by James Gunn
Gavin saw the building as if he had never seen it before. When he had awakened, the day was well into afternoon. After the Professor had been safely, secretly, and reverently planted in front of the library, Gavin had returned to Jenny's side and slept like a baby—restlessly, turning, whimpering ... When he awakened, he still was tired. The medic awoke him with a hypodermic filled with a faintly yellow fluid. Jenny was gone, and Gavin felt sad and old, and the medic said it was an extract of what he had been able to get from the Professor, and did Gavin want the shot. “Yes!” Gavin said, wanting everything of the Professor that he could get.
Afterward he didn't want to stay at the house. The kitchen was filthy. The dirty dishes stacked in the sink and on the table, and the pans on the stove, all smelled like decay, and the cockroaches hopped around tamely. He didn't want to see anybody who had been connected with the project.
The Union was brick and limestone; it had been weathered by midwestern summer heat and winter cold, by thunderstorms and wind and snow and freezing rain. The building had been constructed in stages, over the years, like a Gothic cathedral, as enrollment increased, and cupolas sprouted unexpectedly from green copper roofs, and stone balconies, from red-brick walls.
It was, Gavin thought, a wonderful, surprising mélange of a building. Gavin wondered what the Professor had thought of it, but as the thought occurred to him, he knew with an odd certainty that the Professor had liked it.
Gavin wished the Professor were here with him now, that he could walk with him into the Union and talk to him about life and philosophy and the way things are, and then his mood lightened. The Professor was with him and always would be, he thought.
The Union had been set afire twice during the past twenty years. The first time, the arsonist was never identified; the second time, the students knew who the culprit was, and they had punished the poor screaming wretch for a month, keeping him from all drugs and at the end of the period expelling him from the campus, as a warning to others.
After the second fire, but before the riots, the students assumed complete jurisdiction over the building. Student fees had built it. The students seized it first, and no one wanted to make an issue of it, least of all the administration. The alumni had protested, saying that their fees had built it when they were students and they didn't approve of what was being done with their building, but this argument was brushed aside by student leaders as invalidated by the nonstudent status of the alumni, who had joined the establishment. And they pointed out that the students had possession of the building and were going to keep it, and that was that, there was no need to argue about it, and subsequent uses were sanctioned by time, strike, and struggle.
Gavin opened one of the plywood doors—they replaced the glass that had once served—and walked into the north lobby. The marble had been worn down by shoes and sandals and bare feet over the years, and plastic tiles that had been placed over the marble were worn through as well, until only ragged fragments remained around the edges. A few blankets and bedrolls were scattered along the walls, a few of them still with occupants, some of them sleeping.
Several students were walking aimlessly through the lobby or leaned against the painted pillars, talking aimlessly. One of them looked up and saw Gavin. He rushed over.
“Gavin!” he said, grabbing Gavin's arm at the shoulder, squeezing it. “You're a hero, you know that? Everybody's talking about it.”
The boy was blond and thin and short. His name was Phil, and he reminded Gavin of a spider monkey. His hands on Gavin's arm didn't hurt, but Gavin didn't like the feel of it, and he moved away. He walked on toward the stairs at the far end of the lobby, stepping around a sleeping bag with two heads that was beginning to thrash around.
“What did you do with the Professor?” Phil asked. “Where've you got him stashed? Gonna hold him for ransom, get some bread, get a grade?” Phil trotted along beside Gavin, his monkey face bright and eager.
Gavin walked on. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he said. He kicked some loose papers out of the way and started down the stairs.
“'At's a way, boy,” the other said. “Keep it to yourself. Who's listening, right?” Phil made a show of looking up and down and around as they reached the basement landing and started down the next flight of stairs to the sub-basement. The walls were plastered with old signs and notices advertising films and strike meetings and protest demonstrations and goods and services of all kinds, from the most ordinary to the most intimate, including many that once were found only on the inside of men's toilets; some were printed on squares of colored cardboard, but they ranged down through notes scribbled on scraps of ruled paper or on the walls themselves.
“You can tell old Phil, though. Just between us, right?”
Gavin didn't answer. Phil scuttling at his heels, he went through swinging wooden doors into the rathskeller. Plastic-covered booths lined the walls and filled the center of the room. The place was gloomy. Gavin couldn't see much after the glare of the afternoon, but he could smell the familiar odors of stale beer, old grease, and thrice-breathed smoke.
“Everybody knows you swiped the Professor,” Phil said. “That's no secret. Nobody else would've had the guts to try it, much less carry it off in daylight. You got spirit, man! You're a real dude. Everybody's saying it.”
Gavin looked at Phil and shrugged. He didn't care what everybody said, and Phil sucked.
Gavin found an empty booth and slid into it, catching his pants for a moment on a split in the imitation leather upholstery. Phil waited for him to move over, but Gavin sat on the edge. After a moment Phil sat down on the seat opposite, undeterred.
Phil winked at him. “Now you can tell me, right? What did you do with the Professor? Gonna release him? Hold him hostage?”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” Gavin repeated wearily.
Phil nodded conspiratorially. “That's right. Don't tell nobody. Who may be listening, eh? Or what?” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and leaned down to peer under the cluttered table. When his head came up, he tried to look into Gavin's eyes. “What I wanted to tell you, dude, is that next time you get something on, I'm in. Anything you say, no matter how heavy.” Phil lowered his voice and reached over to tap Gavin on the hand with his forefinger to indicate that “anything” included “everything.” “Can I get you something?” Phil went on. He swept the dishes and glasses toward the wall with his arm. “Let me get you a beer.”
He half-rose from his seat, but Gavin shook his head. Yesterday anybody could have bought him anything, but today was different. In particular he didn't want Phil buying for him. Phil always seemed to have money, and he always wanted to spend it on other people.
A student waiter slouched down the cluttered aisle toward them and stopped by the table. His apron was decorated with food stains, old and new. “What'll it be?” he asked.
Gavin fingered the few coins in his pocket and estimated their purchasing power. “Burger,” he said.
“Beer?”
Gavin shook his head. “Has Jenny been in?”
“Ain't seen her.”
“I saw her,” Phil said. “She was at the Health Service. In line at the dispensary. Getting her pills, I suppose. Some lay, right?” He looked at Gavin slyly.
“She's a person,” Gavin said. Suddenly he was no longer hungry; Phil and the rathskeller made him sick; between Phil's suffocating admiration and the odors, he couldn't remember what he was doing here.
“You?” the waiter said to Phil.
“Naw,” Phil said, and when the waiter was gone, he leaned across the table again. “Look, Gavin,” he said softly, “there's gonna be an election soon. I'm gonna nominate you for raid chief. You'll get votes, too, a dude like you. Damn, you could be president, you know, or a member of StudEx.”
Gavin did not want to feel impressed, but he did. He could not deny it—the abduction, the operation, the interment, the whole project had gone as smoothly as the most classic revolutionary v
enture, and in spite of unforeseen and unlikely events that threatened to sour it all. Ah, there, Professor! “Who wants to be president?” he said.
“Somebody's got to be,” Phil said. “Why not you? Then maybe we'd get something done, not screw around like we seem to do alla time.”
Why not, indeed? Except he had meant what he said. He didn't want to be president. The president was a figurehead with lots of responsibility and no authority, a hostage to the good behavior of his fellows; none of them lasted long. What Gavin wanted was not power but knowledge, which maybe was ultimate power; he had the conviction that if he knew everything there was to know, the questions that disturbed him would fade away and he would have all the time that queer feeling of certainty he felt now only on rare and beautiful occasions.
His friends kept urging him to take alpha-wave training.
A hand clapped him on the shoulder. A deep voice said, passing, “Good show, man!”
Gavin looked up. The man who had spoken was a big broad-shouldered black named John something. He passed on, bandoleers shifting on his back as he moved. Two other blacks followed him, shotguns in their hands. “Thanks,” Gavin said.
The waiter was back with the hamburger. Gavin fumbled in his pocket. “Forget it,” the waiter said. He sounded as if he had learned something while he had been away. “The manager said it's on the house.”
Gavin took his hand out of his pocket. “If I'd known that, I'd have had some fries and a glass of beer.”
“I'll get ’em,” the waiter said. “You really pulled one, didn't you?”
Gavin shrugged.
The waiter turned to Phil. His voice changed. “You sure you don't want anything?”
“Got a joint?” Phil asked.
“There's a cigarette machine right outside the door,” the waiter said.
“How about Big H?”
“We're all out, but there's a guy in number three says he's got some good stuff.”
Phil pulled a roll of bills out of his shirt pocket and turned off a couple with his thumb. “Get me an envelope,” he said. He not only liked to buy things for people, he liked to send waiters on errands for him.
“You know where it is,” the waiter said. “Any food? Drink?”
Phil crumpled the bills in his hand. “I wouldn't eat here if it was the only place on campus.”
The waiter shrugged. “So starve.”
Gavin bit into the hamburger. Phil was right about that, at least. It was pretty bad. Old meat with lots of fat and gristle that had been cooked too long on a dirty grill. It reminded him of the old joke about professor-burgers, and he put it back on the plate. He tried to remember why he ever ate here.
Phil glanced both ways and leaned forward. “There's gonna be a raid tonight,” he whispered.
Gavin looked bored.
“In town.”
Gavin looked surprised. Phil smiled.
“They're gonna ask you to go along,” Phil whispered. “They liked the Professor bit. Gonna check you out. Get it on, and you're in all the way to the jackpot.”
Gavin swallowed. His throat felt dry, and he wished the beer were in front of him. “Who are ‘they'?”
“Names are bad news,” Phil said, crumpling and straightening the bills in his hand. It was his turn to be noncommunicative, but Gavin knew Phil couldn't sustain it.
“What are they going to hit?”
Phil leaned even closer. “They'll tell you the police barracks, but it's really the power plant.”
Gavin sat back. “The big generators north of town?” His hand felt for the split in the upholstery and rubbed it like an old sore. “The coal-steam or the reactor?”
Phil shrugged. “I don't know. Both, maybe. Or make a feint at one and hit the other. Don't make much difference. It'll cut off power to this whole end of the state.”
“Including the campus,” Gavin said.
“So?”
“Students would suffer, food spoil, maybe some sick students might die...”
“So?”
“And if they hit the reactor, we could get some contamination here. Even if it's only the coal-steam plant, the fire and explosions could spread to the reactor.”
“That's their lookout.”
“Yeah,” Gavin said. “Yeah.” He could imagine some ambitious raid leader turning projects over in his mind, starting up in the middle of the night, sweating, thinking “the generating plant,” knowing that this was it, this was the big one, the raid that would make his reputation for life, the project that would affect everybody and write his name in the stars...
“Get me a beer, Phil,” someone said.
Gavin looked up. Standing beside the table was a student named Gregory, the fellow Jenny had run from into Gavin's arms. Behind him was Jenny. She was looking at the floor. Neither of them had seen Gregory since Karnival; at least, Gavin hadn't.
“Sure, Greg,” Phil said, and slid out of the booth.
“Nice operation, Gav,” Gregory said.
Gavin didn't like people who called him “Gav.” He didn't like Gregory much anyway. He was tall and dark and wiry thin. Gavin thought he was probably very strong in spite of his apparent lack of muscle. He moved with the grace of a natural athlete who did well everything physical. Gavin had seen him win first place in both bottle-throwing and tear-gas-canister return.
Rumors of his sexual prowess hung about him like a miasma. That he was ugly, that his nose was too large and his eyes set too close together, that his lips were thick and wet and his complexion was bad, didn't seem to matter. His air of aggressive sexuality challenged everything female to prove itself against his masculinity. Phil skulked around like a neurotic mink; Gregory asserted his male dominance over his territory.
Gavin had heard stories about Gregory taking by force what was not freely offered, and that bothered him, but not as much as the afterword that nobody complained. Gavin didn't know why it bothered him—as if he and Gregory were in competition for all the girls on campus and what Gregory touched he ruined. It was not a sensible feeling, but there it was—a kind of sexual tournament in which Gavin felt himself destined to come in second.
At least he recognized the source of his attitude, Gavin thought, and that was the beginning of wisdom. He slid over in the booth so that Jenny could sit down beside him, but she slid into the other side.
“Hello, Jenny,” he said, wanting to touch her, trying to give his ordinary words special meaning.
She didn't speak. She didn't look at him. Gregory sat down opposite him.
“Careful, neat, precise,” he said. “I like that.”
“Why?” Gavin asked. He felt belligerent, and he knew it was not only because he resented Gregory, but he didn't like the way Jenny was behaving.
“Well, it's not my style,” Gregory said, “but I admire it in others.”
The waiter was back with Gavin's french fries and beer. He looked at Gregory and Jenny. “Anything?”
Gregory shook his head. “I'll eat some of these.” He reached toward the fries. “Bring the ketchup.” The waiter reached into the next booth and put a greasy bottle on the table. Gregory doused the potatoes with ketchup.
Gavin didn't like ketchup on his french fries, but he just looked at Gregory coldly. He wasn't hungry anyway. He tried the beer. It was cold and astringent. They couldn't do much to beer, he thought, except to let it get warm or go flat.
He looked at Jenny. “I missed you,” he said. He hadn't said that to Jenny before—it implied a sense of unfair obligation on both sides—but he wanted her to know. Last night had been something special. “I wondered where you went.”
“I ... had to go out,” she said, still not looking up. “I had to go to the dispensary.”
“Yeah,” Gavin said. He was going to say that Phil had seen her, but he didn't want to link them together. And he was thinking, too, that Jenny's voice sounded a bit weak. Gregory's right hand was underneath the table, and Gavin wondered if Gregory was fooling with Jenny. It was the
sort of thing that Gregory would enjoy—enjoy it more because Jenny hated it. Well, if it was going on and Jenny didn't like it, she could object. Nobody owned her. Not Gavin, anyway.
“We've got a raid on tonight,” Gregory said, his mouth full of french fries. He ate with lip-smacking enjoyment.
Phil trotted back to the table with Gregory's beer. He put it down and looked as if he were going to sit down beside Gavin.
“Go screw,” Gregory said, not looking at him. When Phil was gone, Gregory said, “We want you to join us. We need somebody like you.”
“For what?”
“To go along,” Gregory said. “Someone you can count on to pull a trigger, to throw a grenade, to set a timer under fire.”
“That's not my style,” Gavin said quietly, “and I don't admire it in others.”
“Ever tried it?” Gregory's eyes were brightly feral.
“No.”
“Next best thing to getting laid,” Gregory said.
“What are you going to raid?”
“I tell you, and you got to go along.”
“Why?”
“Protection.”
Gavin frowned. That wasn't the way most students operated. If you were into it, you went along; if you weren't, you went your way. Who was going to fink? They might take different routes, but they all were heading for the same goal.
“Is it the police barracks?” Gavin asked.
Gregory smiled. “We tell you, and you got to go along.”
Gavin shook his head. “Even if I were into that sort of stuff, I'd only go with something I had planned myself.”
“What d'ya mean, ‘that sort of stuff?” Gregory asked. He had finished the potatoes, and he sat back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and then rubbing that on his pants.
“I'm not an anarchist,” Gavin said.
“Who is?” Gregory said. “So we use a little leverage, let ’em know we're here.”
