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.