Building Maintenance will be happy to accommodate you."
Sarah felt defeated. It had been a nice summer, and while away she had
forgotten how it was. She had forgotten that the people who ran this place
didn't have a clue as to how reality worked, that in their way they were all
as crazy as Bert Nix. She closed her eyes and tilted her tense head back, and
the man in the chair behind her intervened.
"Wait a minute," he said righteously. His voice was high, but carried
conviction and reasonable sensitivity. "She can't be expected to do that.
Those guys don't even speak English. All they speak is Bosnian or Moldavian or
something."
"Moravian," said Mrs. Santucci in her Distant Early Warning voice, which was
rumored to set off burglar alarms Within a quarter-mile radius.
"The language is Crotobaltislavonian, a modern dialect of Old Scythian,"
announced Sarah, hoping to end the conflict. The B-Men are refugees from
Crotobaltislavonia."
"Listen, I talk to Magrov all the time, and I say it's MoraVian." Sarah felt
her body temperature begin to drop as she chanced a direct look at Mrs.
Santucci.
Trying to sound prim, Sarah said, "Have you ever considered the possibility
that you are confusing Magrov with Moravian?" Seeing the look on Mrs.
Santucci's face, she then inhaled sharply and shifted away. Just as the old
bureaucrat's jaw was starting to yawn, her chest rising like the return of
Atlantis, Casimir Radon leaned way across and yanked something out of Sarah's
lap and-- in a tone so arresting that it was answered by Bert Nix outside--
exclaimed, "Wait a minute!"
Casimir was meek and looked like a nerd and a wimp, but he was great in a
crisis. The lost continent subsided and Mrs. Santucci leaned forward with
a dangerous frown. Out in the hallway the exasperated Bert Nix cried, "But
there's no more minutes to wait! To save the Big U we've got to start now!"
Casimir had taken Sarah's room assignment card from the stack of ammunition
on her lap, and was peering at it like a scientific specimen. It was an IBM
card, golden yellow, with a form printed on it in yellow-orange ink. In the
center of the form was a vague illustration of the Monoplex, looking decrepit
and ruined because of the many rectangular holes punched through it. Along the
top was a row of boxes labeled with tiny blurred yellow-orange abbreviations
that were further abbreviated by rectangular holes. Numbers and letters were
printed in black ink in the vicinity of each box.
Bert Nix was still carrying on outside. "Then fell the fires of Eternity with
loud & shrill Sound of loud Trumpet thundering along from heaven to heaven,
A mighty sound articulate Awake ye dead & come To Judgement from the four
winds Awake & Come away Folding like scrolls of the Enormous volume of Heaven
