The Big U

by Neal Stephenson

  “You,” said the knight, pointing his sword at the man who had just spoken, “must be in the oil business. Are you Ralph Priestly?”

  “Ha! Well, yeah, that’s me,” said Ralph Priestly, unnerved.

  “We have to talk later.”

  “How did you know about our disposal site?” asked Heimlich.

  “That doesn’t matter. What matters now is: how did the government of Crotobaltislavonia find out about it?”

  “Oh,” said Heimlich, shocked. “You know about that also.”

  “Yep.”

  After a pause, S. S. Krupp continued. “Now, don’t go tell your honchos that we did this out of greed. America had to start doing something with this waste—that’s a fact. You know what a fact is? That’s something that has nothing to do with politics. The site is as safe as could be. See, some things just can’t be handed over to political organizations, because they’re so damned unstable. But great universities can last for thousands of years. Hell, look at the changes of government the University of Paris has survived in the last century alone! This facility had to be built and it had to be done by a university. The big steady cash flow makes us more stable, and that makes us better qualified to be running the damn thing in the first place. Symbiosis, son.”

  “Wait. If you’re making so much money off of this, why are you so financially tight-assed?”

  “That’s a very good question,” said Heimlich. “As I said, it’s imperative that this facility remain secret. If we allowed the cash flow to show up on our ledgers, this would be impossible. We’ve had to construct a scheme for processing or laundering, as it were, our profits through various donors and benefactors. In order to allay suspicion, we keep these ‘donations’ as small as we can while meeting the university’s basic needs.”

  “What about the excess money?”

  “What’s done with that depends on how long the site remains secret. Therefore we hold the surplus in escrow and invest it in the name of American Megaversity, so that in the meantime it is productively used.”

  “Invest it where? Don’t tell me. Heimlich Freedom Industries, the Big Wheel Petroleum Corporation…”

  “Well,” said Ralph Priestly, cutting the tip off a cigar. “Big Wheel’s a hell of an investment. I run a tight ship.”

  “We don’t deny that the investments are in our best interests,” said a very old Trustee with a kindly face. “But there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as we do not waste or steal the money. Every investment we make in some way furthers the nation’s economic growth.”

  “But you’re no different from the Crotobaltislavonians, in principle. You’re using your control over the wastes to blackmail whatever government comes along.”

  “That’s an excellent observation,” said Krupp. “But the fact is, if you’ll just think about it, that as long as the waste exists, someone’s going to control it, and whoever does can blackmail whatever government there is, and as long as someone’s going to have that influence, it might as well be good people like us.”

  The knight drummed his fingers on the table, and the Trustees peered at his inscrutable silver mask. “I see from the obituaries that Bert Nix and Pertinax Rushforth were one and the same. What happened to him?”

  Heimlich continued. “Pertinax couldn’t hack it. He was all for fiscal conservatism, of course—Bert was not a soft-headed man at any point. But when he learned he was firing people and cutting programs just to maintain this charade, he lost his strength of will. The faculty ruined his life with their hatred, he had a nervous breakdown and we sacked him. Then the MegaUnion began to organize a tuition strike, so the remaining old-guard Trustees threw up their hands, caved in and installed Julian Didius as President!” At the memory of this, several of the Trustees sighed or moaned with contempt. “Well! After he had enjoyed those first three weeks of flying in all his intelligentsia comrades for wine and cheese parties, we got him in here and showed him the financial figures, which looked disastrous. Then he met Pertinax after the electroshock, and realized what a bloody hell-hole he was in. Three days later he went to the Dean’s Office for a chat, and when the Dean turned out to be addressing a conference in Hawaii, he blew his top and hurled himself out the window, and then we brought in Septimius and he’s straightened things out wonderfully.” There were admiring grins around the table, though Krupp did not appear to be listening.

  “Did Pertinax have master keys, then, or what? How did he keep from being kicked out of the Plex?”

  “We allowed the poor bastard to stay because we felt sorry for him,” said Krupp. “He wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

  The angle of the knight’s head dropped a little.

  “So,” said Heimlich briskly, “for some reason you knew our best-kept secrets. We hope you will understand our actions now and not do anything rash. Do you follow?”

  “Yes,” murmured the knight, “unfortunately.”

  “What is unfortunate about it?”

  “The more thoughtful you people are, the worse you get. Why is that?”

  “What do we do that is wrong, Casimir Radon?” said Krupp quietly.

  The mask rose and gleamed at S. S. Krupp, and then its owner lifted off the helmet to reveal his shaven head and permanently consternated face.

  “Lie a hell of a lot. Fire people when you don’t have to. Create—create a very complicated web of lies, to snare a simple, good ideal.”

  “I don’t think it’s a hell of a lot of fun,” said Krupp, “and it hurts sometimes, more than you can suppose. But great goals aren’t attained with ease or simplicity or pleasantry, or whatever you’re looking for. If we gave in to the MegaUnion, we would tip our hand and cause ruination. As long as we’re putting on this little song-and-dance, we’ve got to make it a complete song-and-dance, because if the orchestra’s playing a march and the dancers are waltzing, the audience riots. The theater burns.”

  “At least you could be more conciliatory.”

  “Conciliatory! Listen, son, when you’ve got snakes in the basement and the water’s rising, it’s no time to conciliate. Someone’s got to have some principles in education, and it might as well be us. If this country’s educators hadn’t had their heads in their asses for forty years, we wouldn’t have a faculty union, and more of our students might be sentient. I’ll have strap marks on my ass before I conciliate with those medicine men down there on the picket lines.”

  “You’re trying to fire everyone. That’s a little extreme.”

  “Not if we’re to be consistent,” said Heimlich. “We can use the opportunity to rearrange our financial platform, and hire new people. There are many talented academics desperate for work these days, and the best faculty members here won’t let themselves be taken out en masse anyway.”

  “You’re going to do it, aren’t you!”

  “It’s evident that we have no choice.”

  “Don’t you think—” Casimir looked out at the clear blue sky.

  “What?”

  “That if the administration gets to be as powerful as you, you have killed the university?”

  “Look, son,” said Ralph Priestly, rolling forward. “We never claimed this was an ideal situation. We’re just doing our best. We don’t have much choice.”

  “We’re rather busy, as you can imagine,” said Heimlich finally. “What do you want? Something for the railgun?” He sat up abruptly. “How is the railgun?”

  “Safe.”

  Heimlich smiled for the first time in a week. “I’d like to know what a ‘safe’ railgun is.”

  “Maybe you’ll find out.”

  Everyone looked disturbed.

  “We are prepared to remove the Terrorists from the waste disposal site,” said Casimir crisply, “as a public service. The estimated time will be one week. Beforehand, we plan to evacuate the Plex. We require your cooperation in two areas.

  “First, we will need control of the Plex radio station. One of our group has developed a scheme for evacuating the Plex
which makes this necessary.

  “The second requirement is for the consideration of you, Ralph Priestly. What we want, Ralph, is for some person of yours to sit by the switch that controls the Big Wheel sign. When we phone him and say, ‘Fiat lux,’ he is to turn it on, and when we say, ‘Fiat obscuritas,’ off.

  “That commando team you tried to send in through the sewers last night was stopped by a RAT, or Rodent Assault Tactics team associated with us. We’ll be releasing them soon, we can’t do much more with first aid. The point is that only we can get rid of the Terrorists. We just ask that you do not interfere.”

  Finished, Casimir sat back, hands clasped on breastplate, and stared calmly at a skylight. The Board of Trustees moved down to the far end of the table. After they had talked for a few minutes, S.S. Krupp walked over and shook hands with Casimir.

  “We’re with you,” Krupp said proudly. “Wish I knew what the hell you had in mind. What’s your timetable?”

  “Don’t know. You’ll have plenty of warning.”

  “Can we supply men? Arms?” asked Heimlich.

  “Nope. One gun is all we need.” Casimir let go of Krupp’s hand and walked down the table, unclipping himself from the rope and throwing it out to dangle there. A forest of pinstripes rushed up the other side, trying to circumnavigate the table and shake Casimir’s hand too. Casimir stopped by the exit.

  “I probably won’t see you again. Bear in mind, after the university starts running again, two things: we control the rats. And we control the Worm. You no longer monopolize power in this institution.”

  The Trustees stopped dead at this breach of pleasantness and stared at Casimir. Krupp looked on as though monitoring a field of battle from a high tower. Casimir continued. “I just mention this because it makes a difference in what is reasonable for you to do, and what is not. Good-bye.” As he reached for the doorknob, he found the door briskly opened by a guard; he nodded to the man and strode out into an anteroom.

  “Soldier,” said Septimius Severus Krupp, “see that that man receives safe passage back to his own sphere of influence.”

  Night fell, and Towers A, B, C, D, H and G began to flash on and off in perfect unison. Every tower except for E and F—homes of the Axis—was blinking in and out of existence every two seconds. As the Axis people saw it, the entire Plex was disappearing into the night, then re-igniting, over and over. It was much closer than the Big Wheel; it was far larger; it surrounded them on three sides. The effect was stupefying.

  Dex Fresser ran to his observation post. In the corridors of E13S, Terrorists wandered like decapitated chickens. Some were hearing voices telling them to look, some not to look, to run or stay, to panic or relax. The SUBbie who was supposed to guard the lounge-headquarters had dropped his gun on the floor and disappeared. Fresser burst into the lounge to consult with Big Wheel.

  Big Wheel had gone dark.

  He turned on the Little Wheel—the Go Big Red Fan.

  “Big Wheel must be mad at you or something. What the fuck did you do wrong?” shouted the Fan, loud, omnipresent and angry. Dex Fresser shrank, got on his knees and snuffled a little. Outside, a bewildered stereo-hearer was playing with the knobs on his ghetto blaster, desperate for advice.

  “The stereo! The stereo, dipshit, find that frequency! Find the frequency,” said the Fan in the voice of Dex Fresser’s old scoutmaster. Dex Fresser tumbled over a chair in his haste to reach the stereo. The only light in the room was cast by the glowing LEDs on his stereo that looked out like feral eyes in the night. All systems were go for stereo energize. As Dex Fresser’s hands played over the controls, dozens of lights kicked in with important systems data, and green digits glowed from the tuner to tell him his position on the FM dial. Only dense static came from the speakers, meaningless to anyone else; but he could hear Big Wheel guiding him in the voice of his first-grade ballroom dance teacher.

  “A little farther down, dear. Keep going right down the dial. You’re certain to get it eventually.”

  Dex Fresser punched buttons and a light came on, saying: “AUTO DOWNWARD SCAN.” He now heard many voices from the dark cones of the speakers: funky jazz-playing fascists, “great huge savings now…”, Neil Young wailing into his harmonica, a call-in guest suggesting that we load the Mexicans on giant space barges and hurl them into the sun, a base hit by Chambliss, an ad for rat poison, a teen, apoplectic about his acne…and then the voice he was looking for.

  “On. Off. On. Off. On. Off.” It was a woman’s voice, somehow familiar.

  “It’s Sarah, dumbshit,” said the Go Big Red Fan. “She’s on the campus station.”

  Indeed. The other towers were going on and off just as Sarah told them to. He knelt there for ten minutes, watching their reflection in the glassy surface of the Big Wheel. On. Off. On. Off.

  “On,” she said, and paused. “Most of you did very well! But we’ve got some holdouts in E and F Towers. I’m sorry to say that Big Wheel won’t be showing up this evening. He will not be here to give us his advice without cooperation from the E and F tower hearers. We’ll try later. I’ll be back in an hour, at midnight, and by then I hope that you SUBbies and Terrorists will have submitted to Big Wheel’s will.” Sarah was replaced by Ephraim Klein, who started in with another solid hour of pre-classical keyboard selections.

  Dex Fresser was clutching his chest, which felt unbearably tight. “Oh, shit,” he exclaimed, “it’s us! We’re keeping Big Wheel off! Everybody put your stereos on ninety point three! Do as she says!”

  Down in Electrical Control, deep in the Burrows, I and the other switch-throwers rested. The circuit breakers that supply power to an entire tower are large items, not at all easy to throw on and off every two seconds!

  By midnight we were rested up and ready to go. Sarah resumed her broadcast.

  “I sure hope we can get Big Wheel to come on. Let’s hope E and F Towers go along this time. Ready? Everyone standing by their light switch? Okay…Off. On. Off…”

  From his lounge-headquarters, Dex Fresser watched his towers flash raggedly on and off. Some of the lights were not flashing; but within minutes the Wing Commissars had swept through and shot out any strays, and Dex Fresser was indescribably proud that his towers could flash like the others. Big Wheel could not forsake them now.

  “On!” cried Sarah, and stopped. Several lights went off again from habit, then coyly flickered back on. There was an unbearable wait.

  “I think we’ve done it,” Sarah said. “Look at Big Wheel!”

  And the wheel of fire cast its light over the Plex with all its former glory. Dex wept.

  “Not bad for a fascist,” observed Little Wheel.

  The Big Wheel spun all night.

  It was trickier to get the attention of the barbarians of the Base. Most of them did not have bicameral minds and thus could not be made to hear mysterious voices. We needed to impress them. Hence Sarah predicted that in twenty-four hours a plague of rats would strike Journalism, unless all the journalists cleared out of the Plex.

  “Frank,” said the reporter into the camera, “I’m here in the American Megaversity mailroom, our operations center for the Plex war. It’s been quiet on all fronts tonight despite former Student President Sarah Jane Johnson’s prediction of a ‘plague of rats.’ Well, we’ve seen a few rats here”—his image is replaced by shot of small rat scurrying down empty corridor, terrified by TV lights—“but perhaps that’s not unusual in these very strange, very special circumstances. We toured the Plex today, looking for plagues of rats, leaving no stone unturned to find the animals of which Ms. Johnson spoke. We looked in garbage heaps”—shot of journalist digging in garbage with long stick; sees nothing, turns to camera, holds nose, says “phew!”—“but all we found were bugs. We toured the corridors”—journalist alone in long empty corridor; camera swivels around to look in other direction; nothing there either; back to journalist—“but apparently the rats were somewhere else. We checked the classrooms, but the only rats there were on paper”�
�journalist standing in stolen lab coat next to diagram of rat’s nervous system—“Finally, though, we did manage to find one rat. In a little-used lab, Frank, in a little cage, we found one very hungry white rat”—back to mailroom; journalist holds up wire cage containing furtive white rat—“but he’s been well fed ever since, and we don’t think he’ll attack.”

  “Sam, what do you think about Sarah Jane Johnson’s pronouncement? Is it a symbolic statement, or has she cracked?”

  “No one can be sure, Frank.” Behind journalist, door explodes open with a boom and a flash; strobe light is seen beyond it. The journalist continues, trying to resist the temptation to turn around and look; but the explosion has drowned out the audio part of the camera. Dozens of giant rats storm the room. “…However, reliable sources have it that…” His words are drowned out by mass machine-gun fire. In an unprecedented breach of media etiquette, journalist turns around to look, and presently disappears from view. Abruptly, the ceiling of the mailroom spins down to fill the screen, and three great fuzzy out-of-focus rat snouts converge from the edges of the screen, long teeth glistening in the TV lights; all goes dark. We return to Network Control. Anchorman is in process of throwing his pen at someone, but pauses to say, “Now, this,” and is replaced by an animated hemorrhoid.

  All we wanted was to get everyone out of the Plex and end this thing. Once rats roamed the Base and bats frolicked in the hallways, and smoke, flies and filth were everywhere, those people were ready to go. The GASF would leave whenever Virgil told them to. The administration would clear B and C Towers as soon as we gave the word. The TUGgies claimed that they were merely holding their three towers to fend off the Reds. Later, to no one’s surprise, we found that they had half-brainwashed the population of those towers by the time Sarah kicked in with her pronouncements; and how could oversweetened Kool-Aid, Manilow songs and love-bombing compete with her radical power and grand demonstrations? After we shut off their electricity and water for twelve hours, the TUG agreed to evacuate their towers at our command. The SUB/Terrorist axis would do whatever they had to to keep the Big Wheel on.