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.
Meanwhile, he had a job to do. No more waiting. He stood up, letting the crossword magazine tumble to the Turkish rug, and threw his mind at the Breakers in the room. It wasn't hard; he'd been practicing almost daily for this moment, with Ted's help. And if it worked? If the Breakers picked it up, rebroadcasting it and amping what Dinky could only suggest to the level of a command? Why then it would rise. It would become the dominant chord in a new good-mind gestalt.
At least that was the hope.
(IT's A FIRE FOLKS THERE's A FIRE IN THE BUILDING)
As if to underscore this, there was a soft bang-and-tinkle as something imploded and the first puff of smoke seeped from the ventilator panels. Breakers looked around with wide, dazed eyes, some getting to their feet.
And Dinky sent:
(DON'T WORRY DON'T PANIC ALL IS WELL WALK UP THE)
He sent a perfect, practiced image of the north stairway, then added Breakers. Breakers walking up the north stairway.
Breakers walking through the kitchen. Crackle of fire, smell of smoke, but both coming from the guards' sleeping area in the west wing. And would anyone question the truth of this mental broadcast? Would anyone wonder who was beaming it out, or why? Not now. Now they were only scared. Now they were wanting someone to tell them what to do, and Dinky Earnshaw was that someone.
(NORTH STAIRWAY WALK UP THE NORTH STAIRWAY WALK OUT ONTO THE BACK LAWN)
And it worked. They began to walk that way. Like sheep following a ram or horses following a stallion. Some were picking up the two basic ideas
(NO PANIC NO PANIC)
(NORTH STAIRWAY NORTH STAIRWAY)
and rebroadcasting them. And, even better, Dinky heard it from above, too. From the can-toi and the taheen who had been observing from the balconies.
No one ran and no one panicked, but the exodus up the north stairs had begun.
NINE
Susannah sat astride the SCT in the window of the shed where she'd been concealed, not worrying about being seen now.
Smoke detectors-at least three of them-were yowling. A fire alarm was whooping even more loudly; that one was from Damli House, she was quite sure. As if in answer, a series of loud electronic goose-honks began from the Pleasantville end of the compound. This was joined by a multitude of clanging bells.
With all that happening to their south, it was no wonder that the woman north of the Devar-Toi saw only the backs of the three guards in the ivy-covered watchtowers. Three didn't seem like many, but it was five per cent of the total. A start.
Susannah looked down the barrel of her gun at the one in her sights and prayed. God grant me true aim … true aim … Soon.
It would be soon.
TEN
Finli grabbed the Master's arm. Pimli shook him off and started toward his house again, staring unbelievingly at the smoke that was now pouring out of all the windows on the left side.
"Boss!" Finli shouted, renewing his grip. "Boss, never mind that! It's the Breakers we have to worry about! The Breakers!"
It didn't get through, but the shocking warble of the Damli Hovise fire alarm did. Pimli turned back in that direction, and for a moment he met Jakli's beady litde bird's eyes. He saw nothing in them but panic, which had the perverse but welcome effect of steadying Pimli himself. Sirens and buzzers everywhere. One of them was a regular pulsing honk he'd never heard before. Coming from the direction of Pleasantville?
"Come on, boss!" Finli O'Tego almost pleaded. "We have to make sure the Breakers are okay-"
"Smoke!" Jakli cried, fluttering his dark (and utterly useless) wings. "Smoke from Damli House, smoke from Feveral, too!"
Pimli ignored him. He pulled the Peacemaker from the docker's clutch, wondering briefly what premonition had caused him to put it on. He had no idea, but he was glad for the weight of the gun in his hand. Behind him, Tassa was yelling-
Tammy was, too-but Pimli ignored the pair of them. His heart was beating furiously, but he was calm again. Finli was right. The Breakers were the important thing right now. Making sure they didn't lose a third of their trained psychics in some sort of electrical fire or half-assed act of sabotage. He nodded at his Security Chief and they began to run toward Damli House with Jakli squawking and flapping along behind them like a refugee from a Warner Bros, cartoon. Somewhere up there,