the climax. No music was on the console; the organist played from memory. High up on the wall of the chapel, bright yellow light shone down from the picture-windowed broadcast booth, where the organ's sound could be piped to the radio station hundreds of meters away.

As we approached, I could see a ragged overcoat and the pink flashes of bare feet on the pedals. The final chord was trumpeted, threatening to blow out the rose window above, and the performer applauded himself. I climbed the dais and gaped into the beaming face of Bert Nix.

His tongue was blooming from his mouth as usual; but when I arrived, he retracted it and fixed a gaze at me that riveted me to the wall.

"Beware the Demon of the Wave," he said coldly. For a moment I was too scared to breathe. Then the spell was broken as he removed a cup of beer from the Ethereal keyboard and drained it. "I never was dead," he said defensively.

"You're actually Pertinax, aren't you?" I asked.

"I've always been more pertinent than you thought," he said and, giggling, pounded out a few great chords that threatened to lift the top of my head off.

"Who was the dead man in your room?"

He rolled his eyes thoughtfully. "Bill Benson, born in nineteen-twenty. Joined Navy in forty-two, five-inch gun loader in Pacific War, winning Bronze Star and Purple Heart, discharged in forty-eight, hired by us as security guard. That poor bastard had a stroke in the elevator, he was so worried about me!"

"How'd he get in that room?"

"I dragged him there! Otherwise, they don't close the lid of the little pine box and your second cousins come in plastic clothes and put dead flowers on you, a bad way to go!"

"I see. Uh, well, you're quite an organist."

"Yes. But a terrible administrator!" Pertinax now clapped his foot down on the lowest pedal, sounding a rumble too low to hear. "But hark!" he screamed, "there sounds an ominous undertone of warning!" He released the pedal and looked around at Ephraim and me. "I shall now play the famous 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.' This is clearly the work of a young and vigorous Bach, almost ostentatious in his readiness to show virtuosity, reveling in the instrument's ability to bounce mighty themes from the walls of the Kirche

but enough of this, my stops are selected." He looked suspiciously at the ceiling. "This one brings out the bats. Prepare your tennis rackets therefore! Ah. The nuptial song arose from all the thousand thousand spirits over the joyful Earth & Sea, and ascended into the Heavens; for Elemental Gods there thunderous Organs blew; creating delicious Viands. Demons of Waves their watry Eccho's woke! Demons of Waves!" And throwing his head back, he hurled himself into the Toccata. We stood mesmerized by his playing and his probing tongue, until the fugue began; then we retreated to the broadcast booth.

"He's playing stop combinations I've never heard before," said Ephraim. "Anyway, I'm broadcasting all this. He's great."

Down in the tunnels we always kept the radio on low, and so heard plenty of Pertinax in the next few days.

Eventually we brought down the big power supplies from Heimlich Freedom Industries, wrapped in plastic and packed with chemical dessicants to keep them dry, surrounded with electric blankets to keep the electronics warm. Casimir produced several microchips he had stolen from the supplies so that Fred Fine could not use them, and plugged them into their proper spots. We ran thousands of feet of heavy black power cables down into the tunnels to power them. We tested each electromagnet; two were found wanting and had to be sent back and remade. We energized the rail and slid the bucket up and down it hundreds of times, using a small red laser to check for straightness, laboriously adjusting for every defect. It took two days to carry down the machine's parts, four days to adjust it and a day of testing before Casimir was satisfied it would work on its first and only trial.

Virgil worked on the payload, a ten-kilogram high-explosive shell. He used a computer program to design the shaped charge, an enormous program that normally would have run for days, but now required only seconds. The weakened Worm could only taunt him. AH, GOING TO BLOW SOMETHING UP? "I'm going to blow you up."

THREATS OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE ARE USELESS AGAINST THE WORM. This was its usual response to what sounded like threats. YOU'RE VERY CLEVER, BUT I SHALL TRIUMPH IN THE END.

"Wrong. I found where you are."

HUH? "I found the secret mini-disc drives that Paul Bennett hid above the ceiling of his office. The drives where you've been hiding. It's all over now."

I AM EVERYWHERE.

"You are most places, but not everywhere. I'm going to shut off your secret disc drives as soon as I'm sure they aren't booby trapped."

I'M GOING TO BLOW YOU UP.

"I'm going to be careful."

THAT'S A LOT OF EXPLOSIVE FOR YOU TO FOOL AROUND WITH, LITTLE BOY.

"It'll do."

I WILL BLOCK YOUR CALCULATIONS.

"You're living in the past, Worm," typed Virgil, and executed his program. "I have just executed my program. And next, I'm going to execute you."

THREATS OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE ARE USELESS AGAINST THE WORM.

Lute turned the shell on a Science Shop lathe and packed the explosive with a hydraulic press. Virgil carried it down an evacuated stairwell, placing each foot very, very carefully.

Casimir put it on a clean table downstairs and weighed it; ten kilograms precisely. He dusted it off with a lint-free rag and slid it into the bucket. We checked the power sources, and they looked fine. Everyone was evacuated except for me, Casimir and Fred Fine; Virgil led the remaining GASF forces upstairs and commanded them to leave. It was 10:30 P.M.

We sat in the APPASMU for an hour and a half, until Sarah's program came on.

"Everyone look at Big Wheel!" she said. There was long silence and we sat there on the APPASMU, protected by strobes, the rats chattering and grumbling in the darkness around us, the HFI power sources looking oddly clean and shiny as they flashed in and out of darkness in their own little strobe-pool.

"That's good," said Sarah. "As you can see, Big Wheel is shining tonight. But he won't shine for long, because he is unhappy." Another wait. We knew that, upstairs, Hyacinth had phoned the Big Wheel's controller and ordered him to shut off the sign. "Big Wheel is not shining tonight," Sarah continued, "because he wants you all out of the Plex. You are all to stop watching him from a distance. The Big Wheel wants you to see him up close tonight. Everyone get out of the building now and walk toward Big Wheel and stand under him. Leave your radios on in case I have more instructions! You have an hour to leave the Plex. When Big Wheel is happy, he will turn on again."

Organ music came on, obviously another live performance by a particularly inspired Pertinax. We played cards atop the tank. "Should we evacuate too?" asked Fred Fine. "Could Big Wheel be another face of Shekondar?"

"Sarah wants you here," said Casimir. This satisfied him. The music started just after midnight and continued for three hours. Above, we supposed, the evacuees were being loaded into ambulances or paddy-wagons, while Army fallout emergency workers prepared the city for the worst. The Board of Trustees were departing by helicopter from the top of C Tower, withdrawing to the HFI Tower a mile away.

"This is really it," said Fred Fine, ready to black out. "This is the moment of the heroes. The Apocalypse of Plexor. All will be unMixed in an instant."

"Yep," said Casimir, drawing another card. "I'll see that, and raise you four chocolate chips."

The only problem so far was minor: the station's signal seemed to be dying away. We had to keep turning up the volume to hear the music, and by 1:30 we had it up all the way. Our batteries were fine, so we assumed it was a problem at the station. As long as everyone else was turning up their volume too, it should be fine.

Finally the organ music was phased out for a second and we heard Sarah. "Go for it," she said, tense and breathless. "We're gone. See you outside." I started sweating and trembling and had to get up and pace around to work off energy, finally taking an emergency dump. We were in a sewer, who cared? We gave Sarah, Hyacinth, Ephraim and Bert Nix half an hour to evacuate, but the music kept on going. After twenty minutes, Ephraim's voice came in. "Go ahead," he said, "we're staying."

So we went ahead. We had no choice.

The tunnel was four hundred feet long.

The first fifty feet were taken up by the railgun, set up on its supports about five feet above the floor. There was a three-hundred-foot desert of tinfoil shards, then the barrier of light, then, fifty feet beyond that, the door to the Nuke Dump. We rolled the APPASMU to within twenty feet of the light barrier and parked it against one of the tunnel sides. Through long wires strung down the tunnel we controlled the firing of the railgun. When we were ready, we entered the tank, shut off the strobe and turned on the ultrasound. Within a minute we were surrounded by a thousand giant rats, standing on one another's shoulders in their lust for that sweet tone, milling about the APPASMU as though it were a dumpster.

Fred Fine and I aimed shotguns out the forward gun ports. Casimir hit the button.

We could not see the shell as it shot past the vehicle. We heard the explosion, though, and saw its flash. The rats milled back from the explosion. Fred Fine and I opened fire and annihilated the light-wall in a few shots, and with a chorus of joy the rat-army surged forward into its long-looked-at Promised Land, followed by us. Our fear was that the shell would not suffice to blow open the door, but even with our poor visibility we could see the jagged circle of light and the boiling silhouette of the rat-stream pouring through it. As we drew very near, some rats were blown back by machine-gun fire, and a Crotobaltislavonian ducked through the hole and ran toward us in his ghostly radiation suit, two rats hanging from his body.

Fred Fine opened the top hatch, whipped out his sword as he vaulted out and leapt at him howling, "SHEKONDAR!" I grabbed at his legs on his way out but he kicked free, jumped to the floor, smashed in a few rat skulls, and made toward the Croto. I do not know whether he intended to save the man or kill him. A rat tried to come in through the open hatch but I shoved it out, then stood up through it with my shotgun. I damaged my hearing for life but did not change the outcome. Once the rats started landing on my back and I could no longer see Fred Fine, I could only give up. I sat down and closed the hatch, and we waited for a while. But nothing happened; all we saw through our peepholes were rats, and the clicking of our Geiger counter did not vary.

Casimir turned the APPASMU around, and we plowed through rats and followed the tunnels until we joined up with the city sewer system. Pertinax continued to play. From time to time he sang or shouted something, and the microphones hanging back amid the pipes would dimly pick him up: "There is no City nor Corn-field nor Orchard! all is Rock & Sand; There is no Sun nor Moon nor Star, but rugged wintry rocks Justling together in the void suspended by inward fires. Impatience now no longer can endure!"

We easily found the manhole we sought, because dim morning light was shining down through it. The Guardsmen were waiting to haul us out, and emerging onto the street, we saw civil authority around us again and, even better, our friends. The Plex rose above us, about half a mile distant, beginning to glow brownish-pink in the imminent dawn. All was quiet except for the distant hum of the TUGgies, gathered just outside the police cordons and running their OM generators full blast.

During our frantic reunion, two absurdly serious-looking men approached me with complicated badges and questions. As they introduced themselves, we were all startled by a hoarse blast of organ music that burst from all directions.

"Ephraim must have turned the broadcast volume way down, then back up again," said Casimir as soon as everyone in our area had turned down their radios. Once the music was quiet enough to be recognized, I knew it as Ephraim's old favorite, the "Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor"; and at the end of each phrase, when the voice of the Greathouse Organ plunged back down home to that old low C, it rumbled in concord with the OM generators across the street, and the Plex itself seemed to vibrate as a single huge eight-tubed organ pipe.

And after all this, I was the only one to understand. "Get away!" I screamed, tearing myself loose from an agent. "Get away!" I shouted, ripping a megaphone from a policeman's hand, and "Get away!" I continued, stumbling to the roof of a squad car and cranking up the volume.

"Get away!" all the other cops began to shout into their megaphones. "Get away!" crackled from the PA systems of squad cars and helicopters. It was the word of the hour, and mounted cops howled it at TUGgies and SUBbies and the media, forcing them back with truncheons and horses. Someone flashed It to the police teams who had entered the Plex, and they scrambled out and squealed away in their cars. Perhaps it was shouted ten thousand times as the ring of onlookers gradually expanded away from the Base.

The sound waxed. Ephraim kept turning it up and Bert Nix, building for the climax, kept pulling out more stops. Casimir tried to phone Ephraim from a booth, but he didn't answer. He probably couldn't even hear it ring.

He certainly heard nothing but organ as, at the end, he cranked the volume all the way and Pertinax Rushforth pulled out all the stops.

The windows went first. They all burst from their frames at once. All 25,000 picture windows boomed out into trillions of safe little cubes in the red dawn air. At first it seemed as though the Plex had suddenly grown fuzzy and white, then as though a blizzard had enveloped the eight towers, and finally as though It were rising up magnificently from a cloud of glinting orange foam. As the cloud of glass dropped away from the towers with grand deliberation, the millions of bats In the upper levels, driven crazy by the terrible sound, imprisoned in a building with too few exits, stopped beating their wings against the windows and exploded from the rooms in a black cloud of unbelievable volume. The black cloud drifted forth and rose into the sky and the white cloud sank into the depths, and Pertinax pushed the swell pedals to the floor and coupled all the manuals to the pedalboard and pushed his bare pink foot down on the first one, the low C, and held it down forever.

The building's steel frame was unaffected. The cinder-blocks laid within that frame, though, stopped being walls and became a million individual blocks of stone. Uncoupled, they began to dissolve away from the girders, and the floors accordionned down with a boom and a concussion that obliterated the sound of the organ. All the towers went together; and as those tons of debris avalanched into the girders on which the towers rested, the steel finally went too, and crumpled together and sagged and fell and snapped and tore with painful slowness and explosive booms.

The hundred thousand people watching it plugged their ears, except for the TUGgies, who watched serenely and shut off their OM generators. From the enormous heap of rubble, broken water pipes shot fountains glistening white in the rising sun. Crunches and aftershocks continued for days.

Not far away, Virgil Gabrielsen sat on a curbstone, his hair bright in the sun, drinking water. Between his feet was a stack of mini-computer memory discs in little black envelopes. The APPASMU is in the Smithsonian Institution and may be visited 10:00 A.M.– 5:30 P.M. seven days a week. And the Go Big Red Fan was found unscathed, sitting miraculously upright on a crushed sofa on a pile of junk, its painted blades rotating quietly and intermittently in the fresh spring breeze.