Just a Couple of Days (27 page)

THE BOOK O' BILLETS-DOUX

 

92
The bubbles that form when water is boiled are, of course, steam—water that has been liberated from its liquid state of existence into its gaseous form. In the crowd below, which itself was fast approaching the boiling point, bodies in various stages of undress were beginning to pop up like the first
tiny bubbles in a teakettle. And despite aphorisms to the contrary, I tell you, I stood there and watched the frigging pot boil.

It is difficult to say for certain what role the Pied Piper virus was playing. After all, scarcely half an hour had passed since Blip's unabashed gallop. Nevertheless, it seemed that the general state of intoxication was contributing to the pace of the progression of symptoms. Every few minutes a new wave of intensity broke from the center and rippled outward, as if an enormous boulder had just kerplunked into a churning sea. This ripple lost no energy as it expanded. It only rushed outward, and people whirled faster and danced more untamedly in its wake, never slowing down.

Any way you look at it, from the kettle to the caldera, from the stove to the sea, great forces were building. The pot was boiling, the volcano was erupting, the indefatigable crowd was overflowing its boundaries. The National Guardsmen, cut off from any chain of command and nervous as inbred puppies, had retreated into their armored vehicles to await orders that would never come.

Then came the laughter, unmistakable in its source, for no frivolity was as ferocious and unfettered, and never was merriment quite so contagious as this infectious epidemic of uninhibited hilarity. The decibel level rose so quickly as this next swell swept the crowd that the conspirators' conversation was drowned before whomever was speaking could finish their sentence. General Kiljoy, Tynee, and Captain Down thus joined Miss Mary and me at the windows to see what all the ruckus was about. And so there we stood, five of us peering timidly at the mob. I couldn't help but feel rather dim-witted, instinctively wondering what was so funny. I'm sure my miserable companions
shared this sensation. When one hundred thousand members of your species are seized with mirth of such absurd proportions, who wants to be left out of the joke, scratching their head and muttering, “I don't get it”?

Tynee, pretending he didn't care what was so funny, I initially surmised, busied himself examining the windows. Upon inspecting them myself, however, I discovered the glass in front of me vibrating like an imbalanced washing machine in an earthquake. The sound of the crowd was relentlessly throbbing against the thick glass, pushing it to such a high pitch that it numbed my fingertips to touch its surface.

Tynee appeared quite concerned, and General Kiljoy was shouting unheard at someone or everyone. In spite of the overwhelming volume he was competing with, his voice gradually began to become audible at predictable intervals. A most uncanny thing was occurring. Every other fraction of a second, the crowd became ridiculously silent, like an auditory strobe. It seemed that their mad glee had fallen into synchronicity with itself, such that every individual's rate of ha-ha eventually became identical. General Kiljoy continued his attempt to communicate, but, just as a strobe light makes movements appear jerky and unconnected, so were his words hopelessly garbled.

And stranger things were yet afoot.

 

93
Consider Crater Lake, on top of Mount Mazama in the Cascades of Oregon. Mount Mazama is actually a volcano that experienced a series of violent eruptions about seven thousand years ago. The explosions darkened the sky for weeks, throwing volcanic ash for thousands of miles across the continent and the
ocean. But even these geological upheavals paled in comparison with what was to come. Mount Mazama soon spent itself, and the magma chamber underneath the mountain was left empty. Deprived of any underground support, the entire mountain collapsed upon itself, creating a caldera four thousand feet deep and five miles across, which eventually filled with water over the course of six hundred years and became a scene of overwhelming beauty and tranquillity.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this particular event in geological history is that it was observed, that is to say, there were humans around, specifically, the Makalak Indians. Their take on this topographical twitch was that there was a great battle between Llao, chief of the underworld, and Skell, chief of the world above. Skell ultimately drove Llao back underground, collapsing the mountain upon him, and the heavens were victorious. Now understand, this was no tree falling noiselessly in the woods. It made a
sound
, a sound impossible to ignore, a thunderous and resounding . . . boom. If you've ever stood under a railroad bridge while a freight train passes at full speed fifteen feet over your head, you still have no conception of how it sounds when the Earth quivers.

Nor do I, of course. I'm only pointing it out. I do, however, have an idea of what it sounds like when humanity kicks in its sleep, when history sneezes. I dare not suggest an exaggerated comparison between the two, but I do go so far as to suggest that the murmur of a hundred thousand people being tickled well past the point of abuse certainly lies far beyond that of the freight train. And in any case, I reckon it's considerably more hair-raising than either the mountain or the train, seeing as how it's emanating from your brothers and sisters. To put it simply
and understatedly, it was as unnerving as hearing a thief in the night.

Mountains collapsing, trees falling, books toppling over, these are all examples of a phenomenon called
punctuated equilibrium
. When I first learned about this in graduate school, the professor likened it to a kaleidoscope. When you look through a kaleidoscope and turn it, the pattern very slowly unfolds and changes. This is continuous change. But every so often, the beads tumble over and the pattern collapses into an entirely new one. When this happens, discontinuous change has occurred. Punctuated equilibrium is the norm in nature, from genetic evolution to tectonic tantrums. Periods of continuous change are peppered with periods of discontinuous change. Stability and instability exist together, and both should be expected.

And so, watching the crowd below begin to explode outward, chaos spilling off campus and into the streets, it was apparent that the kaleidoscope of human history was in the process of shifting. Indeed, I felt I was witnessing the beginning of a rather jarring tumble into instability. Pondering all of this, I touched the feverishly vibrating glass and, discontinuous change be damned, a fracture appeared in the window, growing by perceptible millimeters and tracing a crooked path in front of me like a tributary off a lightning bolt.

 

94
The Pied Piper, it seemed, had traded his pipe for a flute, a Pan flute, to be precise, and there was no mistaking the Earthly roar of his primal music. Inevitably, panic was stinging my perception like a jellyfish congratulating a tourist. It riveted my attention to the cracking window and stapled it to all the
fuss outside. But let me be clear, yonder maniacs weren't panicking. Rather, they were the embodiment of Pan-ia, the vibration of the reeds in the old devil's hands, the presence that produces panic, the cerebral stampede of divine madness, the skull-shattering orgasm of raw existence. Possessed of the Pied Piper's charm, horrified or overjoyed, they were riding the shock wave of Blip's ground zero like nuclear surfers. They skipped and danced and clicked their heels, flawlessly out of control.

Entranced by the novelty of the entire experience, my terror was akin to a goat staring down a pair of headlights. I didn't quite know what was going on or how to react toward it, so my mind retreated to the oft-omitted freeze reaction. In a desperate situation, it's actually fight or flight or freeze. I froze, and if the Pied Piper virus wasn't drunkenly driving my kind collectively mad, he would have had time to say, “Tickle tickle hee haw, whenever we get bored,” before colliding with me.

As it turned out, it was the Piper's former caretaker who blindsided me. Before I realized what was happening, General Kiljoy had me behind his head and across his shoulders in a fireman's carry. The flight reaction. In five steps he had me at the elevator, where he hurled me down like Paul Bunyan swinging an ax. Next I saw Captain Down help him with Tynee and Miss Mary, both of whom had fainted upon seeing the windows crack. As the two of them dragged the three of us into the elevator, garbled franticities were whistling about my head like starving vultures. Somehow I was kicked in the face by Tynee, who, along with Miss Mary, was coming around and greatly agitated, ready to kill or be killed. The fight reaction. See what I mean?

Once we had all been assembled in the luxurious elevator and the doors had closed behind us, we began our descent. Once the decibel level decreased, General Kiljoy hit a button on his remote and halted the elevator. From a shoulder holster under his jacket, he pulled out a handgun.

“Get down!” Tynee covered Miss Mary's head along with his own. I instinctively shielded my head as well. But he wasn't directing the gun at us. He was pointing it, along with the remote control, at Captain Down. No one moved or spoke for a long moment, and the crowd, now sounding like a raging thunderstorm in the next county, drowned out the sound of thumping arteries.

“Captain Porton Down,” General Kiljoy spoke at last, hitting a button on his remote with all the malice of pulling a trigger as the elevator began to ascend. “Time to pay the Piper.”

 

95
The votes were in, counted and recounted, and no filibuster could delay this legislation. There was no disputing that the disarming voice and savoir-faire sensibilities of Captain Down had just been voted out of office. Throw the bum out! His lame-duck linguistic capacity had nothing to say or do but wait. He might have tried to let people know what he really thought of them, push last-minute legislation through, pay political debts, but he was so used to telling people what they wanted to hear that he had no idea what he really thought.

“General, what are you doing?” Captain Down managed feebly. “The windows may have broken by now.”

“We would have heard a sudden increase in volume.” General Kiljoy raised the gun to Captain Down's face.

“What the hell is going on, General?” Tynee yelled, regaining confidence as we got closer to his office.

“Quiet!” General Kiljoy bellowed above the increasing noise. “Captain Down is the only one with any access whose actions I can't account for 100 percent. This is a crisis situation, and the ship is sinking fast. I'm plugging a security leak.”

The volume, rising with the elevator, prevented further comment on anyone's part. Captain Down stood, his face filled with passive fear as if he were watching a suspenseful movie, as the elevator came to a halt. One second later, the doors opened patiently, once again revealing Tynee's office, and although the middle window across from the elevator was now a nearly opaque cobweb of fractures, it was still intact.

When General Kiljoy fired, it sounded like a penny dropping on a tile floor. Had it not been for the sudden explosion of Captain Down's knee and his subsequent collapse sideways into Tynee's office, I may not have noticed at all, such was the volume of the Piper's call of the wild. Tynee noticed, too, and scrambled to push the lame leg of Captain Down past the threshold. Once accomplished, the doors closed, at their leisure and completely heedless of the desperation of the situation.

 

96
Sophia once told me about a psychological phenomenon medical doctors sometimes experience when they are required to inform a patient of a terminal illness or a family about an unsuccessful surgery. What sometimes happens is that when they are giving the grim news, they are suddenly seized with an irresistible urge to grin or even burst out laughing. This mortifying reaction is called grim-grin in some circles. Psychologists think
it may be a defensive reaction against excessive emotional trauma, but Sophia always insisted that Western doctors are fundamentally sadistic and sometimes can't hide their pleasure. For reasons that will become clear, I prefer the psychological explanation for myself.