"Unless they ask for it," muttered Jastrow.
"No, not even then," snapped Hank.
"Who appointed you general? I didn't!"
"All right-" Hank put up his hands. "We'll take a vote-"
"No!" I said. "We have a plan. We're ready to go! Armies don't vote!"
"They do now!" said Jastrow.
"But not in times of war! Is there anyone who needs to vote?"
"Yeah, I want to go over this war plan again-"
"Oh, terrific! There goes the revolution! Let's have a parliamentary battle instead. Wait a minute, I've got a copy of Robert's Rules of Order here-"
"McCarthy, shut up! You're an asshole!"
"Yeah? Then why are you the one who's giving us shit?"
"Hey, wait a minute-we're being distracted from our goal by this! We're forgetting who the real enemy is." Hank Chelsea stepped between us. "Now, look, we've got a plan. Let's do it! All right?"
Jastrow looked at Chelsea's proffered hand skeptically. "I don't like this-"
"Aw, come on, Paul," said Mariette and Janice, and then everybody else said it too, and Paul looked embarrassed and shrugged and said, "All right," and we went and invaded Mr. Whitlaw's Global Ethics course.
He was ready for us.
All the desks had been piled up to form a barricade across half the room. The kingdom of Myopia had built a Maginot Line. We stopped and looked at each other.
"I've heard of paranoia, but this is crazy!" said Janice. "Yeah. Well, I told you it wouldn't work," growled Paul. "Now what do we do?" said Mariette.
We stood there exchanging glances. "Can we pull it down?"
"We could try," I said. "But I don't think that's the way we're supposed to solve this problem."
"Okay, Mr. Megabyte," said Paul Jastrow. "What's your solution?"
"I don't have one. I just said, I didn't think the physical way is the answer. I think we're supposed to use our brains here." I shut up then. I realized I was looking straight through the barrier at Whitlaw. He was making notes on a clipboard, but he had paused and was looking at me with a slight smile. "Um . . ." I tried to continue, but my train of thought had disappeared. "Let's have a conference. In the hallway. I think I have an idea."
We trooped out to the hall. I said, "I think we should go in and try to negotiate a peace treaty."
"He's not going to negotiate with us."
"Yes, he is." I said.
"What makes you so sure?"
"Because they can't get out of there unless they do. We have the side of the room with the doors. I don't think they're going to want to climb out of a third-story window."
There was a moment of appreciative silence. You could almost hear the smiles spreading.
"Yeah, let's go. Who's got a handkerchief? We need a white flag-"
We trooped back in and announced, "We come in peace. We want to negotiate a settlement."
"Why should I? You're a bunch of radicals and subversives who were thrown out of the system because you wouldn't cooperate with it."
"The system doesn't work," said Janice. "We want a better one."
"Yeah," said Mariette. "One we can be a part of."
"You're already part of the system. You're the rebels. We have to have rebels to punish as examples."
"Well, we don't want to be rebels anymore!"
"Too bad," said Whitlaw from behind his barrier. "You're troublemakers. The only role for you is rebels. That's what you're good at." We could see him grinning.
"You gotta take us back, Whitlaw-" That was Paul Jastrow.
"Eh? I don't gotta anything!"
"Yes, you do," I said. "You can't get out of the room until we let you."
"Ahh," he said. "You found something to bargain with. All right, what is it you want?"
"We want our money back!" screamed Joey Hubre. Joey?
"We want to come back to class," said Janice.
"-amnesty!" said Paul.
"-a fair deal!" I said.
"-respect!" said Mariette.
"-the rights of Englishmen," said Hank quietly, and we all turned to look at him.
"Huh?"
But Whitlaw was grinning. "You-your name? Chelsea? Right." He made a note on his clipboard. "A for the day. Now let's see if you can keep it. What are those rights?"
Hank was standing before the barrier of desks, his arms folded. "No more taxes, Mr. Whitlaw, unless we get some say in how the money is to be spent. No more expulsions from the class unless there's a fair hearing. No more unfair use of force. We want the right to disagree with you, and the right to express our disagreements freely without you throwing us out."
"It's my classroom and the law says I can run it any way I want."
"Well, then we want that law changed."
"Sorry, that's one law I didn't make. I can't change that."
"It doesn't matter. You can change the way you run your class. You said you have autonomy. Let's negotiate some changes that'll make this class acceptable to all of us."
"Since when do students have the right to tell teachers how to teach?"
"Since we have all the doors!" cried Paul.
"Shh!" said Hank.
"Who appointed you president?"
"Will you shut up? One person is supposed to talk for all of us!"
"I didn't agree to that!"
"It doesn't matter what you agreed to-it's the way things are!"
"You're just as bad as he is! Well, the hell with you, then!" Paul marched to the end of the room and sat down, glowering. Hank looked around at the rest of us, a little panicky. "Listen, people-if we don't cooperate with each other, this isn't going to work. We can't show any weakness."
"Yeah," said Janice. "Hank's right. We can't bog down in arguments among ourselves."
"Yeah, but that's no license for you to take over," said Mariette. "Paul's right. We didn't have an election."
"Wait a minute," I said. "I don't want to argue-and I agree with you that we've all gotta pull together or we'll certainly be pulled apart-but I think we have to recognize that each of us is in this rebellion for a different reason and each of us wants to have a say in the negotiations. I want the same thing Paul wants-to be heard."
"May I say something?" John Hubre stepped forward, the silent twin. "Let's draft a list of our demands, and vote on the ones that we want to make Whitlaw adhere to."
Hank looked defeated. "All right. Who's got some paper? I'll write 'em down."
"No," said John. "We'll put them on the screen, where everyone can see them. And I think the entire class should discuss them and vote on them. Is that okay by you, Mr. Whitlaw?"
"Do I have any choice?"
John looked startled. "Uh ... no. Of course not."
"May I offer a suggestion?" asked Whitlaw.
"Uh ... all right."
"Let's dismantle this mountain of furniture so we can operate in a more civilized situation. The rest of this war is cancelled until further notice."
In short order, we looked like a classroom again, except that instead of tyrannizing us, Whitlaw was standing quietly to one side, observing-and only occasionally offering suggestions. The list of demands grew to thirty in less than five minutes. Whitlaw looked them over, snorted and said, "Don't be silly." The class reactions ranged from, "Huh? What's wrong with these demands?" to "You don't have any choice!"
He held up a hand. "Please-I want you all to take another look at this list. Most of your grievances appear to be legitimate, but take another look and see if you notice something about your demands."
"Well, some of these are kind of petty," said Paul Jastrow. "I mean, like number six. No more ripping shirts. Maybe that one's important to Doug-but how important is it to the rest of us?"
Janice said, "And some of them are redundant-like the right to express ourselves freely encompasses the right to assemble and the right to speak and the right to publish-so we don't have to list all three, do we?"
And then other voices chimed in with their opinions. Whitlaw had to hold up a hand for silence.