with no diversity or freedom of thought. The SUB took over a women's issues newsletter and turned it into the People's Truth Publication, a highly libelous so-called newspaper. In the same way '
He was eventually cut off by Sarah. SUB spokespersons stated their views passionately, then another TUGgie. Finally a skinny man in dark spectacles came to the mike, a man whom Sarah recognized but couldn't quite place. He identified himself as Casimir Radon and said he was president of the physics club Neutrino. He quieted the crowd down a bit, as his was the first speech of the evening that was not entirely predictable.
'I'd like to point out that you've only given us four hundred dollars,' he said. 'We need more. I've done some analysis of the way our activity money is budgeted, which I will just run through very quickly here— ' he fumbled through papers as a disappointed murmur rose from the audience. How long was this nerd going to take? The cameramen put new film and tape in their equipment as lines formed outside by the restrooms.
'Here we go. I won't get too involved in the numerical details— it's all just arithmetic— but if you look at the current budget, you see that a small group of people is receiving a hugely disproportionate share of the money. In effect, the average funding per member of the Stalinist Underground Battalion is $114.00, while the figure for everyone else averages out to about $46.00, and only $33.00 for Neutrino. That's especially unfair because Neutrino needs to purchase things like books and equipment, while the expenses of a political organization are much lower. I don't think that's fair.'
The SUB howled at this preposterous reasoning but everyone else listened respectfully.
'So I move we cut SUB funding to the bare minimum, say, twenty bucks per capita, and give Neutrino its full request for a scientific research project, $1500.00.'
The rest of the evening, anyway, was bonkers, and I'll not go into detail. It was insignificant anyway, since the administration had the final say; the Student Government would have to keep passing budgets until they passed one that S. S. Krupp would sign, and the only question was how long it would take them to knuckle under. Time was against the SUB. As the members of the government got more bored, they became more interested in passing a budget that would go through the first time around. Eventually it became obvious that the SUB had lost out, and the only thing wanting was the final vote. The highlight of the evening came just before that vote: the speech of Yllas Freedperson.
Yllas, the very substantial and brilliant leader of the SUB, was a heavy black woman in her early thirties, in her fifth year of study at the Modern Political Art Workshop. She had a knack for turning out woodblock prints portraying anguished faces, burning tenements, and thick tortured hands reaching for the sky. Even her pottery was inspired by the work of wretched Central American peasants. She was also editor and illustrator of the People's Truth Publication, but her real talent was for public speaking, where she had the power of a gospel preacher and the fire of a revolutionary. She waited dignified for the TV lights, then launched into a speech that lasted at least a quarter of an hour. At just the right times she moaned, she chanted, she sang, she reasoned, she whispered, she bellowed, she just plain spoke in a fluid and hypnotically rhythmic voice. She talked about S. S. Krupp and the evil of the System, how the System turned good into bad, how this society was just like the one that caused the Holocaust, which was no excuse for Israel, about conservatism in Washington and how our environment, economic security, personal freedom, and safety from nuclear war were all threatened by the greedy action of cutting the SUB's budget. Finally out came the names of Martin Luther King, Jr., Marx, Gandhi, Che, Jesus Christ, Ronald Reagan, Hitler, S. S. Krupp, the KKK, Bob Avakian, Elijah Mohammed and Abraham Lincoln. Through it all, the bat was active, dipping and diving crazily through the auditorium, divebombing toward walls or lights or people but veering away at the last moment, flitting through the dense network of beams and cables and catwalks and light fixtures and hanging speakers and exposed pipes above us at great smooth speed, tracing a marvelously complicated path that never brushed against any solid object. All of it was absorbing and breathtaking, and when Yllas Freedperson was finished and the bat, perhaps no longer attracted by her voice. slipped up and disappeared into a corner, there was a long silence before the applause broke out.
'Thank you, Yllas,' said Sarah respectfully. 'Is there any particular motion you wanted to make or did you just want to inject your comments?'
'I move,' shouted Yllas Freedperson, 'that we put the budget the way it was.'
The vote was close. The SUB lost. Recounting was no help. They took the dignified approach, forming into a sad line behind Yllas and singing 'We Shall Overcome' in slow tones as they marched out. Above their heads they carried their big black-on-red posters of S. S. Krupp with a target drawn over his face, and they marched so slowly that it took two repetitions of the song before they made it out into the hallway to distribute leaflets and posters.
Sarah, three members of her cabinet and I gathered later in my suite for wine. After the frenzy of the meeting we were torpid, and hardly said anything for the first fifteen minutes or so. Then, as it commonly did those days, the conversation came around to the Terrorists.
'What's the story on those Terrorist guys?' asked Willy, a business major who acted as Treasurer. 'Are they genuine Terrorists?'
'Not on my floor,' said Sarah, 'since they subjugated us. We're living in… the Pax Thirteenica.'
'I've heard a number of stories,' I said. Everyone looked at me and I shifted into my professor mode and lit my pipe. 'Their major activity is the toll booth concept. They station Terrorists in the E13 elevator lobby who continually push the up and down buttons so that every passing elevator stops and opens automatically. If it doesn't contain any non-students or dangerous-looking people, they hold the door open until everyone gives them a quarter. They have also claimed a section of the Cafeteria, and there have been fights over it. But nothing I'd call true terrorism.'
'How about gang rape?' asked Hillary, the Secretary, quietly. Everything got quiet and we looked at her.
'It's just a rumor,' she said. 'Don't get me wrong. It hasn't happened to me. The word is that a few of the hardcore Terrorists do it, kind of as an initiation. They go to big parties, or throw their own. You know how at a big party there are always a few women— typical freshmen— who get very drunk. Some nice-looking Terrorist approaches the woman— I hear that they're very good at identifying likely candidates— and gets into her confidence and invites her to another party. When they get to the other party, she turns out to be the only woman there, and you can imagine the rest. But the really terrible thing is that they go through her things and find out where she lives and who she is, then keep coming back whenever they feel like it. They have these women so scared and broken that they don't resist. Supposedly the Terrorists have kind of an invisible harem, a few terrified women all over the Plex, too dumb or scared to say anything.'
I was sitting there with my eyes closed, like everyone else a little queasy. 'I've heard of the same thing elsewhere,' I said. 'I wonder if it's happened to any Airheads,' murmured Sarah. 'God, I'll bet it has. I wonder if any of them know about it. I wonder if they even understand what is being done to them— some of them probably don't even understand they have a right to be angry.'
'How could anyone not understand rape?' said Hillary.
'You don't know how mixed up these women are. You don't know what they did to me, without even understanding why I didn't like it. You can't imagine those people— they have no place to stand, no ideas of their own— if one is raped, and not one of her friends understands, where is she? She's cut loose, the Terrorists can tell her anything and make her into whatever they want. Shit, where are those animals going to stop? We're having a big costume party with them in December.'
'There's a party to avoid,' said Hillary.
'It's called Fantasy Island Nite. They've been planning it for months. But by the time the semester is over, those guys will be running wild.'
'They've been running wild for a long time, it sounds like,' said Willy. 'You'd better get used to that, you know? I think you're living in the law of the jungle.' That sounded a trifle melodramatic, but none of us could find a way to disagree.
Sarah and Casimir met in the Megapub, a vast pale airship hangar littered with uncertain plastic tables and chairs made of steel rods bent around into uncomfortable chairlike shapes that stabbed their occupants beneath the shoulder blades. At one end was a long bar, at the other a serving bay connected into the central kitchen complex. Casimir declined to eat Megapub food and lunched on a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich made from overpriced materials bought at the convenience store and a plastic cup of excessively carbonated beer. Sarah used the salad bar. They removed several trays from a window table and stacked them atop a nearby wastebasket, then sat down.
