"Master's Bible says queerin be a sin," she told him righteously.
"I've read it myself, so I have. Book of Leviticracks, Chapter Three, Verse-"
"And what do Leviticracks say about the sin of gluttony?" he enquired. "What do it say about a woman with tits as big as bolsters and an ass as big as a kitchen ta-"
"Never mind the size o' my ass, you little cocksucker!"
"At least I can get a man," he said sweetly, "and don't have to lie abed with a dustclout-"
"Don't you dare!" she cried shrilly. "Shut your foul mouth before I shut it for you!"
"-to get rid of the cobwebs in my cunny so I can-"
"I'll knock thy teeth out if thee doesn't-"
"-finger my tired old pokeberry pie." Then something which would offend her even more deeply occurred to him.
"My tired, dirty old pokeberry pie!"
She balled her own fists, which were considerably bigger than his. "At least I've never-"
"Go no further, sai, I beg you."
"-never had some man's nasty old... nasty... old..."
She trailed off, looking puzzled, and sniffed the air. He sniffed it himself, and realized the aroma he was getting wasn't new. He'd been smelling it almost since the argument started, but now it was stronger.
Tammy said, "Do you smell-"
"-smoke!" he finished, and they looked at each other with alarm, their argument forgotten perhaps only five seconds before it would have come to blows. Tammy's eyes fixed on the sampler hung beside the stove. There were similar ones all over Algul Siento, because most of the buildings which made up the compound were wood. Old wood, WE ALL MUST WORK TOGETHER TO CREATE A FIRE-FREE ENVIRONMENT, it Said.
Somewhere close by-in the back hallway-one of the still-working smoke detectors went off with a loud and frightening bray. Tammy hurried into the pantry to grab the fireextinguisher in there.
"Get the one in the library!" she shouted, and Tassa ran to do it without a word of protest. Fire was the one thing they all feared.
FIVE
Gaskie O'Tego, the Deputy Security Chief, was standing in the foyer of Feveral Hall, the dormitory directly behind Damli House, talking with James Cagney. Cagney was a redhaired cantoi who favored Western-style shirts and boots that added three inches to his actual five-foot-five. Both had clipboards and were discussing certain necessary changes in the following week's Damli security. Six of the guards who'd been assigned to the second shift had come down with what Gangli, die compound doctor, said was a hume disease called "momps." Sickness was common enough in Thunderclap-it was the air, as everyone knew, and die poisoned leavings of the old people-but it was ever inconvenient. Gangli said they were lucky there had never been an actual plague, like the Black Death or the Hot Shivers.
Beyond them, on the paved court behind Damli House, an early-morning basketball game was going on, several taheen and can-toi guards (who would be officially on duty as soon as the horn blew) against a ragtag team of Breakers. Gaskie watched Joey Rastosovich take a shot from way downtown-swish. Trampas snared the ball and took it out of bounds, briefly lifting his cap to scratch beneath it. Gaskie didn't care much for Trampas, who had an entirely inappropriate liking for the talented animals who were his charges. Closer by, sitting on the dorm's steps and also watching the game, was Ted Brautigan. As always, he was sipping at a can of Nozz-A-La.
"Well fuggit," James Cagney said, speaking in the tones of a man who wants to be finished with a boring discussion. "If you don't mind taking a couple of humies off the fence-walk for a day or two-"
"What's Brautigan doing up so early?" Gaskie interrupted.
"He almost never rolls out until noon. That kid he pals around with is the same way. What's his name?"
"Earnshaw?" Brautigan also palled around with that halfbright Ruiz, but Ruiz was no kid.
Gaskie nodded. "Aye, Earnshaw, that's the one. He's on duty this morning. I saw him earlier in The Study."
Cag (as his friends called him) didn't give a shit why Brautigan was up with the birdies (not that there were many birdies left, at least in Thunderclap); he only wanted to get this roster business settled so he could stroll across to Damli and get a plate of scrambled eggs. One of the Rods had found fresh chives somewhere, or so he'd heard, and-
"Do'ee smell something, Cag?" Gaskie O'Tego asked suddenly.
The can-toi who fancied himself James Cagney started to enquire if Gaskie had farted, then rethought this humorous riposte. For in fact he did smell something. Was it smoke?
Cag thought it was.
SIX
Ted sat on the cold steps of Feveral Hall, breathing the badsmelling air and listening to the humes and the taheen trash-talk each other from the basketball court. (Not the can-toi; they refused to indulge in such vulgarity.) His heart was beating hard but not fast. If there was a Rubicon that needed crossing, he realized, he'd crossed it some time ago. Maybe on the night the low men had hauled him back from Connecticut, more likely on the day he'd approached Dinky with the idea of reaching out to the gunslingers that Sheemie Rviiz insisted were nearby. Now he was wound up (to the max, Dinky would have said), but nervous?
No. Nerves, he thought, were for people who still hadn't entirely made up their minds.
Behind him he heard one idiot (Gaskie) asking t'other idiot (Cagney) if he smelled something, and Ted knew for sure that Haylis had done his part; the game was afoot. Ted reached into his pocket and brought out a scrap of paper.
Written on it was a line of perfect pentameter, although hardly Shakespearian: GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOU WON'T BE HURT.
He looked at this fixedly, preparing to broadcast.
Behind him, in the Feveral rec room, a smoke detector went off with a loud donkey-bray.
Here we go, here we go, he thought, and looked north, to where he hoped the first shooter-the woman-was hiding.
SEVEN
Three-quarters of the way up the Mall toward Damli House,
Master Prentiss stopped with Finli on one side of him and Jakli on the other. The horn still hadn't gone off, but there was a loud braying sound from behind them. They had no more begun to turn toward it when another bray began from the other end of the compound-the dormitory end.
"What the devil-" Pimli began.
-is that was how he meant to finish, but before he could,
Tammy Kelly came rushing out through the front door of Warden's House, with Tassa, his houseboy, scampering along right behind her. Both of them were waving their arms over their heads.
"Fire!" Tammy shouted. "Fire!"
Fire? But that's impossible, Pimli thought. For if that's the smoke detector Fm hearing in my house and also the smoke detector I'm hearing from one of the dorms, then surely-
"It must be a false alarm," he told Finli. "Those smoke detectors do that when their batteries are-"
Before he could finish this hopeful assessment, a side window of Warden's House exploded outward. The glass was followed by an exhalation of orange flame.
"Gods!" Jakli cried in his buzzing voice. "It wfire!"
Pimli stared with his mouth open. And suddenly yet another smoke-and-fire alarm went off, this one in a series of loud, hiccuping whoops. Good God, sweet Jesus, that was one of the Damli House alarms! Surely nothing could be wrong at-
Finli O'Tego grabbed his arm. "Boss," he said, calmly enough. "We've got real trouble."
Before Pimli could reply, the horn went off, signaling the change of shifts. And suddenly he realized how vulnerable they would be for the next seven minutes or so. Vulnerable to all sorts of things.
He refused to admit the word attack into his consciousness.
At least not yet.
EIGHT
Dinky Earnshaw had been sitting in the overstuffed easy chair for what seemed like forever, waiting impatiently for the party to begin. Usually being in The Study cheered him up-hell, cheered everybody up, it was the "good-mind" effect-bvit today he only felt the wires of tension inside him winding tighter and tighter, pulling his guts into a ball. He was aware of taheen and can-toi looking down from the balconies every now and again, riding the good-mind wave, but didn't have to worry about being progged by the likes of them; from that, at least, he was safe.
Was that a smoke alarm? From Feveral, perhaps?
Maybe. But maybe not, too. No one else was looking around.
Wait, he told himself. Ted told you this would be the hard part, didn't he? And at least Sheemie's out of the way. Sheemie's safe in his room, and Corbett Hall's safe from fire. So calm down. Relax.
That was the bray of a smoke alarm. Dinky was sure of it.
Well... almost sure.
A book of crossword puzzles was open in his lap. For the last fifty minutes he'd been filling one of the grids with nonsenseletters, ignoring the definitions completely. Now, across the top, he printed this in large dark block letters: GO SOUTH WITH YOUR HANDS UP, YOU WON'T BE HU
That was when one of the upstairs fire alarms, probably the one in the west wing, went off with a loud, warbling bray. Several of the Breakers, jerked rudely from a deep daze of concentration, cried out in surprised alarm. Dinky also cried out, but in relief. Relief and something more. Joy? Yeah, very likely it was joy. Because when the fire alarm began to bray, he'd felt the powerful hum of good-mind snap. The eerie combined force of the Breakers had winked out like an overloaded electrical circuit. For the moment, at least, the assault on the Beam had stopped.