The Big U

Looking down, Sarah saw that the woman was indeed clean of face and wet of hair. She was shorter than average and compact but not overweight, with pleasant strong features and black-brown hair that fell to her shoulders. Her bathrobe was short, old and plain, with a clothesline for a sash.

"Oh, sorry," said Sarah. "So you did. Uh, I'm Sarah, and my bathrobe is blue."

"I know. President of the Student Government."

Sarah shrugged and tried not to look stuck-up.

"What's the story, you've never lived on one of these floors?" The other woman seemed surprised.

"What do you mean, 'one of these floors?'"

She sighed. "Ah, look. I'm Hyacinth. I'll explain all this later. You want to sit down? It'll be a long meeting." Hyacinth grasped Sarah's belt loop and led her politely to the back row of chairs, where they sat a row behind the next people up. Hyacinth turned sideways in her chair and examined Sarah minutely.

The Study Lounge was not a pretty place. Designed to be as cheery as a breath mint commercial, it had aged into something not quite so nice. Windows ran along one wall and looked out into the elevator lobby, where the four wings of E12S came together. It was furnished with the standard public-area furniture of the Plex: cubical chairs and cracker-box sofas made of rectangular beams and slabs of foam covered in brilliant scratchy polyester. The carpet was a membrane of compressed fibers, covered with the tats and cigarette-burns and barfstains of years. Overhead, the ubiquitous banks of fluorescent lights cheerfully beamed thousands of watts of pure bluish energy down onto the inhabitants. Someone was always decorating the lounge, and this week the theme was football; the decorations were cardboard cutouts of well-known cartoon characters cavorting with footballs.

The only other nonrobed person in the place was the RA, Mitzi, who sat bolt upright at the lace-covered card table in front, left hand still as a dead bird In her lap, right hand three inches to the side of her jaw and bent back parallel to the tabletop, fingers curled upward holding a ballpoint pen at a jaunty but not vulgar forty-five-degree angle. She bore a fixed, almost manic smile which as far as Sarah could tell had nothing to do with anything— charm school, perhaps, or strychnine poisoning. Mitzi wore an overly formal dress and a kilogram of jewelry, and when she spoke, though not even her jawbone moved, one mighty earring began to swing violently.

Among other things, Mitzi welcomed new "members." There were three: another woman, Hyacinth and Sarah, introduced in that order. The first woman explained that she was Sandi and she was into like education and stuff. Then came Hyacinth; she was into apathy. She announced this loudly and they all laughed and complimented Hyacinth on her sense of humor.

Sarah was introduced last, being famous. "What are you into, Sarah Jane?" asked Mitzi. Sarah surveyed the glistening, fiercely smiling faces turned round to aim at her.

"I'm into reality," she said. This brought delighted laughter, especially from Hyacinth, who screamed like a sow.

The meeting then got underway. Hyacinth leaned back, crossed her arms and tilted her head back until she was staring openmouthed at the ceiling. As the meeting went on she combed her hair, bit her nails, played with loose threads from her robe, cleaned her toes and so on. The thing was, Sarah found all of this more interesting than the meeting itself. Sarah looked interested until her face got tired. She had spoken in front of groups enough to know that Mitzi could see them all clearly, and that to be obviously bored would be rude. Sometimes politeness had to give way to sanity, though, and before she knew it she found herself trying to swing the tassels at the ends of her sleeves in opposite directions at the same time. Hyacinth watched this closely and patted her on the back when she succeeded.

Mainly what they were doing was filling a huge social calendar with parties and similar events. Sarah wanted to announce that she liked to do things by herself or with a few friends, but she saw no diplomatic way of saying so. She did resurface for the discussion of the theme for the Last Night party, the social climax of the semester: Fantasy Island Nite.

"Wonder how they're going to tell it apart from all the other nights," grumbled Hyacinth. Nearby wingmates turned and smiled, failing to understand but assuming that whatever Hyacinth said must be funny.

Another phase of the social master plan was to form an official sister/brother relationship with the wing upstairs, known as the Wild and Crazy Guys. This in turn led to the wing naming idea. After all, if E13S had a name for itself, shouldn't E12S have one too? Mari Meegan, darling of the wing, made this point, and "Yeah!"s zephyred up all around.

Sarah was feeling pretty sour by this point but said nothing. If they wanted a name, fine. Then the ideas started coming out: Love Boat, for example.

"We could paint our lobby with a picture of the Love Boat like it looks at the start of the show, and we could, you know, do everything, like parties and stuff, with like that kind of a theme. Then on Fantasy Island Nite, we could pretend the Boat was visiting Fantasy Island!"

This idea went over well and the meeting broke up into small discussions about how to apply this theme to different phases of existence. Finally, though, Sarah spoke up, and they all smiled and listened. "I'm not sure I like that idea. There are plenty of creeps on the floor already, because we're all-female. If we name it Love Boat, everyone will think it's some kind of outcall massage service, and we'll never get a break."

Several seconds of silence. A few nods were seen, some "yeah"s heard, and Love Boat was dead. More names were suggested, most of them obviously dumb, and then Mari Meegan raised her hand. All quieted as her fingernails fluttered like a burst of redhot flak above the crowd. "I know," she said.

There was silence save for the sound of Hyacinth's comb rushing through her hair. Mari continued. "We can call ourselves 'Castle in the Air.' "

The lounge gusted with oohs and aahs.

"I like that."

"You're so creative, Mari."

"We could do a whole Dark Ages theme, you know, castles and knights and shining armor."

"That's nice! Really nice!"

"Wait a sec." This came from Hyacinth.

At this some of the women were clearly exasperated, looking at the ceiling, but most wore expressions of forced tolerance. Hyacinth continued flatly. "Castle in the Air is derogatory. That means it's not-nice. When you talk about a castle in the air, you mean something with no basis in reality. It's like saying someone has her head in the clouds."

They all continued to stare morosely, as though she hadn't finished. Sarah broke in. "You can call it anything you want. She is just making the point that you're using an unflattering name." Mari was comforted by two friends. The rest of them defended the name, nicely. "I never heard that."

"I think it sounds nice."

"Like a Barry Manilow song."

"Like one of those little Chinese poems."

"I always thought if your head was in the clouds, that was nice, like you were really happy or something. Besides, castles are a neat theme for parties and stuff— can't you see Mark dressed up like a knight?" Giggles.

"And this way we can call ourselves the Airheads!" Screams of delight. Hyacinth's objection having been thus obliterated, Castle In the Air was voted In unanimously, with two abstentions, and it was decided that paints and brushes would be bought and the wing would be painted in this theme during the weeks to come. Presently the meeting adjourned.

"We've got forty minutes until the Candle Passing," observed Mitzi, "and until then we can have a social hour. But not a whole hour"

The meeting dissolved into chattering fragments. Sarah leaned towards Hyacinth to whisper in her ear, and Hyacinth tensed. They had been whispering to each other in turns for the last half hour, and as both had ticklish ears this had caused much hysterical lip-biting and snorting. Sarah did not really have to whisper now, but it was her turn. "What candle passing?" she asked.

Hyacinth's attempt to whisper back was met by violent resistance from Sarah, so they laughed and made a truce. "It's kind of complicated. It means something personal happened between someone and her boyfriend, so everyone else has to know about it. Listen. We've got to escape, okay?"

"Okay."

"Go to Room 103 when the alarm sounds."

"Alarm?" But Hyacinth was already gliding out.

Sarah was quickly trapped in a conversation group including Mitzi and Mari. She accepted a cup of Kool-Aid/vodka punch and smiled when she could. Everyone was being nice to her in case she felt like an idiot for having said those things during the meeting. Mari asked if her boyfriend helped out with the hard parts of being President and Sarah had to say that just now she didn't have a boyfriend.

"Ahaa!" said everyone. "Don't worry, Sarah, we'll see what we can come up with. No prob, now you're an Airhead."

Sarah was groping for an answer when the local smoke alarm howled and the Airheads moaned in disappointment. As they all trooped off to their rooms to make themselves a little more presentable, Sarah headed for Room 103, following a heavy trail of marijuana smoke with her nose. As this was only the smoke alarm, only the twelfth floor would be evacuated.

Hyacinth pulled Sarah into the room and carefully fitted a wet reefer to her lips. It was dark, and a young black woman was slumped over a desk asleep, stereo on loud. Hyacinth Went to the vent window and released an amazing primal scream toward F Tower. After some prompting from her hostess, Sarah gave back the joint and followed suit. Hyacinth's Sleeping roommate, Lucy, sat up, sighed, then went over and lay down on her bed. Sarah and Hyacinth sat on Hyacinth's bed and drank milk from an illegal mini-fridge in the closet.

They silently finished the joint, shaking their heads at each other and laughing in disbelief.

"Ever done LSD?" asked Sarah.

"No. Why? Got some?"

"Oh. jeez, I wasn't suggesting it. I was going to say, for a minute there I thought I was back on it. That's how unreal those people are to me."

"You think they're strange?" said Hyacinth. "I think they're very normal."

"That's what I'm afraid of. Your room is pretty nice; I feel very much at home here." It was a nice room, one of the few Plex rooms I ever saw that was pleasant to be in. It was full of illegal cooking appliances and stashes of food, and the walls had been illegally painted white. Wall hangings and plants were everywhere.

"Well, we were in the Army— Lucy and me," said Hyacinth, carefully fitting a roach clip. "That's almost like LSD." By now their wing had been evacuated, and a couple of security guards were plodding up and down the hallways pretending to inspect for sources of smoke. Sarah and Hyacinth leaned together and spoke quietly.

"You're not real presidential," said Hyacinth. "People like you aren't supposed to take LSD."

"I don't take it anymore. See, back when I was about fourteen, my older sister was really into it, and I did it a few times."

"Why'd you stop?"

Sarah squinted into the milk carton and said nothing. Outside, the guards cursed to each other about students in general. Sarah finally said, "I kept an eye on my sister, and when she got cut loose completely— lost track of what was real and stopped caring— I saw it wasn't a healthy thing."

"So now you're President. I don't get it."

"The important thing is to get your life anchored in something. I think you have to make contact with the world in some way, and one way is to get involved."

"Student government?"

"Well, it beats MTV."

A guard beat on their door, attracted by the stereo-noise. "Screw off," said Hyacinth in a loud stage whisper, flipping the bird toward the door. Sarah put her face in her hands and bent double with suppressed laughter. When she recovered, the guard had left and Hyacinth was smiling brightly.

"Jeezus!" said Sarah, "you're pretty blatant, aren't you?"

"If it's the quiet, polite type you want, go see the Air-heads."

"You've lived with people like this before. Why don't they kick you off the wing?"

"Tokenism. They have to have tokens. Lucy is their token black, I'm their token individual. They love having a loudmouth around to disagree with them— makes them feel diverse."

"You don't think diplomacy would be more effective?" I'm not a diplomat. I'm me. Who are you?"

Instead of answering this difficult question, Sarah leaned back comfortably against the wall and closed her eyes. They listened to music for a long time as the Airheads breezed back onto the wing. "I'd feel relaxed," said Sarah, "except I'm actually kind of guilty about missing the Candle Passing."

"That's ridiculous."

"You're right. You can say that and be totally sure of yourself, can't you? I admire you, Hyacinth."

"I like you, Sarah," said Hyacinth, and that summed it up.

In the Physics Library, Casimir Radon read about quantum mechanics. The digital watch on the wrist of the sleeping post-doc across the table read 8:00. That meant it was time to go upstairs and visit Professor Emeritus Walter Abraham Sharon, who worked odd hours. Casimir was not leaving just yet, though. He had found that Sharon was not the swiftest man in the world, and though the professor was by no means annoyed when Casimir showed up on time, Casimir preferred to come ten minutes late. Anyway, in the informal atmosphere of the Physics Department, appointments were viewed with a certain Heisenbergian skepticism, as though being in the right place at the right time would involve breaking a natural law and was therefore impossible to begin with. Outside the picture windows of the library, the ghettos of the City were filled with smoky light, and occasionally a meteor streaked past and crashed in flames in the access lot below. They were not actual meteors, but merely various objects soaked in lighter fluid, ignited and thrown from a floor in E Tower above, trailing fire and debris as they zoomed earthward.

Casimir found this perversely comforting. It was just the sort of insanity he hadn't been able to get away from during his first week at American Megaversity. Soon the miserable Casimir had taken me up on my offer to stop by at any time, showing up at my door just before midnight, wanting to cry but not about to. I took coffee, he took vodka, and soon we understood each other a little better. As he explained it, no one here had the least consideration for others, or the least ability to think for themselves, and this combination was hard to take after having been an adult. Nor had academics given him any solace; owing to the medieval tempo of the bureaucracy, he was still mired in kindergarten-level physics. Of course he could speed these courses up just by being there. Whenever a professor asked a question, rhetorical or not, Casimir shouted the answer immediately. This earned him the hatred and awe of his classmates, but it was his only source of satisfaction. As he waited for his situation to become sensible, he sat in on the classes he really wanted to take, in effect taking a double load.

"Because I'm sure Sharon is going to bring me justice," Casimir had declared, raising his voice above a grumble for the first time. "This guy makes sense! He's like you, and I can't understand how he ended up in this place. I never thought I'd be surprised by someone just because he is a sensible and a good guy, but in this place it's a miracle. He c. out me, asks questions about my life— it's as though discovering what's best for me is a research project we're working on as a team. I can't believe a great man like him would care." Long, somber pause. "But I don't think even he can make up for what's wrong with this place. How about you, Bud? You're normal. What are you doing here?" Lacking an answer, I changed the subject to basketball.

A trio of meteors streaked across the picture windows and it was 8:10. Casimir returned his book and exited into the dark shiny hail. He was now at the upper limit of the Burrows, the bloc of the Plex that housed the natural sciences. Two floors above him, on the sixth and top floor of the base, was Emeritus Row, the plush offices of the academic superstars. He made his way there leisurely, knowing he was welcome.

Emeritus Row was dark and silent, illuminated only by the streak of warm yellow splashed away from Sharon's door. Casimir removed his glacier glasses. "Come in," came the melodious answer to his knock, and Casimir Radon entered his favorite room in the world.

Sharon looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Veil! You haff made a decision?"

"I think so."

"Let's have it! Leaving or staying? For the sake of physics I hope the latter."

Casimir abruptly realized he had not really made up his mind. He shoved his hands into his pockets and breathed deeply, a little surprised by all this. He could not keep a smile from his face, though, and could not ignore the hominess of Sharon's chaotic office. He announced that he was going to stay.

"Good, good," Sharon said absently. "Clear a place to sit." He gestured at a chair and Casimir set about removing thirty Pounds of high-energy physics from it. Sharon said, "So you've decided to cross the Rubicon, eh?"

Casimir sat down, thought about it, and said with a half grin, "Or the Styx, whichever the case may be."

Sharon nodded, and as he did a resounding thump issued from above. Casimir jumped, but Sharon did not react.

"What was that?" Casimir asked. "Sounded big."

"Ach," said Sharon. "Throwing furniture again, I should guess. You know, don't you, that many of our students are very interested in the physics of falling bodies?" He delivered this, like all his bad jokes, slowly and solemnly, as though working out long calculations in his head. Casimir chuckled. Sharon winked and lit his pipe. "I am given to understand, from grapevine talk, that you are smarter than all of our professors except for me." He winked again through thick smoke.

"Oh. Well, I doubt it."

"Ach, I don't. No correlation between age and intelligence! You're just afraid to use your smarts! That's right. You'd rather suffer— it is your Polish blood. Anyway, you have much practical experience. Our professors have only book experience."

"Well, it's the book experience I want. It's handy to know electronics, but what I really like is pure principles. I can make more money designing circuits, if that's what I want."

"Exactly! You prefer to be a poor physicist. Well, I cannot argue with you wanting to know pure things. After all, you are not naоve, your life has been no more sheltered than mine."

Embarrassed, Casimir laughed. "I don't know about that. I haven't lived through any world wars yet. You've lived through two. I may have escaped from a slum, but you escaped from Peenemunde with a suitcase full of rocket diagrams."

Sharon's eyes crinkled at the corners. "Yet. A very important word, nicht wahr? You are not very old, yet."

"What do you mean? Do you expect a war?"

Sharon laughed deeply and slowly. "I have toured your residential towers with certain students of mine, and I was reminded of certain, er, locations during the occupation of the Sudetenland. I think from what I see"— the ceiling thumped again, and he gestured upward with his pipestem — "and hear, that perhaps you are in a war now."

Casimir laughed, but then sucked in his breath and sat back as Sharon glowered at him morosely. The old professor was very complicated, and Casimir always seemed to be taking missteps with him.

"War and violence are not very funny," said Sharon, "unless they happen to you— then they are funny because they haff to be. There is more violence up there than you realize! Even speech today has become a form of violence— even in the university. So pay attention to that, and don't worry about a war in Europe. Worry about it here, this is your home now."

"Yes, sir." After pausing respectfully, Casimir withdrew a clipboard from his pack and put It on Sharon's desk. "Or it will be my home as soon as you sign these forms. Mrs. Santucci will tear my arms off if I don't bring them in tomorrow."

Sharon sat still until Casimir began to feel uncomfortable. "Ja," he finally said, "I guess you need to worry about forms too. Forms and forms and forms. Doesn't matter to me."

"Oh. It doesn't? You aren't retiring, are you?"

"Ja, I guess so."

Silently, Sharon separated the forms and laid them out on the Periodic Table of the Elements that covered his desk. He examined them with care for a few minutes, then selected a pen from a stein on his desk, which had been autographed by Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr, and signed them.

"There, you're in the good courses now," he concluded. "Good to see you are so well Socioeconomically Integrated." The old man sat back in his chair, clasped his fingers over his flat chest, and closed his eyes.

A thunderous crash and Casimir was on the floor, dust in his throat and pea gravel on his back. Rubble thudded down from above and Casimir heard a loud inharmonious piano chord, which held steady for a moment and moaned downward in pitch until it was obliterated by an explosive splintering crack. More rubble flew around the room and he was pelted with small blocks. Looking down as he rubbed dust from his eyes he saw scores of strewn black and white piano keys.

Sharon was slumped over on his desk, and a trickle of blood ran from his head and onto the back of his hand and puddled on the class change form beside his pipe. Gravel, rainwater and litter continued to slide down through the hole in the ceiling. Casimir alternately screamed and gulped as he staggered to his feet. lie waded through shattered ceiling panels and twisted books to Sharon's side and saw with horror that the old man's side had been pierced by a shard of piano frame shot out like an arrow in the explosion. With exquisite care he helped him lean back, cleared the desk of books and junk, then picked up his thin body and set him atop the desk. He propped up Sharon's head with the 1938 issues of the Physical Review and tried to ease his breathing. The head wound was superficial and already clotting, but the side wound was ghastly and Casimir did not even know whether to remove the splinter. Blood built up at the corners of Sharon's mouth as he gasped and wheezed. Brushing tears and dirt from his own face, Casimir looked for the phone.

He started away as a small bat fluttered past.

"Troglodyte! No manners! This is what you're supposed to see!" Casimir whirled to see Bert Nix plunging from the open door toward Sharon's desk. Casimir tried to head him off, fearing some kind of attack, but Bert Nix stopped short and pointed triumphantly to Sharon. Casimir turned to look. Sharon was gazing at him dully through half-shut eyes, and weakly pounding his finger into a spot on the tabletop. Casimir leaned over and looked. Sharon was pointing at the Table of the Elements, indicating the box for Oxygen.

"Oxygen! Oh two! Get it?" shouted Bert Nix.

Bill Benson, Security Guard 5, was arguing with a friend whether it was possible that F.D.R. committed suicide when the emergency line rang. He let it ring four times. Since ninety-nine calls out of a hundred were pranks, by letting each one ring four times he was delaying the true emergency calls by an average of only four one-hundredths of a ring apiece— nothing compared with the time it took to respond. Anyway, fed up with kids getting stoned at parties and falling on the way out to barf and spraining their wrists, then (through some miracle of temporary clearheadedness) calling Emergency and trying to articulate their problems through a hallucinogenic miasma while monster stereos in the background threatened to uncurl his phone cord. Eventually, though, he did pick up the phone, holding the earpiece several inches from his head in case it was another of those goddamn Stalinist whistle-blasters.

"Listen," came the voice, sounding distant, "I've got to have some oxygen. Do you have some there? It's an emergency!" Oh, shit, Did he have to get this call every night? He listened for a few more seconds. "It's an oxygen freak," he said to his friend, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.

"Oxygen freak? What do they do with oxygen?"

Benson swung his feet down from the counter, put the receiver in his lap, and explained. "See, nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, is the big thing. They breathe it through masks, like for surgery. But if you breathe it pure you'll kick in no time, because you got to have oxygen. And they are so crazy about laughing gas they don't want to take off that mask even to breathe, so they like to get some oxygen to mix with it so that they can sit there all goddamn night long and breathe nothing else and get blasted out of their little minds. So we always get these calls."

He picked up the receiver again, took a puff on his cigar, exhaled slowly. "Hello?" he said, hoping the poor gas-crazed sap had hung up.

"Yeah? When will it be here?"

"Cripes!" Bill Benson shouted, "look, guy, hang it up. We don't have any and you aren't allowed to have it."

"Well, shit then, come up here and help me. Call an ambulance! For God's sake, a man's dying here."

Some of these kids were such cretins, how did they make it into college? Money, probably. "Listen, use your head, kid," he said, not unkindly. "We're the Emergency Services desk. We can't leave our posts. What would happen if there was an emergency while we were gone?"

This was answered by silence; but in the background, Benson could just make out another voice, which sounded familiar: "You should have listened to what he was trying to tell you! He wasn't farting around! We had to sack the Cartography Department to afford him. And you don't listen!"

"Shut up!" shouted the gas freak.

"Hey, is that Bert? Is that Bert Nix on the phone?" asked Bill Benson. "Where are you, kid?"

"Emeritus Row!' shouted the kid, and dropped the phone. Bill Benson continued to listen after the BONKITY-BONK of the phone's impact, trying to make sure it was really good old Bert Nix. I think he heard this poem; on the news, he claimed he heard a poem, and it could well have been this, which Bert Nix quoted regularly and liked to write on the walls:

Tenuring and tenuring in the ivory tower!

The flagon cannot fill the flagoneers.

Krupp cuts a fart! The sphinxter cannot hold

Dear academe, our Lusitanta, recoils.

The time-limned dons are noosed. With airy webs

The cerebrally infarcted bring me down.

The East affects conscription, while the curst

Are gulled with Fashionate Propensities.

Shrilly, sum reevaluation is demanded.

Earlier-reckoned commencement is programmed!

What fecund mumming! Outly ward those words hard

When a glassed grimace on an animal Monday

Rumbles at night; unaware that the plans aren't deserved

Escapists' lie-panoply aims to head off the Fan.

A sign frank and witless as the Sun

Is mute in the skies, yet from it are shouted

Real shadows of endogenous deserted words.

The concrete drops down in; but know I now

That thirty-storied stone steel keeps

When next the might of Air are rooks unstable.

What buff be; its towers coming down deglassed

Slumps amid Bedlam in the morn?

"Holy shit!" cried Bill Benson. "Bert? Is that you? Hell, maybe something's up. Sam, punch me onto line six there and Ill see if I can raise the folks down at nine-one-one."

Casimir was careening through the halls, cursing himself for having had to leave Sharon alone with a derelict, adrenaline blasting through him as he imagined coming back to find the old man dead. He didn't know how he was going to open the door when he got where he was going, but at the moment it did not matter because no slab of wood and plastic, it seemed, could stand in his way. He veered around a corner, smashing into a tail young man who had been coming the other way. They both sprawled dazed on the floor, but Casimir rolled and sprang to his feet and resumed running. The man he had collided with caught up with him, and he realized that it was Virgil Gabrielsen, King of the Burrows.

"Virgil! Did you hear that?"

"Yeah, I was coming to check it out. What's up?"

"Piano fell into Sharon's office… pierced lung… oxygen." "Right," said Virgil, and skidded to a stop, fishing a key from his pocket. He master-keyed his way into a lab and they sent a grad student sprawling against a workbench as they made for the gas canisters. Casimir grabbed a bottle-cart and they feverishly strapped the big cylinder onto it, then wheeled it heavily out the door and back toward Sharon.

"Shit," said Virgil, "no freight elevator. No way to get it upstairs." They were at the base of the stairs, two floors below Sharon. The oxygen was about five feet tall and one foot in diameter, and crammed with hundreds of pounds of extremely high-pressure gas. Virgil was still thinking about it when Casimir, a bony and unhealthy looking man, bear-hugged the canister, straightened up, and hoisted it to his shoulder as he would a roll of carpet. He took the stairs two at a time, Virgil bounding along behind.

Shortly, Casimir had slammed the cylinder down on the floor near Sharon. Bert Nix was holding Sharon's hand, mumbling and occasionally making the sign of the cross. As Virgil closed the door, Casimir held the top valve at arm's length, buried one ear in his shoulder, and opened it up. Virgil just had time to plug his ears.

The room was inundated in a devastating hiss, like the shriek of an injured dragon.