“And I smell something rotten in your eagerness to free us,” Dr. Shpritzsvet sniffed.
“I’ll never leave you, darling,” Ludmilla informed Jonathan Relevant in Russian, her hands stroking the back of Dr. Handelquim’s neck, her eyes straying toward Big Dick Eberhard.
“We won’t go!” Pigbaigh repeated the decision and sat down firmly on the floor. “You can’t make us leave!” The other hostages followed his example. We’re staying!”
“You won’t go?” Minerva Kaufman looked at them helplessly. “But if we don’t release you they’ll send in paratroopers!”
“Good!” Pigbaigh folded his arms firmly.
“What do you think?” Minerva turned to Jonathan Relevant beside her and spread her hands. “Do you see any way to avoid this confrontation?”
“Every confrontation is an opportunity for communication and understanding.” Jonathan Relevant soothed her. Or for noncommunication, nonunderstanding, and violence, he added to himself.
“Where will it all end?” Minerva wondered aloud.
Up against the wall, Mother—-
CHAPTER NINE
Dawn broke on the eggs rolling into position to be cracked for the Harnell omelet. There were white eggs and brown eggs of various shades, gun-powdered army eggs and simmering cop eggs, mildle-class coddled eggs and hard-boiled ghetto eggs, too-fresh SDS eggs and CIA rotten eggs, War- painted deviled eggs and sit-in poaching eggs, brain-scrambled eggs and eggheads galore. Also there were lots of chicks, committed and un, and at least one old hen (Miss Uptyte) with ruffled feathers. And all because of the cock which didn’t crow with the sunrise, but merely gleamed metallically, silent, waiting for the events of the day to decide Whether or not its connection with the Angel Gabriel would be served.
The statue had been moved to the center of the main hall of the Administration Building, where G. P. hoped it would serve as an inspiration to the brothers when the action started. The ranks of the black students had been bolstered by the street fighters from the ghetto who had joined them inside the building after routing the jocks the previous night. G. P. assigned students and ghetto youths to their various posts. Everybody was on edge, waiting for the action to begin. G. P. carried his sack of explosives with him as he moved around the center hall.
“Man, we gonna blow this place sky-high!” The speaker was the leader of the street gang. He was known as “Hardcore,” a nickname derived from soapbox speeches in which he repeatedly told his ghetto followers that if “Whitey ain’t gonna give me no job, I’m gonna be the hardest-core unemployed black man in this whole town!”
Now G. P. tried to explain to Hardcore that the explosives were only a last resort, and even then meant only to be used for a threat, rather than actually detonated.
But Hardcore wasn’t hearing G. P. “Baby, you point out this here chancellor to me an’ ZAP!—got you a red-spoutin’ lawn sprinkle!” Hardcore jabbed the air graphically with a switchblade knife. “Then we make us some Molotovs an’ mop up on the rest of the ofays!”
G. P. wished he’d never thought of taking the explosives. . . .
The sun rose higher, spreading its rays over the areas adjacent to the campus. Here, the city police were assembling. A few of the more eager cops were already sneaking off behind the bushes to remove their nameplates and badges in a modest desire for anonymity during the up-coming action.
Farther back from the campus, the state’s National Guardsmen were assembling. They looked very young and very nervous as they inserted their bayonets in their rifles. Some boys leave the country to avoid the draft, some boys go to college, and some boys join the National Guard. Now many of the Guardsmen looked like they wished they’d made a different choice.
Behind the Guard the paratroopers were assembled. They seemed crisp and efficient by comparison, gung-ho and deadly. Like the cops, they had an ingrained recognition of who the real enemy was: smart-ass college kids who looked down on GIs, loudmouth softies whose Daddy-money had bought their way out of serving their country. The paratroopers—most of them—were as itchy as the bluecoats to crack open a few eggheads.
In a rear-echelon tent, the leaders of the three forces of “law and order” were meeting. The chief of police, the colonel in charge of the paratroops, and the general leading the National Guard discussed their tactics. They spoke calmly, as befits men holding the responsibility of command.
“My boys’ll club the longhaired little bastards into the ground,” the chief of police promised. “Then we’ll mop ’em up with Mace!”
“The men under my command have been trained to break up demonstrations with bayonets and tear gas,” the Guard general told them. “They’re itching for action!”
“Then what are they doing in the Guard?” the paratrooper colonel wanted to know. “Now, I don’t care what the police or the Guard do,” he continued. “My orders come directly from the President. I’m to get those hostages and it doesn’t matter who gets clobbered in the process. And I’ve got tanks, weapons carriers, cannon, and an elite fighting force— all the muscle I need to achieve the objective.”
“Shouldn’t we coordinate our activities?” the chief of police asked.
“Why? More fun for everybody if we don’t.” The Guard general winked.
“I’ll buy that.” The paratrooper colonel agreed. “Hell, that’s what I call real academic freedom! . . .”
“Academic freedom isn’t license!” the captain of the football team was telling the assembled meeting of concerned Greeks and jocks.
“Isn’t he wonderful? Such a phrasemaker!” a dewy-eyed cheerleader whispered to her sorority sister.
“This is our school and we’re not going to let a bunch of black savages and pinkos take it away from us,” the captain continued. “We’re going to go in there and throw them out ourselves! . . .”
“It’s our job to throw the bums out,” the campus police chief informed his twenty-eight-man force. “Let’s prove we can do it without any outside help. Why should outsiders get the credit? Are you with me, men?”
“Oink! Oink!”
They were with him. . . .
“We’re with you, Chancellor!” There was a murmur of agreement from the Harnell Board of Trustees as the speaker sat back down in his wheelchair and rested his gouty foot.
“Thank you, gentlemen.” Chancellor Hardlign acknowledged their faith in him.
“Speaking for the Harnell University Alumni Committee”-—another man tottered to his feet——“I want you to know, Chancellor, that we admire your toughness in this situation.”
“My thanks to HUAC.” The chancellor bowed his head.
“Damn the torpedoes!” the HUAC speaker rambled. “Give ’em liberty! The British are coming! Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!”
“Watch your blood pressure!” A fellow alumnus pulled the speaker back into his chair.
“It won’t be long now, gentlemen,” the chancellor informed them, “before I deliver the final ultimatum. And then I shan’t hesitate to see that these dissidents are removed by whatever means necessary, including physical force! . . .”
“Force is the only answer!” The Weathermen faction of SDS was making its kamikaze plans. “It’s the only way to radicalize the student body! So we bide our time until just the right moment, and then we dive in and bleed just as hard as we can. Remember, blood is the only irrigation for revolution!”
“Everybody into the irrigation ditch! . . .”
“Our last-ditch attempts to mediate this situation have failed,” Mercy Altebopper told the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee in an “I-told-you-so” tone of voice. “Now is the time to show the students that they have our support, that we’re with them all the way!” Her face twitched violently; her eyes crossed; she sat down and put her hands over them.