"The Guild had to place an overseer over Plexor. It must be the Operating System for the Technological side, and the Prime Deity for the Magic side, and in Plexor it must be omniscient and all-powerful. Thus, the Guild generated Shekondar the Fearsome/JANUS 64, the Organism that inhabits and controls the colony. The creation of this system took twice as long as the building of Plexor itself, and in the end Keldor died, his mind overloaded by massive transfers of data from one hemisphere to the other, the Boundary within his mind destroyed and the contents Mixed hopelessly. But out of his death came the King of Two Faced, that which in Techno-Plexor is JANUS 64 and in Magic Plexor, Shekondar the Fearsome.
"Though the last member of the Guild died two thousand years ago, most Plexorians have revered the King of Two Faces. But in these dark days, at the close of this age, those who know the story of Shekondar/JANUS 64 are very few. We who have kept the flame alive have trained your bodies and minds to accept this responsibility. Today, our efforts output in batch. From this room will march the Grand Army celebrated in the prophecies and songs of Magic-Plexor, whose coming has been foretold even in the seemingly random errors of JANUS 64; the band of heroes which will debug Plexor, which will fight Mixture in the approaching crisis. And for those of you who have failed to detect Mixture, who scoff that Magic might have crossed the Central Bifurcation:
Behold!"
The listeners had now allowed themselves to sink deep into their characters, and Councilla's words had begun to mesmerize them. Though a few had grinned at the silliness spewing out of the big speakers, the oppressive seriousness and magical unity that filled this dank chamber had silenced them; soon, cut off from the normal world, they began to doubt themselves, and heeded the Priestess. As she built to a climax and revealed the most profound secrets of Plexor, many began to sweat and tingle, fidgeting with terrified energy. When she cried, "Behold!" the spell was bound up in a word. The room became silent with fear as all wondered what demonic demonstration she had conjured up.
A sssh! was heard, and it avalanched into a loud, general hiss. When that sound died away, it was easy to hear a soft, cacophonous noise, a jumble of sharp high tones that sounded like a distant kazoo band. The sound seemed to come from one of the tunnels, though echoes made it hard to tell which one. It was approaching quickly. Suddenly and rapidly, everyone cleared away from the four tunnel openings and plastered against the walls. Only when all the others had found places did Klystron the Impaler move. He walked calmly through the center of the room, leaving the radio receiver and speakers in the middle, and found himself a place in front of a hushed squadron of swordsmen. The roar swelled to a scream; a bat the size of an eagle pumped out of a tunnel, took a fast turn around the room, sending many of the men to their knees, then plunged decisively into another passage. As the roar exploded into the open, in the garish artificial light the Grand Army saw a swarm of enormous fat brown-grey lash-tailed bright-eyed screaming frothing rats vomit from the tunnel, veer through the middle of the room and compress itself into the opening through which the giant bat had flown. Some of them smashed headlong into the old boxy radio, sending it sprawling across the floor, and before it had come to rest, five rats had parted from the stream and demolished it, scything their huge gleaming rodent teeth through the plywood case as though it were an orange peel, prying the apparatus apart, munching into its glass-and-metal innards with insane passion. Their frenzy lasted for several seconds; their brothers had all gone; and they emitted piercing shrieks and scuttled off into the tunnel, one trailing behind a streak of twisted wire and metal.
Most everyone save Klystron sat on the floor in a fetal position, arms crossed over faces, though some had drawn swords or clubs, prepared to fight it out. None moved for two minutes, lest they draw another attack. When the warriors began to show life again, they moved with violent trembling and nauseated dizziness and the most perfect silence they could attain. No one strayed from the safety of the walls except for Klystron the Impaler/Chris the Systems Programmer, who paced to a spot where a thousand rat footprints had stomped a curving highway into the thin sludge. Hardly anyone here, he knew, had been convinced of the Central Bifurcation, much less of the danger of Mixture. That was understandable, given the badly Mixed environment which had twisted their minds. Klystron/Chris had done all he could to counter such base thinking, but the rise of the giant rats, and careful preparation by him and Councilla and Chip Dixon, had provided proof.
He let them think it over. It was not an easy thing, facing up to one's own importance; even he had found it difficult. Finally he spoke out in a clear and firm voice, and every head in the room snapped around to pay due respect to their leader.
"Do I have a Grand Army?"
The mumbled chorus sounded promising. Klystron snapped his sword from its scabbard and held it on high, making sure to avoid electrical cables. "All hail Shekondar the Fearsome!" he trumpeted.
Swords, knives, chains and clubs crashed out all around and glinted in the mist. "All hail Shekondar the Fearsome!" roared the army in reply, and four times it was answered by echoes from the tunnels. Klystron/Chris listened to it resonate, then spoke with cool resolve: "It is time to begin the Final Preparations."
An advantage of living in a decaying civilization was that nobody really cared if you chose to roam the corridors laden with armfuls of chest waders, flashlights, electrical equipment and weaponry. We did receive alarmed scrutiny from some, and boozy inquiries from friendly Terrorists, but were never in danger from the authorities. A thirty-minute trek through the deepening chaos of the Plex took us to the Burrows, which were still inhabited by people devoted to such peaceful pursuits as gaming, computer programming, research and Star Trek reruns.
From here a freight elevator took us to the lowest sublevel, where Fred Fine led us through dingy hallways plastered with photos of nude Crotobaltislavonian princesses until we came to a large room filled with plumbing. From here, Virgil used his master key to let us into a smaller room, from which a narrow spiral staircase led into the depths.
"I go first," said Virgil quietly, "with the Sceptre. Hyacinth follows with her .44. Bud follows her with the heavy gloves, then Sarah and Casimir with the backpacks, and Fred in the rear with his sixteen-gauge. No noise."
After one or two turns of the stair we had to switch on our headlamps. The trip down was long and tense, and we seemed to make a hellacious racket on the echoing metal treads. I kept my beam on the blazing white-gold beacon of Virgil's hair and listened to the breathing and the footsteps behind me. The air had a harsh damp smell that told me I was sucking in billions of microbes of all descriptions with each breath. Toward the bottom we slipped on our gas masks, and I found I was breathing much faster than I needed to.
The rats were waiting a full fifty feet above the bottom. One had his mouth clamped over Virgil's lower leg before he had switched on the Sceptre of Cosmic Force. The flashing drove away the rest of the rats, who tumbled angrily down the stair on top of one another, but the first beast merely clamped down harder and hung on, too spazzed out to move. Fortunately, Hyacinth did not try to shoot it on the spot. I slipped past, flexed my big elbow-length padded gloves, and did battle with the rat. The rodent teeth had not penetrated the soccer shinguards Virgil wore beneath his waders, so I took my time, relaxing and squatting down to look into the animal's glowering white-rimmed eye. His bared chisel teeth, a few inches long and an inch wide, flickered purple-yellow with each flash of the strobe. Having sliced through Virgil's waders to expose the colorful plastic shinguard, the rat now tried to gnaw its way through the obstacle without letting go. I did not have the strength to pull its mouth open.