n!' But do these idiots
understand? No, they throw barbells through the ceiling! All they can do with
good food is throw it, like it is being a sports implement or something. You!"

Forksplit sprinted toward a tall thin fellow who had just slit one of the
sliding partitions almost in half with a bayonet and plunged through, pulling
a briefcase behind him. Under his arm this man carried a pistol-shaped
flashlight, which he tried to pull out; but before Forksplit was able to
reach him, several more people exploded through the slit, pointing back and
complaining about high rudeness levels in the next room. With a bloodcurdling
battle cry Forksplit flung his body through the breach and into the next
compartment, where much loud smashing and yelling commenced.

Mari turned to Sarah, a big smile visible through her mouth-hole. "That
was very nice of you, Sarah. It was sweet to think about Dean Forksplit's
feelings."

"He put me in a hell of a spot," said Sarah, who was looking at Fred Fine and
his light-gun and his bayonet. "I mean, what was I supposed to say?"

Mari did not follow, and laughed. "It was neat the way you didn't say
something bad about the Terrorists just on his account." Fred Fine was
stashing his armaments in his briefcase and staring at them. Sarah concluded
that he had just come over to eavesdrop on their conversation and look at
their secondary sex characteristics.

"Diplomatic? There's nothing I could say, Mari, that could be nasty enough to
describe those assholes, and the sooner you realize that the better off you'll
be."

"Oh, no, Sarah. That's not true. The Terrorists are nice guys, really."

"They are assholes."

"But they're nice. You said so yourself at Fantasy Island Nite, remember? You
should get to know some of them."

Sarah nearly snapped that she had almost gotten to know some of them quite
well on Fantasy Island Nite, but held her tongue, suddenly apprehensive. Had
she said that on Fantasy Island Nite? And had Mar! known who she was? "Man, it
is possible to be nice and be an asshole at the same time. Ninety-nine percent
of all people are nice. Not very many are decent."

"Well, sometimes you don't seem terribly nice."

"Well, I don't wish to be nice. I don't care about nice. I've got more
important things on my mind, like happiness."

"I don't understand you, Sarah. I like you so much, but I just don't
understand you." Mari backed away a couple of paces on her spikes, gazing
coolly at Sarah through her eye-holes. "Sometimes I get the feeling you're
nothing but a clown." She stood and watched Sarah triumphantly.

DEATH TO CLOWN WOMAN! hung before Sarah's eyes. A knifing chill struck her and
she was suddenly nauseated and lightheaded. She sat down on a table, assisted
needlessly by Fred Fine.

"You'll be fine," he said confidently. "Just routine shock. Lie back here and
we'll take care of you." He began making a clear space for her on the table.

Somehow, Sarah had managed to unzip the back pocket of her knapsack and
wrap her fingers around the concealed grip of the revolver. Shocked, she
forced herself to relax and think clearly. To scare the hell out of Mari was

[...] <FIXME> (missing text)

neighborhood, the square had degenerated meteorically and become a chaotic
intersection lined with dangerous discos, greasy spoons, tiny weedlike
businesses, fast-food joints with armed guards and vacant buildings covered
with acres of graffiti-festooned plywood and smelling of rats and derelicts'
urine. The home office of the Big Wheel Petroleum Corporation had moved out
some years ago to a Sunbelt location. It had retained ownership of its old
twelve-story office building, and on its roof, thrust into the heavens on a
dirty web of steel and wooden beams, the Big Wheel sign continued to beam out
its pulsating message to everyone within five miles every evening. One of the
five largest neon signs ever built, it was double-sided and square, a great
block of lovely saturated cherry red with a twelve-spoked wagon wheel of azure
and blinding white rotating eternally in the middle, underscored by heavy
block letters saying BIG WHEEL that changed, letter by letter, from white to
blue and back again, once every two revolutions. Despite the fact that the
only things the corporation still owned in this area were eight gas stations,
the building and the sign, some traditionalist in the corporate hierarchy made
sure that the sign was perfectly maintained and that it went on every evening.

During the daytime the Big Wheel sign looked more or less like a billboard,
unless you looked closely enough to catch the glinting of the miles of glass
tubing bracketed to its surface. As night fell on the city, though, some
mysterious hand, automatic or human, would throw the switch. Lights would dim
for miles around and anchormen's faces would bend as enough electricity to
power Fargo at dinnertime was sent glowing and incandescing through the glass
tracery to beam out the Big Wheel message to the city. This was a particularly
impressive sight from the social lounges on the east side of the Plex, because
the sign was less than a quarter mile away and stood as the only structure
between it and the horizon. On cloudless nights, when the sky over the water
was deep violet and the stars had not yet appeared, the Big Wheel sign as seen
from the Plex would first glow orange as its tubes caught the light of the
sunset. Then the sun would set, and the sign would sit, a dull inert square
against the heavens, and the headlights of the cars below would flicker on
and the weak lights of the discos and the diners would come to life. Just
when the sign was growing difficult to make out, the switch would be thrown
and the Big Wheel would blaze out of the East like the face of God, causing
thousands of scholarly heads to snap around and thousands of conversations
to stop for a moment. Although Plex people had few opportunities to purchase
gasoline, and many did not even know what the sign was advertising, it had
become the emblem of a university without emblems and was universally admired.
Art students created series of paintings called, for example, "Thirty-eight
views of the Big Wheel sign," the Terrorists adopted it as their symbol
and its illumination was used as the starting point for many parties. Even
during the worst years of the energy crisis, practically no one at AM had
protested against the idea of nightly beaming thousands of red-white-and-blue
kilowatt-hours out into deep space while a hundred feet below derelicts lost
their limbs to the cold.

The summit conference, the Meeting of Hearers, the Conclave of the Terrorist
Superstars, was therefore held in the D24E lounge around sunset. About a
dozen figures from various Terrorist factions came, including eight stereo
hearers, two Big Wheel hearers, a laundry-machine hearer and a TV test-pattern
hearer. Hudson Rayburn, Tiny's successor, got there last, and did not have
a chair. So he went to the nearest room and walked in without knocking. The
inhabitant was seated cross-legged on the bed, smoking a fluorescent red
plastic bong and staring into a color-bar test pattern on a 21-inch TV. This
was the wing of the TV test-pattern hearers, a variation which Rayburn's group
found questionable. There were some things you could say about test patterns,
though.

"The entire spectrum," observed Hudson Rayburn.

"Hail Roy G Biv," quoth the hearer in his floor's ritual greeting. Rayburn
grabbed a chair, causing the toaster oven it was supporting to slide off onto
the bed. "I must have this chair," he said. The hearer cocked his head and was
motionless for several seconds, then spoke in a good-natured monotone. "Roy G
Biv speaks with the voice of Ward Cleaver, a voice of great power. Yes. You
are to take the chair. You are to bring it back, or I will not have a place
for putting my toaster oven."

"I will bring it back," answered Rayburn, and carried it out. The hosts of
the meeting had set up a big projection TV on one wall of the lounge, and
the representatives of the Roy G Biv faction stared at the test pattern. One
of them, tonight's emcee, spoke to the assembled Terrorists, glancing at the
screen and pausing from time to time.

"The problem with the stereo-hearers is that everybody has stereos and so
there are many different voices saying different things, and that is bad,
because they cannot act together. Only a few have color TV5 that can show Roy
G Biv, and only some have cable, which carries Roy G Biv on Channel 34 all the
time, so we are unified."

"But there is only one Big Wheel. It is the most unified of all," observed
Hudson Rayburn, staring out at the Big Wheel, glinting orange in the setting
sun.

There was silence for a minute or so. A stereo-hearer, holding a large ghetto
blaster on his lap, spoke up. "Ah, but it can be seen from many windows. So
it's no better at all."

"The same is true of the stereo," said a laundry-machine hearer. "But there
is only one dryer, the Seritech Super Big-Window 1500 in Laundry, which is
numbered twenty-three and catches the reflection of the Astro-Nuke video game,
and only a few can see it at a time, and I think it told me just the other day
how we could steal it."

"So what?" said Hudson Rayburn. "The dryer is just a little cousin of the Big
Wheel. The Big Wheel is the Father of all Speakers. Two years ago, before
there were any hearers, Fred and I-- Fred was the founder of the Wild and
Crazy Guys, he is now a bond analyst-- we sat in our lounge during a power
blackout and smoked much fine peyote. And we looked out over the city and it
was totally dark except for a few headlights. And then the power came back
on, like with no warning, out of nowhere, just like that, and instantly, the
streets, buildings, signs, everything, were there, and there is the Big Wheel
hanging in space and god it just freaked our brains and we just sat there
going 'Whooo!' and just being blown away and stuff! And then Big Wheel spoke
to me! He spoke in the voice of Hannibal Smith on the A-Team and said, 'Son,
you should come out here every time there is a blackout. This is fun. And if
you buy some more of that peyote, you'll have more when you run out of what
you have. Your fly is open and you should write to your mother, and I suggest
that you drop that pre-calculus course before it saps your GPA and knocks you
out of the running for law school.' And it was all exactly right! I did just
what he said, he's been talking to me and my friends ever since, and he's
always given great advice. Any other Speakers are just related to the Big
Wheel."

There was another minute or two of silence. A stereo cult member finally said,
"I just heard my favorite deejay from Youngstown. He says what we need is one
hearer who can hear all the different speakers, who we can follow"

"Stop! The time comes!" cried Hudson Rayburn. He ran to the window and knelt,
putting his elbows on the sill and clasping his hands. Just as he came to
rest, the Big Wheel sign blazed out of the violet sky like a neutron bomb, its
light mixing with that of Roy G Biv to make the lounge glow with unnatural
colors. There was a minute or two of stillness, and then several people spoke
at once.

"Someone's coming."

"Our leader is here."

"Let's see what this guy has to say."

Everyone now heard footsteps and a rhythmic slapping sound. The door opened
and a tall thin scruffy figure strode in confidently. In one hand he was
lugging a large old blue window fan which had a Go Big Red sticker stuck to
its side. The grilles had been removed, exposing the blades, which had been
painted bright colors, and as the man walked, the power cord slapped against
the blades, making the sound that had alerted them. Wordlessly, he walked to
the front of the group, put the fan up on the windowsill, drew the shades
behind it to close off the view of the Big Wheel, and plugged it in. Another
person had shut off Roy G Biv, and soon the room was mostly dark, inspiring a
sleeping bat to wake up and flit around.

Once the fan was plugged in, they saw that its inside walls had been lined
with deep purple black-light tubes, which caused the paint on the blades to
glow fluorescently.

"Lo!" said the scruffy man, and rotated the fan's control to LO. The glowing
blades began to spin and a light breeze blew into their faces. Those few who
still bore stereos set them on the floor, and all stared mesmerized into the
Fan.

"My name is Dex Fresser," said the new guy. "I am to tell you my story.
Last semester, before Christmas break, I was at a big party on E31E. I was
there to drink and smoke and stare down into the Big Wheel, which spoke to
me regularly. At about midnight, Big Wheel spoke in the voice of the alien
commander on my favorite video game. 'Better go pee before you lose it,' is
what he said. So I went to pee. As I was standing in the bathroom peeing, the
after-image of Big Wheel continued to hang in front of me, spinning on the
wall over the urinal.

"I heard a noise and looked over toward the showers. There was a naked man
with blood coming from his head. He was flopping around in the water. There
was much steam, but the Go Big Red Fan blew the steam away, creeping toward
him and making smoke and sparks of power. The alien commander spoke again,
because I didn't know what to do. 'You'd better finish what you're doing,' it
said, so I finished. Then I looked at the Fan again and the afterimage of the
Big Wheel and the Fan became one in my sight and I knew that the Fan was the
incarnation of the Big Wheel, come to lead us. I started for it, but it said,
'Better unplug me first. I could kill you, as I killed this guy. He used to be
my priest but he was too independent.' So I unplugged Little Wheel and picked
it up.

"It said, 'Get me out of here. I am smoking and the firemen will think I set
off the alarm.' Yes, the fire alarm was ringing. So I took Little Wheel away
and modified it as it told me, and today it told me I am to be your leader.
Join me or your voices will become silent."

They had all listened spellbound, and when he was done, they jumped up with
cheers and whoops. Dex Fresser bowed, smiling, and then, hearing a command,
whirled around. The Fan had almost crept its way off the windowsill, and he
saved it with a swoop of the hand.

In the middle of the month, as the ridges of packed grey snow around the Plex
were beginning to settle and melt, negotiations between the administration
and the MegaUnion froze solid and all B-men, professors, cletical workers and
librarians went on strike. To detail the politics and posturings that led to
this is nothing I'd like to do. Let's just say that when negotiations had
begun six months before, the Union had sworn in the names of God, Death and
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that unless granted a number of wild, vast
demands they would all perform hara kiri in President Krupp's bedroom. The
administration negotiators had replied that before approaching to within a
mile of the bargaining table they would prefer to drink gasoline, drop their
grandchildren into volcanoes, convert the operation into a pasta factory and
move it to Spokane.

Nothing unusual so far; all assumed that they would compromise from those
positions. All except for the B-men, that is. After some minor compromising on
both sides, the Crotobaltislavonian bloc, which was numerous enough to control
the Union, apparently decided to stand their ground. As the clock ticked to
within thirty minutes of the deadline, the Administration people just stared
at them, while the other MegaUnion people watched with sweaty lunatic grins,
waiting for the B-men to show signs of reason. But no.

Krupp came on the tube and said that American Megaversity could not afford
its union, and that there was no choice but to let the strike proceed. The
corridors vibrated with whooping and dancing for a few hours, and the strike
was on.

As the second semester lurched and staggered onward, I noted that my friends
had a greater tendency to drop by my suite at odd times, insist they didn't
want to bother me and sit around reading old magazines, examining my plants,
leafing through cookbooks and so on. My suite was not exactly Grandma's house,
but it had become the closest thing they had to a home. After the strike
began, I saw even more of them. Living in the Plex was tolerable when you
could stay busy with school and keep reminding yourself that you were just a
student, but it was a slough of despond when your purpose in life was to wait
for May.

I threw a strike party for them. Sarah, Casimir, Hyacinth, Virgil and Ephraim
made up the guest list, and Fred Fine happened to stop by so that he could
watch a Dr. Who rerun on my TV. We all knew that Fred Fine was weird, but
at this point only Virgil knew how weird. Only Virgil knew that an S & S
player had died in the sewers during one of Fred Fine's games, and that the
young nerd-lord had simply disregarded it. The late Steven Wilson was still a
Missing Person as far as the authorities were concerned.

Ephraim Klein was just as odd in his own way. We knew that his hated
ex-roommate had died of a freak heart attack on the night of the Big Flush,
but we didn't know Ephraim had anything to do with it. We were not alarmed by
his strange personality because it was useful in parties-- he would allow no
conversation to flag or fail.

Virgil sat in a corner, sipping Jack Daniels serenely and staring through
the floor. Casimir stayed near Sarah, who stayed near Hyacinth. Other people
stopped in from time to time, but I haven't written them into the following
transcript-- which has been rearranged and guessed at quite a bit anyway.

HYACINTH. The strike will get rid of Krupp. After that everything will be
fine.

EPHRAIM. How can you say that! You think the problem with this place is just
S. S. Krupp?

BUD. Sarah, how's your forest coming along?

EPHRAIM. Everywhere you look you see the society coming apart. How do you
blame S. S. Krupp alone for that?

SARAH. I haven't done much with it lately. It's just nice to have it there.

CASIMIR. Do you really think the place is getting worse? I think you're just
seeing it more clearly now that classes are shut down.

HYACINTH. You were in Professor Sharon's office during the piano incident,
weren't you?

FRED FINE. What do you propose we do, Ephraim?

EPHRAIM. Blow it up.

CASIMIR. Yeah, I was right there.

HYACINTH. So for you this place has seemed terrible right from the beginning.
You've got a different perspective.

SARAH. Ephraim! What do you mean? How would it help any-thing to blow up the
Big U?

EPHRAIM. I didn't say it would help, I said it would prevent further
deterioration.

SARAH. What could be more deteriorated than a destroyed Plex?

EPHRAIM. Nothing! Get it?

SARAH. You do have a point. This building, and the bureaucracy here, can
drive people crazy-- divorce them from reality so they don't know what to do.
Somehow the Plex has to go. But I don't think it should be blown up.

FRED FINE. Have you ever computed the explosive power necessary to destabilize
the Plex?

EPHRAIM. Of course not!

CASIMIR. He's talking to me. No, I haven't.

HYACINTH. Is that nerd as infatuated with you as he looks?

SARAH. Uh... you mean Fred Fine?

HYACINTH. Yeah.

SARAH. I think so. Please, it's too disgusting.

HYACINTH. No shit.

FRED FINE. I have computed where to place the charges.

CASIMIR. It'd be a very complicated setup, wouldn't it? Lots of timed
detonations?

BUD (drunk). So do you think that the decay of the society is actually built
into the actual building itself?

SARAH. The reason he likes me is because he knows I carry a gun. He saw it in
the Caf.

EPHRAIM. Of course! How else can you explain all this? It's too big and it's
too uniform. Every room, every wing is just the same as the others. It's a
giant sensory deprivation experiment.

HYACINTH. A lot of those science-fiction types have big sexual hangups. You
ever look at a science-fiction magazine? All these women in brass bras with
whips and chains and so on-- dominatrices. But the men who read that stuff
don't even know it.

EPHRAIM. Did you know that whenever I play anything in the key of C, the
entire Wing vibrates?

FRED FINE. This one worked out the details from the blueprints. All you need
is to find the load-bearing columns and make some simple calculations.

EPHRAIM. Hey! Casimir!

CASIMIR. Yeah?

SARAH. What's scary is that all of these fucked-up people, who have problems
and don't even know it, are going to go out and make thirty thousand dollars a
year and be important. Well all be clerk-typists.

EPHRAIM. You're in physics. What's the frequency of a low C? Like in a
sixty-four-foot organ pipe?

CASIMIR. Hell, I don't know. That's music theory.

EPHRAIM. Shit. Hey, Bud, you got a tape measure?

CASIMIR. I'd like to take music theory sometime. One of my professors has
interesting things to say about the similarity between the way organ pipes are
controlled by keys and stops, and the way random-access memory bits are read
by computers.

BUD. I've got an eight-footer.

FRED FINE. This one doesn't listen to that much music. It would be pleasant
to have time for the luxuries of life. In some D & D scenarios, musicians
are given magical abilities. Einstein and Planck used to play violin sonatas
together.

EPHRAIM. We have to measure the length of the hallways!

The conversation split up into three parts. Ephraim and I went out to measure
the hallway. Hyacinth was struck by a craving for Oreos and repaired to the
kitchen with a fierce determination that none dared question. Casimir followed
her. Sarah, Fred Fine and Virgil stayed in the living room.

FRED FINE. What's your major?

SARAH. English.

FRED FINE.  Ah, very interesting. This one thought you were in Forestry.

SARAH. Why?

FRED FINE. Didn't host mention your forest?

SARAH. That's different. It's what I painted on my wall.

FRED FINE. Well, well, well. A little illegal room painting, eh? Don't worry,
I wouldn't report you. Is this part of an other-world scenario, by any chance?
SARAH. Hell, no, it's for the opposite. Look, this place is already an
other-world scenario.

FRED FINE. No. That's where you're wrong. This is reality. It is a
self-sustaining ecosociosystem powered by inter-universe warp generators.

(There is a long silence.)

VIRGIL. Fred, what did you think of Merriam's Math Physics course?

(There is another long silence.)

FRED FINE. Well. Very good. Fascinating. I would recommend it.

SARAH. Where's the bathroom?

FRED FINE. Ever had to pull that pepper grinder of yours on one of those
Terrorist guys?

SARAH. Maybe we can discuss it some other time.

FRED FINE. I'd recommend more in the way of a large-gauge shotgun.

SARAH. I'll be back.

FRED FINE. Of course, in a magical universe it would turn into a two-handed
broadsword, which would be difficult for a petite type to wield.

Meanwhile Casimir and Hyacinth talked in the kitchen. They had met once
before, when they had stopped by my suite on the same evening; they didn't
know each other well, but Casimir had heard enough to suspect that she was not
particularly heterosexual. She knew a fair amount about him through Sarah.

HYACINTH. You want some Oreos too?

CASIMIR. No, not really. Thanks.

HYACINTH. Did you want to talk about something?

CASIMIR. How did you know?

HYACINTH (scraping Oreo filling with front teeth).  Well, sometimes some
things are easy to figure out.

CASIMIR. Well, I'm really worried about Sarah. I think there's something wrong
with her. It's really strange that she resigned as President when she was
doing so well. And ever since then, she's been kind of hard to get along with.

HYACINTH. Kind of bitchy?

CASIMIR. Yeah, that's it.

HYACINTH. I don't think she's bitchy at all. I think she's just got a lot on
her mind, and all her good friends have to be patient with her while she works
it out.

CASIMIR. Oh, yeah, I agree. What I was thinking-- well, this is none of my
business.

HYACINTH. What?

CASIMIR. Oh, last semester I figured out that she was dating some other guy,
you know? Though she wouldn't tell me anything about him. Did she have some
kind of a breakup that's been painful for her?

HYACINTH. No, no, she and her lover are getting along wonderfully. But I'm
sure she'd appreciate knowing how concerned you are.

(Long silence.)

HYACINTH (slinging one arm around Casimir's waist, feeding Oreo into his mouth
with other hand). Hey, it feels terrible, doesn't it? Look, Casimir, she likes
you a hell of a lot. I mean it. And she hates to put you through this kind of
pain-- or she wishes you wouldn't put yourself through it. She thinks you're
terrific.

CASIMIR (blubbering).Well what the hell does it take? All she does is say I'm
wonderful. Am I unattractive? Oh, I forgot. Sorry, I've never talked to a, ah

HYACINTH. You can say it.

CASIMIR. Lesbian. Thanks.

HYACINTH. You're welcome.

CASIMIR. Why can she look at one guy and say, "He's a friend," and look at
this other guy and say, "He's a lover?"

HYACINTH. Instinct. There's no way you can go against her instincts, Casimir,
don't even think about it. As for you, I think you're kind of attractive, but
then, I'm a dyke.

CASIMIR. Great. The only woman in the world, besides my mother, who thinks I'm
good looking is a lesbian.

HYACINTH. Don't think about it. You're hurting yourself.

CASIMIR. God, I'm sorry to dump this on you. I don't even know you.

HYACINTH. It's a lot easier to talk when you don't have to worry about the
sexual thing, isn't it?

CASIMIR. That's for sure. Good thing I've got my sunglasses, no one can tell
I've been crying.

HYACINTH. Let's talk more later. We've abandoned Sarah with Fred Fine, you
know.

CASIMIR. Shit.

Casimir pulled himself together and they went back to the living room.
Shortly, Ephraim and I returned from the hallway with our announcement.

BUD. Isn't it interesting how the alcohol goes to your head when you get up
and start moving around?

EPHRAIM. The hallway on each side of each wing is a hundred twenty-eight feet
and a few inches long. But the fire doors in the middle cut it exactly in
half-- sixty-four feet!

BUD. And three inches.

EPHRAIM. So they resonate at low C.

FRED FINE. Very interesting.

VIRGIL. Casimir, when are you going to stop playing mum about Project Spike?

CASIMIR. What? Don't talk about that!

SARAH. What's Project Spike?

CASIMIR. Nothing much. I was playing with rats.

FRED FINE. What does this one hear about rats?

VIRGIL. Casimir was trying to prove the existence of rat parts or droppings in
the Cafeteria food through a radioactive tracer system. He came up with some
very interesting results. But he's naturally shy, so he hasn't mentioned them
to anyone.

CASIMIR. The results were screwed up! Anyone can see that.

VIRGIL. No way. They weren't random enough to be considered as errors. Your
results indicated a far higher level of Carbon-14 in the food than could be
possible, because they could never eat that much poison. Right?

CASIMIR. Right. And they had other isotopes that couldn't possibly be in the
rat poison, such as Cesium- 137. The entire thing was screwed up.

FRED FINE. How large are the rats in question?

CASIMIR. Oh, pretty much your average rats, I guess.

FRED FINE. But they are not-- they were normal? Like this?

CASIMIR. About like that, yeah. What did you expect?

VIRGIL. Have you analyzed any other rats since Christmas?

CASIMIR. Yeah. Damn it.

VIRGIL. And they were just as contaminated.

CASIMIR. More so. Because of what i did,

SARAH. What's wrong, Casimir?

CASIMIR. Well, I sort of lost some plutonium down an elevator shaft in the Big
Flush.

(Ephraim gives a strange hysterical laugh.)

FRED FINE. God. You've created a race of giant rats, Casimir. Giant rats the
size of Dobermans.

BUD. Giant rats?

HYACINTH. Giant rats?

BUD. Virgil, explain everything to us, okay?

VIRGIL. I am sure that there are giant rats in the sewer tunnels beneath
the Plex. I am sure that they're scared of strobe lights, and that strobes
flashing faster than about sixteen per second drive them crazy. This may be
related to the frequency of muzzle flashes produced by certain automatic
weapons, but that's just a hypothesis. I know that there are organized
activities going on at a place in the tunnels that are of a secret, highly
technological, heavily guarded nature. As for the rats, I assume they were
created by mutation from high levels of background radiation. This included
Strontium-90 and Cesium- 137 and possibly an iodine isotope. The source of the
radiation could possibly have been what Casimir lost down the elevator shaft,
but I suspect it has more to do with this secret activity. In any case, we now
have a responsibility. We need to discover the source of the radioactivity,
look for ways to control the rats and, if possible, divine the nature of the
secret activity. I have a plan of attack worked up, but I'll need help. I need
people familiar with the tunnels, like Fred; people who know how to use guns--
we have some here; big people in good physical condition, like Bud; people who
understand the science, like Casimir; and maybe even someone who knows all
about Remote Sensing, such as Professor Bud again.

An advantage of the Plex was that it taught you to accept any weirdness
immediately. We did not question Virgil. He memorized a list of equipment he'd
have to scrounge for us, and Hyacinth grilled us until we had settled on March
31 as our expedition date. Fred Fine said he knew where he could get authentic
dumdums for our guns, and tried to tell us that the best way to kill a rat
was with a sword, giving a lengthy demonstration until Virgil told him to sit
down. Once we had mobilized into an amateur commando team, we found that our
partying spirit was spent, and soon we were all home trying vainly to sleep.

The strike itself has been studied and analyzed to death, so I'm spared
writing a full account. For the most part the picketers stayed within the
Plex. Their intent was to hamper activities inside the Plex, not to seal
it off, and they feared that once they went outside, S. S. Krupp would not
let them back in again. Some protesters did work the entrances, though. A
delegation of B-men and professors set up an informational picket at the
Main Entrance, and another two dozen established a line to bar access to the
loading docks. Most of these were Crotobaltislavonians who paraded tirelessly
in their heavy wool coats and big fur hats; with them were some black and
Hispanic workers, dressed more conventionally, and three political science
professors, each wearing high-tech natural-tone synthetic-insulated expedition
parkas computer-designed to keep the body dry while allowing perspiration to
pass out. Most of the workers sported yellow or orange work gloves, but the
professors opted for warm Icelandic wool mittens, presumably to keep their
fingers supple in case they had to take notes.

The picket's first test came at 8:05 A.M., when the morning garbage truck
convoy arrived. The trucks turned around and left with no trouble. Forcing
garbage to build up inside the Plex seemed likely to make the administration
more openminded. Therefore the only thing allowed to leave the Plex was the
hazardous chemical waste from the laboratories; run-of-the-mill trash could
only be taken out if the administration and Trustees hauled it away in their
Cadillacs.

A little later, a refrigerated double-bottom semi cruised up, fresh and
steaming from a two-day, 1500-mile trek from Iowa, loaded with enough
rock-frozen beef to supply American Megaversity for two days. This was out
of the question, as the people working in the Cafeteria now were all scabs.
The political science professors failed to notice that their comrades had
all dropped way back and split up into little groups and put their signs on
the ground. They walked toward the semi, waving their arms over their heads
and motioning it back, and finally the enormous gleaming machine sighed and
slowed. An anarcho-Trotskyite with blow-dried hair and a thin blond mustache
stepped up to the driver's side and squinted way up above his head at a
size 25 black leather glove holding a huge chained rawhide wallet which had
been opened to reveal a Teamsters card. The truck driver said nothing. The
professor started to explain that this was a picket line, then paused to read
the Teamsters card. Stepping back a little and craning his neck, he could see
only black greased-back hair and the left lens of a pair of mirror sunglasses.

"Great!" said the professor. "Glad to see you're in solidarity with the rest
of us workers. Can you get out of here with no problem, or shall I direct
you?" He smiled at the left-hand lens of the driver's sunglasses, trying to
make it a tough smile, not a cultured pansyish smile.

"You AFL-CIO," rumbled the trucker, sounding like a rough spot in the idle
of the great diesel. "Me Teamsters. I'm late." The professor admired the
no-nonsense speech of the common people, but sensed that he was failing to
pick up on some message the trucker was trying to send him. He looked around
for another worker who might be able to understand, but saw that the only
people within shotgun-blast range of the truck had Ph.D.'s. Of these, one
was jogging up to the truck with an impatient look on his face. He was a
slightly gray-tinged man in his early forties, who in consultation with his
orthopedist had determined that the running gait least damaging to his knees
was a shuffling motion with the arms down to the sides. Thus he approached the
truck. "Turn it around, buster, this is a strike. You're crossing a picket
line."

There was another rumble from the truck window. This sounded more like
laughter than words. The trucker withdrew his hand for a moment, then swung it
back out like a wrecking ball. Balanced on the tip of his index finger was a
quarter. "See this?" said the trucker.

"Yeah," said the professors in unison.

"This is a quarter. I put it in that pay phone and there's blood on the
sidewalks."

The professors looked at each other, and at the third professor, who had
stopped in his space-age hiking-boot tracks. They all retreated to the other
end of the lot for a discussion of theory and praxis as the truck eased up to
the loading dock. They watched the trucker carry his two-hundred pound steer
pieces into the warehouse, then concluded that a policy decision should be
made at a higher level. The real target of this picket ought to be the scabs
working the warehouse and Cafeteria. All the Crotobaltislavonians had gone
inside, and the professors, finding themselves in an empty lot with only the
remains of a few dozen steers to keep them company, decided to re-deploy
inside the Plex.

There things were noisier. People who never engage in violence are quick to
talk about it, especially when the people they are arguing with are elderly
Greek professors unlikely to be carrying tire chains or knives. Of course,
the Greek professors, who tried to engage the picketers in Socratic dialogue
as they broke the picket lines, were not subject to much more than occasional
pushing. Among younger academics there were genuine fights. A monetarist from
Connecticut finally came to blows with an Algerian Maoist with whom he'd
been trading scathing articles ever since they had shared an office as grad
students. This fight turned out to be of the tedious kind held by libidinous
orthodontists' sons at suburban video arcades. The monetarist tried to break
through the line around the Economics bloc, just happening to attack that part
of the line where the Maoist was standing. After some pushing the monetarist
fell down with the Algerian on top of him. They got up and the monetarist
missed with some roundhouse kicks taken from an aerobic dance routine. The
Maoist whipped off his designer belt and began to whirl the buckle around his
head as though it were dangerous. The monetarist watched indecisively, then
ran up and stuck out his arm so that the belt wrapped around it. As he had
his eyes closed, he did not know where he was going, but as though guided by
some invisible hand he rammed into the Algerian's belly with his head and they
fell onto a stack of picket signs and received minor injuries. The Algerian
grabbed the monetarist's Adam Smith tie and tried to strangle him, but the
latter's gold collar pin prevented the knot from tightening. He grabbed the
Maoist's all-natural-fiber earthtone slacks and yanked them down to midthigh,
occasioning a strange cry from his opponent, who removed one hand from the
Adam Smith tie to prevent the loss of further garments; the monetarist grasped
the Algerian's pinkie and yanked the other hand free. Finding that they had
made their way to the opposite side of the picket line, he got up and skipped
away, though the Maoist hooked his foot with a picket sign and hindered him
considerably.

Students wanting to attend classes in the ROTC bloc found that they need only
assume fake Kung Fu positions and the skinny pale fanatics there would get
out of their way. Otherwise, students going to classes taught by nonunion
professors worried only about verbal abuse. Unless they were aggressively
obnoxious, like Ephraim Klein, they were in no physical peril. Ephraim went
out of his way to cross picket lines, and unleashed many awe-inspiring insults
he had apparently been saving up for years. Fortunately for him he spent most
of his time around the Philosophy bloc, where the few picketing professors
devoted most of their time to smoking cigarettes, exchanging dirty jokes and
discussing basketball.

The entrance to the Cafeteria was a mess. The MegaUnion could never agree on
what to do about it, because to allow students inside was to support S. S.
Krupp's scab labor, and to block the place off was to starve the students.
Depriving the students of meals they had already paid for was no way to make
friends. Finally the students were encouraged to prepare their own meals as a
gesture of support. In an attempt at plausibility, some efforts were mounted
to steal food from Caf warehouses, but to no avail. The radicals advocated
conquering the kitchen by main force, but all entrances were guarded by
private guards with cudgels, dark glasses and ominous bulges. The radicals
therefore used aerial bombardment, hurling things from the towers in hopes
that they would crash through Tar City and into the kitchens. This was
haphazard, though, and moderate MegaUnion members opposed it violently; as a
result, students who persisted in dining at the Caf were given merely verbal
abuse. As for the scabs themselves, they were determined-looking people, and
activists attempting to show them the error of their ways tried not to raise
their voices or to make any fast moves.

Then, seven days into the strike, it really happened: what the union had never
dreamed of, what I, sitting in my suite reading the papers and plunging into
a bitter skepticism, had been awaiting with a sort of sardonic patience. The
Board of Trustees announced that American Megaversity was shutting down for
this year, that credit would be granted for unfinished courses and that an
early graduation ceremony would take place in mid-April. Everyone was to be
out of the Plex by the end of March.

"Well," said S. S. Krupp on the tube, "I don't know what all the confusion's
about. Seems to me we are being quite straightforward. We can't afford our
faculty and workers. We can't meet our commitment to our students for this
semester. About all we can do is clean the place out, hire some new faculty,
re-enroll and get going again. God knows there are enough talented academics
out there who need jobs. So we're asking all those people in the Plex to clear
out as soon as they can."

The infinite self-proclaimed cleverness of the students enabled them to
dismiss it as a fabulous lie and a ham-fisted maneuver. Once this opinion was
formed by the few, it was impossible for the many to disagree, because to
believe Krupp was to proclaim yourself a dupe. Few students therefore planned
to leave; those who did found it perilous.

The Terrorists had decided that leaving the Plex was too unusual an idea to
go unchallenged, and the Big Wheel backed them up on it. So the U-Hauls and
Jartrans stacked up in the access lot began to suffer dents, then craters,
then cave-ins, as golf balls, chairs, bricks, barbell weights and flaming
newspaper bundles zinged out of the smoggy morning sky at their terminal
velocities and impacted on their shiny tops. Few rental firms in the City had
lent vehicles to students in the first place; those that did quickly changed
their policies, and became dour and pitiless as desperate sophomores paraded
before their reception desks waving wads of cash and Mom-and-Dad's credit
cards.

The Plexodus, as it was dubbed by local media, dwindled to a dribble of
individual escapes in which students would spri