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