eed to be
shown is how funding of your project would he consistent with the basic
mission of a great institution of higher learning. You see? We're talking
basic principles here."

Casimir had removed his glasses in the dim light, and his strangely
naked-looking eyes darted uncertainly around the tabletop. "Well"

"Aw, shit, it's obvious!" shouted Ephraim Klein, drawing looks from everyone
in the pub. "This university, let's face it, is for average people. The
smart people from around here go to the Ivy League, right? So American
Megaversity doesn't get many of the bright people the way, say, a Big Ten
university would. But there are some very bright people here, for whatever
reasons. They get frustrated in this environment because the university is
tailored for averagely bright types and there is very little provision for
the extra-talented. So in order to fulfill the basic mission of allowing
all corners to realize their full potential-- to avoid stultifying the best
minds here-- you have to make allowances for them, recognize their special
creativity by giving them more freedom and self-direction than the typical
student has. This is your chance to have something you can point to as an
example of the opportunities here for people of all levels of ability."

Krupp listened intently through this, lightly tapping the edge of a potato
chip on the table. When Klein finally stopped, he nodded for a while.

"Yep. Yeah, I'd say you have an excellent point there, Isaiah. Casimir, looks
as though you're going to get your funding." He raised an eyebrow.

Casimir stood up, yelled "Great!" and pumped Krupp's hand. "This is a great
investment. When this thing is done it will be the most incredible machine
you've ever seen. There's no end to what you can do with a mass driver."

There was a commotion behind Krupp, and suddenly, larger than life, standing
on the bench in the next booth down, Bert Nix had risen to his full bedraggled
height and was suspending a heavy broadsword (stolen from a suit of armor by
the restroom) over Krupp's head. "O fortunate Damocles, thy reign began and
ended with the same dinner!"

After Krupp saw who it was he turned back around without response. His two
aides staggered off their barstools across the room and charged over to
grab the sword from Bert Nix's hand. He had held it by the middle of the
blade, which made it seem considerably less threatening, but the aides didn't
necessarily see it this way and were not as gentle in showing Mr. Nix out as
they could have been. He was docile except for some cheerful obscenities; but
as he was dragged past a prominent painting, he pulled away and pointed to it.
"Don't you think we have the same nose?" he asked, and soon was out the door.

Krupp got up and brought the conversation to a quick close. After distributing
cigars to Ephraim and Casimir and me, he left. Finding ourselves in an
exhilarated mood and with what amounted to a free ticket to the Faculty Pub,
we stayed long enough to close it down.

Earlier, however, on his fifth trip to the men's room, Casimir stopped to look
at the plaque under the portrait to which Bert Nix had pointed. "WILBERFORCE
PERTINAX RUSHFORTH-GREATHOUSE, 1799-- 1862, BENEFACTOR, GREATHOUSE CHAPEL
AND ORGAN." Casimir tried to focus on the face. As a matter of fact, the
Roman nose did resemble Bert Nix's; they might be distant relatives. It was
queer that a derelict, who couldn't spend that much time in the Faculty Pub,
would notice this quickly enough to point it out. But Bert Nix's mind ran
along mysterious paths. Casimir retrieved the broadsword from where it had
fallen, and laughingly slapped it down on the bar as a deposit for the fourth
pitcher of Dark. The bartender regarded Casimir with mild alarm, and Casimir
considered, for a moment, carrying a sword all the time, a la Fred Fine. But
as he observed to us, why carry a sword when you own a mass driver?

"Casimir?"

"Mmmmm. Huh?"

"You asleep?"

"No."

"You want to talk?"

"Okay."

"Thanks for letting me sleep here."

"No problem. Anytime."

"Does this bother you?"

"You sleeping here? Nah."

"You seemed kind of bothered about something."

"No. It's really fine, Sarah. I don't care."

"If it'd make you feel better, I can go back and sleep in my room. I just
didn't feel like a half-hour elevator hassle, and my wing is likely to be
noisy."

"I know. All that barf on the floors, rowdy people, sticky beer crud all over
the place. I don't blame you. It's perfectly reasonable to stay at someone's
place at a time like this."

"I get the impression you have something you're not saying. Do you want to
talk about it?"

The pile of sheets and blankets that was Casimir moved around, and he leaned
up on one elbow and peered down at her. The light shining in from the opposite
tower made his wide eyes just barely visible. She knew something was wrong
with him, but she also knew better than to try to imagine what was going on
inside Casimir Radon's mind.

"Why should I have something on my mind?"

"Well, I don't see anything unusual about my staying here, but a lot of people
would, and you seemed uptight."

"Oh, you're talking about sex? Oh, no. No problem." His voice was tense and
hurried.

"So what's bothering you?"

For a while there was just ragged breathing from atop the bed, and then he
spoke again. "You're going to think this is stupid, because I know you're
a Women's Libber, but it really bothers me that you're on the floor in a
sleeping bag while I'm up here in a bed. That bothers me."

Sarah laughed. "Don't worry, Casimir. I'm not going to beat you up for it."

"Good. Let's trade places, then."

"If you insist." Within a few seconds they had traded places and Sarah was
up in a warm bed that smelled of mothballs and mildew. They lay there for an
hour.

"Sarah?"

"Huh?"

"I want to talk to you."

"What?"

"I lied. I want to sleep with you so bad it's killing me. Oh, Jeez. I love
you. A lot."

"Oh, damn. I knew it. I was afraid of this. I'm sorry."

"No, don't be. My fault. I'm really, really sorry."

"Should I leave? Do you want me out?"

"No. I want you to sleep with me," he said, as though this answer was obvious.

"How long have you been thinking about me this way?"

"Since we met the first time."

"Really? Casimir! Why? We didn't even know each other!"

"What does that have to do with it?" He sounded genuinely mystified.

"I think we've got a basic difference in the way we think about sex, Casimir."
She had forgotten how they were when it came to this sort of thing.

"What does that mean? Did you ever think about me that way?"

"Not really."

Casimir sucked in his breath and flopped back down.

"Now, look, don't take it that way. Casimir, I hardly know you. We've only had
one or two good conversations. Look, Casimir, I only think about sex every one
or two days-- it's not a big topic with me right now."

"Jeez. Are you okay? Did you have a bad experience?" "Don't put me on the
defensive. Casimir, our friendship has been just fine as it is. Why should I
fantasize about what a friendship might turn into, when the friendship is fine
as is? You've got to live in the real world, Casimir."

"What's wrong with me?"

The poor guy just did not understand at all. There was no way to help him;
Sarah went ahead and spoke her lines.

"Nothing's wrong with you. You're fine."

"Then what is the problem?"

"Look. I sleep with people because there's nothing wrong with them. I don't
fantasize about relationships that will never exist. We're fine as we are. Sex
would just mess it up. We have a good friendship, Casimir. Don't screw it up
by thinking unrealistically."


They sat in the dark for a while. Casimir was being open-minded, which was
good, but still had trouble catching on.  "It's none of my business, but just
out of curiosity, do you like sex?"

"Definitely.  It's a blast with the right person."

"I'm just not the right person, huh?"

"I've already answered that six times." She considered telling him about
herself and Dex Fresser in high school. In ways-- especially in appearance--
Casimir was similar to Dex. The thing with Dex was a perfect example of what
happened when a man got completely divorced from reality. But Sarah didn't
want the Dex story to get around, and she supposed that Casimir would be
horrified by this high school saga of sex and drugs.

"I think I'll do my laundry now, since I'm up," she said.

"I'll walk you home."

A few minutes later they emerged into a hall as bright as the interior of a
small sun. The dregs of a party in the Social Lounge examined them as they
awaited an elevator, and Sarah was bothered by what they were assuming. Maybe
it would boost Casimir's rep among his neighbors.

An elevator opened and fifty gallons of water poured into the lobby. Someone
had filled a garbage can with water, tilted it up on one corner just inside
the elevator, held it in place as the doors closed, and pulled his hand out at
the last minute so that it leaned against the inside of the doors. Not greatly
surprised, Sarah and Casimir stepped back to let the water swirl around their
feet, then threw the garbage can into the lobby and boarded the elevator.

"That's the nice thing about this time of day," said Casimir. "Easy to get
elevators."

As they made their way toward the Castle in the Air, they spoke mostly of
Casimir's mass driver. With the new funding and with the assistance of Virgil,
it was moving along quite well. Casimir repeatedly acknowledged his debt to
Ephraim for having done the talking.

They took an E Tower elevator up to the Castle in the Air. A nine-leaved
marijuana frond was scotch-taped over the number 13 on the elevator panel
so that it would light up symbolically when that floor was passed. In the
corridors of the Castle the Terrorists were still running wild and hurling
their custom Big Wheel Frisbees with great violence.

Casimir had never seen Sarah's room. He stood shyly outside as she walked into
the darkness. "The light?" he said. She switched on her table lamp.

"Oh." He entered uncertainly, swiveling his bottle-bottom glasses toward the
wall. Conscious of being in an illegally painted room, he shut the door, then
removed his glasses and let them hang around his neck on their safety cord.
Without them, Sarah thought he looked rather old, sensitive, and human. He
rubbed his stubble and blinked at the forest with a sort of awed amusement. By
now it was very detailed.

"Isotropic."

"You saw what?"

"Isotropic. This forest is isotropic It s the same in all directions. It
doesn't tend in any way. A real forest is anisotropic thicker on the bottom
thinner on the top. This doesn't grow in any direction it just is."

She sighed. "Whatever you like."

"Why? What's it for?"

"Well-- what's your mass driver for?"

"Sanity."

"You've got your mass driver. I've got this."

He looked at her in the same way he had been staring at the forest. "Wow," he
said, "I think I get it."

"Don't go overboard on this," she said, "but how would you like to attend
something dreadful called Fantasy Island Nite?"

                                 --December--

So nervous was Ephraim Klein, so primed for flight or combat, that he barely
felt his suitcases in his hands as he carried them toward his room. What
awaited him? He had left a week ago for Thanksgiving vacation. He had waited
as long as he could-- but not long enough to outwait John Wesley Fenrick and
three of his ugly punker friends, who leered hungrily at him as he walked out.
The question was not whether a prank had been played, but how bad it was going
to be. Hyperventilating with anticipation, he stopped before the door. The
cracks all the way around its edges had been sealed with heavy grey duct tape.
This prank did not rely on surprise. He pressed his ear to the door, but all
he could hear was a familiar chunka-chunka-chunk. With great care he peeled
back a bit of tape.

Nothing poured out. Standing to the side, he unlocked the door with surgical
care. There was a cracking sound as the tape peeled away under his impetus.
Finally he kicked it fully open, waited for a moment, then stepped around to
look inside.

He could see nothing. He took another step and then, only then, was enveloped
in a cloud of rancid cheap cigar smoke that oozed out the doorway like a
moribund genie under the propulsion of the Go Big Red Fan.

Incandescently furious, he retreated to the bathroom and wet a T-shirt to put
over his face. Thus protected he strode squinting down the foggy hallway into
the lifeless room.

The only remaining possessions of John Wesley Fenrick's were the Go Big Red
Fan and most of a jumbo roll of foil. He had moved out of the room and then
covered his half of the room with the foil, then spread out on it what must
have been several hundred generic cigars-- it must have taken half an hour
just to light them. The cigars had all burned away to ash, which had been
whipped into a blizzard by the Go Big Red Fan on its slow creep across the
floor to Ephraim's side. The room now looked like Yakima after Mount Saint
Helens. The Fan had ground to a halt against a large potted plant of Ephraim's
and for the rest of the week had sat there chunk-ing mindlessly.

He checked a record. To his relief, the ash had not penetrated to the grooves.
It had penetrated everything else, though, and even the Rules had taken on a
brown parchmentlike tinge. Ephraim Klein took little comfort in the fact that
his ex-roommate had not broken any of them.

He cranked open the vent window, set the Go Big Red Fan into it, cleared ash
from his chair, and sat down to think.

Klein preferred to live a controlled life. He never liked to pull out all the
stops until the final chord. But Fenrick had forced him to turn revenge into a
major project and Klein did not plan to fail. He began to tidy his room, and
to unleash his imagination on John Wesley Fenrick.

"Sarah?"

"Huh?"

"Did I wake you up?"

"No. Hi."

"Let's talk."

"Sure." Sarah rolled over on her stomach and propped ~ herself up on her
elbows.

"I hope you're comfortable sleeping down there."

"Listen. Anyplace is more comfortable than my room when a party's going
on above it."

"I don't mind if you want to share a bed with me Hyacinth. My sister and I
slept together until I was eleven and she was twelve."

"Thanks. But I didn't decide to sleep down here because I don't like you,
Sarah."

"Well, that's nice. I guess it's a little small for two." There was a long
silence. Hyacinth sat up on her sleeping bag, her crossed legs stretching
out her nightgown to make a faint white diamond in the darkness of the room.
Then, soundlessly, she got up and climbed into bed with Sarah. Sarah slid
back against the wall to make room, and after much giggling, rolling around,
rearrangement of covers and careful placement of limbs they managed to find
comfortable positions.

"Too hot," said Hyacinth, and got up again. She opened the window and a cold
wind blew into the room. She scampered back and dove in next to Sarah.

"Comfy?" said Hyacinth.

"Yeah. Mmm. Very."

"Really?" said Hyacinth skeptically. "More than before? Not just physically.
You don't feel awkward, being tangled up with me like this?"

"Not really," said Sarah dreamily. "It's kind of pleasant. It's just, you
know, warm, and kind of comforting to have someone else around. I like you,
you like me, why should it be awkward?"

"Would it be any different if I told you I was a lesbian?" Sarah came wide
awake but did not move. With one eye she gazed into the darkness above the
soft white horizon of Hyacinth's shoulder, on which she had laid her head.

"And that I was hoping we could do other nice things to each other? If you
feel inspired to, that is." She gently, almost imperceptibly, stroked Sarah's
hair. Sarah's heart was pumping rhythmically.

"I wish you'd say something," said Hyacinth. "Are you not sure how you feel,
or are you paralyzed with terror?"

Sarah laughed softly and felt herself relaxing. "I'm pretty naive about this
kind of thing. I mean, I don't think about it a lot. I sort of thought you
might be. Is Lucy?"

"Yes. Nowadays we don't sleep together that much. Sarah, do you want me to
sleep on the floor?"

Sarah thought about it but not very seriously. The room was pleasantly cold now
and the closeness of her friend was something she had not felt in a very long
time. "Of course not. This is great. I haven't slept with anyone in a while--
a man, I mean. Sleeping with someone is one of my favorite things. But it's
different with men. Not quite as... sweet."

"That's for sure."

"Why don't you stay a while?"

"That'd be nice."

"Do you mind if we don't do anything?" At this they laughed loudly, and that
answered the question.

"But we are doing something you know" added Hyacinth later. "Your nose
is in my breast. You're stroking my shoulder. I'm afraid that all counts."

"Oh. Gosh. Does that make me a lesbian?"

"Oh, I don't know. I guess you're off to a promising start."

"Hmmm. Doesn't feel like being a lesbian."

Hyacinth squeezed Sarah tight. "Look, honey, don't worry about it. This is
just great as it is. I just wanted you to know the opportunity was there.
Okay?"

"Okay."

"Want to go to sleep?"

"Take it easy, what's your hurry?"

Last Night was the night of the blue towers. A week before, the towers had
glowed uniformly yellow as forty-two thousand students sat beneath their desk
lamps and studied for finals. The next night, blue had replaced yellow here
and there, as a few lucky ones, finished with their finals, switched on their
TVs. This night, all eight towers were studded with blue, and whole patches of
the Plex flickered in unison with the popular shows. The beer trucks were busy
all day long down at the access lot, rolling kegs up the ramps to the Brew
King in the Mall, whence they were dispersed in canvas carts and two-wheelers
and Radio Flyers to rooms and lounges all over the Plex. As night fell and
the last students came screaming in from their finals, suitcases full of dope
moved through the Main Entrance and were quickly fragmented and distributed
throughout the towers for quick combustion. By dinnertime the faucets ran
cold water only as thousands lined up by the shower stalls, and the Caf was a
desert as most students ate at restaurants or parties. After dark, spotlights
and lasers crisscrossed the walls as partying students shone them into other
towers, and when the Big Wheel sign blazed into life, bands of
Big-Wheel-worshiping Terrorists all over the Plex launched a commemorative
fireworks barrage that sent echoes crackling back and forth among the
towers like bumper pool balls, punctuating the roar of the warring stereos.

By 10:00 the parties were just warming up. At 10:30 the rumor circulated that
a special police squad sent by S. S. Krupp was touring the Plex to bust up
parties. At 11:06 a keg was thrown from A24N and exploded on the Turnpike,
backing up traffic for an hour with a twelve-car chain-reaction smashup. By
11:30 forty students had been admitted to the Infirmary with broken noses,
split cheeks and severe inebriation, and it was beginning to look as though
the official estimate of one death from overintoxication and one from accident
might be a little low. The Rape/Assault/Crisis Line handled a call every
fifteen minutes.

Precisely at 11:40:00 an unknown, uninvited, very clumsy student walked behind
John Wesley Fenrick's chair at the big E31E end-of-semester bash and tripped,
spilling a strawberry malt all over Fenrick's spiky blond hair.

John Wesley Fenrick was in the shower with very hot water spraying onto his
head to dissolve the sticky malt crud, dancing around loosely to a tune in
his head and playing the air guitar. He wondered whether the malt had been
the work of Ephraim Klein. This, however, was impossible; his new room and
number were unlisted and you couldn't follow people home in an elevator. The
only way for Klein to find him was by a freak of chance, or by bribing an
administration person with access to the computer-- very unlikely. Besides,
a malt on the head was a bush-league retaliation even for a quiet little
harpsichord-playing New Jersey fart like Klein, considering what Fenrick had
so brilliantly accomplished.

What made it even greater was that the administration had treated it like
a hilarious college prank, a "concrete expression of malfunction in the
cohabitant interaction, intended only as nonviolent emotional expression."
Though they were after him to pay Klein's cleaning bills, Fenrick's brother
was a lawyer and he knew they wouldn't push it in court. Even if they did,
shit, he was going to be pulling down forty K in six months! A small price for
triumph.

With a snarl of disgust, Fenrick dumped another dose of
honey-beer-aloe-grub-treebark shampoo on his hair, finding that the tenacious
malt substance still had not come off. What's in this crap? Fenrick thought.
Fuck up your stomach, for sure.

Throughout E Tower, scores of Ephraim Klein's friends sat in the great
shiny microwave bathrooms watching the Channel 25 Late Night Eyewitness
InstaAction InvestiNews. Even during the most ghastly stories this program
sounded like an encounter session among five recently canceled sitcom actors
and developmentally disabled hairdressers' models. The weather, well, it
was just as bad, but was relieved by its very bizarreness. The weatherman,
a buffoon who knew nothing about weather and didn't care, was named Marvin
DuZan the Weatherman and would broadcast in a negligee if it boosted ratings;
his other gimmick was to tell an abominable joke at the conclusion of each
forecast. After the devastating punchline was delivered, the picture of the
guffawing pseudometeorologist and his writhing colleagues would be replaced
by an animated short in which a crazy-looking bird tried to smash a tortoise
over the head with a sledgehammer. At the last moment the tortoise would
creep forward, causing the blow to rebound off his shell and crash back into
the cranium of the bird. The bird would then assume a glazed expression and
vibrate around in circles, much like a chair in Klein's room during the
"Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor," finally to collapse at the feet of the
smiling turtle, who would then peer slyly at the audience and wiggle his
eyebrow ridges.

During Marvin DuZan's forecast on Last Night, Ephraim Klein was standing
outside his ex-roomie's shower stall, watching a portable TV and squirting
Hyper Stik brand Humonga-Glue into the latch of the stall's door. He had
turned down the volume, of course, and it seemed just as well, since from the
reactions of the InvestiNews Strike Force (and the cameramen, who were always
visible on the high-tech News Nexus set) it appeared that the joke tonight was
a real turd. As the camera zoomed in on the goonishly beaming face of Marvin
DuZan, Ephraim Klein's grip on the handles of two nearby urinals tightened
and his heart beat wildly, as did the grips and the hearts of a small army of
friends and hastily recruited deputies in many other E Tower bathrooms. Bird
and Tortoise appeared, the hammer was brandished, and smash!

As the hammer rebounded on the bird's head, scores of toilets throughout
E Tower were flushed, causing a vacuum so sharp that pipes bent and tore
and snapped and cold water ceased to flow. There was a short pause, and
then a bloodcurdling scream emanated from Fenrick's shower stall as clouds
of live steam burst out the top. After some fruitless handle-yanking and
Plexiglass-banging, the steam was followed by Fenrick himself, who fell
ungainly to the floor with a crisp splat and shook his head in pain as Ephraim
Klein escaped with his TV. In his haste Fenrick had lacerated his scalp on the
steel showerhead, and as he pawed at his face to clear away suds and blood he
was distantly conscious of a cold draft that irritated his parboiled skin, and
a familiar chunka-chunka-chunk that could be heard above the sounds of gasping
pipes and white water. Finally prying one eye open, he looked into the wind to
see it: the Go Big Red Fan, complacently revolving in front of his stall, set
on HI and still somewhat gray with cigar ash. Unfortunately for John Wesley
Fenrick, he did not soon enough see the puddle of water which surrounded
him, and which was rapidly expanding toward The base of the old and poorly
insulated Fan.

This was also quite an evening for E17S. Ever since joining the Terrorists as
the Flame Squad Faction, this all-male wing had suffered from the stigma of
being mere copies of the Big Wheel Men, Cowboys and Droogs of E13. Tonight
that was to change. The Christmas tree had been purchased three weeks ago,
left in a shower until the fireproofing compound was washed away, and hung
over a hot-air vent in the storage room; it was now a lovely shade of
incendiary brown. They took it up to E3 1, the top floor, seized an elevator,
and stuffed the tree inside. Someone pressed all the buttons for floors 30
through 6 while others squirted lighter fluid over the tree's dessicated
boughs.

Only one match was required. The door slid shut just as the smoke and flames
began to billow forth, and with a cheer and a yell the Flame Squad Faction
began to celebrate.

Twenty-four floors below, Virgil and I were having a few slow ones in my
suite. I had no time for partying because I was preparing for a long drive
home to Atlanta. Virgil happened to be wandering the Plex that night, looking
in on various people, and had paused for a while at my place. Things were
pretty quiet-- as they generally had been since John Wesley Fenrick had left--
and except for the insistent and inevitable bass beat, the wing was peaceful.

The fire alarm rang just before midnight. We cursed fluently and looked out
my door to see what was up. As faculty-in-residence I didn't have to scurry
out for every bogus fire drill, but it seemed prudent to check for smoke.
The smoke was heavy when we opened the door, and we smelled the filthy odor
of burning plastic. The source of the flame was near my room: one of the
elevators, which had automatically stopped and opened once the fire alarm was
triggered. I put a rag over my mouth and headed for the fire hose down the
hall. Meanwhile Virgil prepared to soak some towels in my sink.

Neither of us got any water. My fire hose valve just sucked air and howled.

"God Almighty," Virgil called through the smoke. "Somebody pulled a Big
Flush." He came out and joined the people running for the fire stairs. "No
'vators during fires so Ill have to take the stairs. I've got to get the
parallel pipe system working."

"The what?"

"Parallel pipes," said Virgil, skipping into the stairwell. "Hang on! Find a
keg! The architects weren't totally stupid!" And he was gone down the stairs.

I locked my door in case of looting and went off in search of a keg.
Naturally there was a superabundance that night, and with some help from the
too-drunk-to-be-scared owners I hauled it to the lobby and began to pump
clouds of generic light into the flaming Christmas tree.

Casimir Radon was in Sharon's lab, washing out a beaker. This was merely the
first step of the Project Spike glassware procedure, which involved attack by
two different alcohols and three different concentrated acid mixtures, but he
was in no hurry. For him Christmas had started the day before. With Virgil's
help he could get into this lab throughout the vacation, and that meant plenty
of time to work on Project Spike, build the mass driver and suffer as he
thought about Sarah.

He was annoyed but not exasperated when the water stopped flowing. There was a
gulp in the tapstream, followed by a hefty KLONK as the faucet handle jerked
itself from his grasp. The flow of water stopped, and an ominous gurgling,
sucking noise came from the faucet, like an entire municipal water system
flushing its last. He listened as the symphony of hydraulic sound effects grew
and spread to the dozens of pipes lining the lab's ceiling, the knocks and
gurgles and hisses weaving together as though the pipes were having a wild
Christmas party of their own. But Casimir was tired, and fairly absentminded
to boot, and he shrugged it off as yet another example of the infinite variety
of building and design defects in the Plex. The distilled water tap still
worked, so he used it. Despite the drudgery of the task and his problems with
Sarah, Casimir wore a little smile on his long unshaven face. Project Spike
had worked.

He had been sampling Cafeteria food for three weeks, and until tonight had
come up with nothing. Turkey Quiche, Beef Pot Pies, Lefto Lasagne, Estonian
Pasties, and even Deep-Fried Chicken Livers had drawn blanks, and Casimir had
begun to wonder whether it was a waste of time. Then came Savory Meatloaf
Night, an event which occurred every three weeks or so; despite the efforts
of advanced minds such as Virgil's, no one had ever discerned any reliable
pattern which might predict when this dish was to be served. Today, of course,
the last of the semester, Savory Meatloaf Night had struck and Casimir had
craftily smuggled a slice out in his sock (the Cafeteria exit guards could
afford to take it easy on Savory Meatloaf Night).

Not more than fifteen minutes ago, as he had been irradiating the next batch
of rat poison, the computer terminal had zipped into life with the results
of the analysis: high levels of Carbon- 14! There were rats in the meatloaf!
That was a triumph for Casimir. It seemed likely to be a secret triumph,
though. Sarah would never understand why he was doing this. Casimir wasn't
even sure he understood it himself. S. S. Krupp had funded his mass driver,
so why should he wish to damage the university now? He suspected that Project
Spike was simply a challenge, an opportunity to prove that he was clever
and self-sufficient in a sea of idiocy. He had accomplished that, but as a
political tactic it was still pretty dumb. Sarah would certainly think so.

Sarah had also thought it was dumb when he had decided to work in the lab all
night instead of going to Fantasy Island Nite. She was right on that issue
too, perhaps, but Casimir loathed parties of all sorts and would use any
excuse to avoid one. Hence he was here on the bottom of the Plex, washing out
rat-liver scum, while she was far above, dancing in the clown costume she had
shown him-- probably having a wonderful time as handsome Terrorists salivated
on her.

He observed he was leaning on the counter staring at the wall as though it
were a screen beaming him live coverage of Sarah at the party. Maybe he would
leave now, retaining a lab coat as a costume, and go up and surprise Sarah.

Meanwhile water was squirting out of the wall, forcing its way through the
cracks between the panels, running out from under the baseboards and trickling
through the grommets in the sides of Casimir's tennis shoes. Abruptly brought
back into the here and now, he looked around half-dazed and started unplugging
things and moving them to higher ground. What the hell was happening? A broken
pipe? He figured that if there was enough water pressure on the 31st floor to
run a fire hose, the pressure down here must be phenomenal. This was going to
be a hell of a mess.

Water was now trickling through old nail holes high on the wall. Casimir
covered the computer terminal with plastic and then ran out to search for
B-men. They were not here now, of course-- probably spreading rat poison or
celebrating some Crotobaltislavonian radish festival.

Across from Sharon's lab was a freight elevator closed off by a manually
operated door. When he looked through its little window Casimir saw water
falling down the shaft, and sparks spitting past. He got insulated gloves from
the lab and hauled the door open. Several gallons of pent-up water rushed past
his ankles and fell into the blackness. From below rose the-harsh wet odor of
the sewers.

The sparks issued from the electrical control box on the shaft wall. Once
Casimir was sure there was no danger of fire or electrocution he left, leaving
the doors open so that water could drain out of this bottom level of the Plex.

Oh, God. The rat poison. It was only supposed to stay in the radiation source
for a minute at a time! Casimir had put it in an hour ago, then simply
forgotten about it once the results of the analysis had come in. The damn
stuff must be glowing in the dark. He sloshed back into the lab.

Water poured and squirted from the walls and ceiling everywhere he looked. He
shielded his face from spray and walked through a wall of water toward the
neutron source, a garbage can full of paraffin with the plutonium button at
its center. Stopping to listen, he sensed that the slow ticking noise which
had been coming from one wall had sped up and was growing louder. He stood
petrified as it grew into a rumble, then a groan. then a scream-- and the wall
crashed open and a torrent rushed through the lab. An adjacent storage room
had filled with water from a large broken pipe, and Casimir was now knocked to
the floor by a torrent of Fiberglass panels, aluminum studs, and janitorial
supplies. He rolled just in time to see the neutron source, buoyed on the rush
of water, bob through the doorway and across the hall.

Taking care not to be swept along, he made his way to the shaft and looked
down. All was dark, but from far below, under the waterfall sound, he thought
he heard a buzz, or a ringing: the sound of an alarm. Maybe his ears were
ringing, and maybe it was a fire alarm above. Nauseated, he returned to the
lab, sat on a table and awaited the B-men.

Fantasy Island Nite was turning out to be not such a bad thing after all.
Those Terrorists upstairs in their own lounge were making a lot of noise,
but those down here on 12 were making an admirable effort to behave, per
their agreement with the Airheads. Only this agreement had persuaded Sarah
and Hyacinth to show up. It was potentially interesting, it was nice to be
sociable once in a while and they could always leave if they didn't like it.
Sarah wore a clown costume. This was her way of making fun of the fantasy
theme of the party-- most Airheads came as beauty queens or vamps-- and
had the extra advantage of making her totally unrecognizable. Hyacinth put
together a smashing Fairy Godmother costume, as a joke only Sarah would get.
Their plan was to drink so much it would become socially acceptable for them
to dance together.

While Sarah was working on the first stage of this plan she began g a lot
of attention from three Terrorists. These three-- ,a Cowboy, a Droog and a
Commando-- were obvious jerks, each one incensed that she would not reveal her
name, but as long as they danced, fetched drinks and didn't try to converse
they seemed like harmless fun. After a while she got a little boogied out, and
withdrew from the action to look out over the city. Hyacinth had gone to visit
another party and was expected back soon.

Time twisted and she was no longer at the party; she was watching it from a
place in her mind where she had not been for many years. She slid backward
like an air hockey puck until she was high up in one corner of the room. The
walls of the Plex fell away so that she could see in all directions at once.

One of the picture windows had been replaced by a gate that opened to the
sky. The gate was gaily festooned with shining pulsing color-blobs. All the
other party-goers had lined up in front of it. On one side of the gate stood
Mitzi, taking tickets; on the other, Mrs. Saritucci, checking off their names
on a clipboard. Each Airhead-Terrorist who passed through stepped out and sat
down on a long slippery-slide made of blue light, and squealed with delight
as they zoomed earthward. Sarah could not see all the way to the slide's end,
but she could see that, below, the Death Vortex had turned into a whirlpool of
multicolored fire. Forests and towns and families whirled around and around
before gurling down the center to disappear. The Vortex was ringed with
hundreds of fire trucks whose crews halfheartedly sprayed their tiny jets of
water into its middle.

When Sarah looked beyond the whirlpool she saw in its light a shattered
landscape of rubble and corpses, where bawling dirty people scrabbled about
aimlessly and squinted into the fire-glow. Nothing more than dust, solitary
bricks, cockroaches and jagged glass was there, though Sarah's vision swooped
across it for a thousand miles and a thousand years.

Beyond its distant edge was a nonlandscape: a milky white vacuum where choking
black clouds of static grew, split, re-formed, hurled themselves against
one another, clashed with horrible dry violence and abated to grow and form
again. Its slowness and its dryness made it the most awful thing Sarah had
ever seen. After five millennia, when she thought she was entirely lost and
crazy, she saw a piece of broken glass. then a rivulet of blood. Following
them, she found herself in the terrible landscape again, with the Plex on the
horizon erupting like a volcano. Blue beams of light shot from its top and
wrapped around her and sucked her back through the air into the building. But
she could no longer find herself there. She was no longer in the Lounge. The
Lounge had been vacant for centuries and only dust and yellowed party favors
remained. Following footprints in the dust she came to the hallway-- brightly
lit, loud, filled with shouting students and bats. She flew straight down
the hail until four dots at its end grew into four people and she could slow
down and follow them. There were three men: a Cowboy and a Commando held the
arms of a woman dressed as a clown, hurrying her down the hall, while a Droog
walked ahead of them carrying a paper punch cup which glowed with a green
light from within. Sarah closed her eyes to the glow and shook her head, and
when she opened them again she was the clown-woman-- though she did not want
to be.

They were in an elevator filled with black water that rose and crept warmly up
Sarah's thighs. Swimming in the water were bad hidden things, so she kicked as
well as she could. Her hands were held up above her head by men ten feet high,
lost in the glare of the overhead light where it was too bright to look.

Then they were on a floor that reminded Sarah of the broken landscape. On the
wall a giant mouth was chewing vigorously, drooling on the floor and smacking
its disgusting lips. The men threw her through it and followed behind.

"I won't go down the slide," she protested, but they did not really care.
Inside all was red and blue; a neon beer emblem burned in the window and
licked her with its hot rays. There stood a giant in a football costume who
wore the head of Tiny, leader of the Terrorists.

"Is Dex here?" she said, more out of habit than anything. It would be like
Dex to slip her some LSD. But then she knew this was a stupid question. She
felt the door being locked behind her and saw the music turned up until it
was purest ruby red, causing her body to turn into fragile glass. To move now
would be to shatter and die.

"Handle with care," she murmured, "I'm glass now," but the words just dribbled
down the front of her costume. They were ripping her costume away. She
squirmed but felt herself cracking horribly. The beer sign cast grotesque red
and blue light on the transparent flesh of her thighs.

She knew what was going to happen next. Somehow her mind connected it all in a
straight line, before the idea was swept away by the internal storm. The worst
thing in the world. She should have gone down the slide.

She made an effort of will. The sound and the light went away, it was spring;
grass and flowers and blue sky were all around and she was not about to be
raped. She was eating raspberries on the banks of a creek. Out of curiosity
she scratched at the air with her fingernail. Red and blue rays stabbed out
into her skin again, and peeking all the way through for a moment she could
see that they had not yet started.

No wonder; they were moving in slow motion. Sarah would have to spend many
hours waiting on the banks of the creek. She drew back into the sunshine.
Perhaps she could live here forever and have a perfect life.

When she slept, she dreamed of those dry, unending wars in the land of milky
white. She knew it was all an illusion. She tore it away and came back to
the room. She was not going to sleep through anything. She was not going to
imagine anything that didn't exist.

The sign was wavy and upside down now, reflected in a puddle of water on the
floor.

A Terrorist was in the corner twisting a faucet handle. Sarah stood up. Tiny
turned toward her and smashed her across the face. She was on the floor again,
and over there a Terrorist groped in the scintillating ocean of red and blue
for the sign's power cord. He was screaming like an electric guitar now. He
was trying to swim in the shallow lake of blood and bile.

Sarah was thrown onto a bed. Her arms and legs fl