Yet among the inconsistencies of our detention, by the logic of our warden's illogicality, we were not invariably assigned a cell at all. On occasion it was every man for himself at lock-up time; my objectives then would be to elude the predatory faggots (who collared the unwary to ruthless buggering) and share a cell with Max, Leonid, Peter Greene — or Croaker, when soon afterwards he joined our company. From them, from Stoker himself, who now and then toured his domain, and from the regular visits of Anastasia and my mother, I learned the unhappy state of things among my erstwhile Tutees, as well as in the upper campus generally. And that news, those developments, were my one real punishment in this interval of my life: sad postings in a desert of dead time.
I was not uncomfortable. When meat was served, or cows-milk, I contented myself with water and mattress-straw, and gained strength and trim from that buckly fare. I cannot say that I was never abused by guards and prisoners, who sometimes took advantage of my sticklessness, or that I never made use of the restless whores who climbed upon the bars to sport. In general, however, except for the pleasure of atonement with Max and the pain of learning what catastrophe my Tutorship had wrought, my season in Main Detention was as numb as it was timeless. So much so, I reconstruct with confidence neither the order of the several disclosures and events which follow nor my reaction to them. They took place, I see now, over a period of some forty weeks, but for aught I felt or valued time it might have been forty years, forty days — or one long night.
The EAT-whistle that had postponed my end was a false alarm — rather, a true alarm falsely construed. When Classmate X had broken off the Summit Symposium and in such dudgeon left the U.C. building, the Nikolayan and New Tammanian border-guards were each alerted to expect trouble from the other. Later that same day, on Lucius Rexford's orders, units from the School of Engineering had moved up to begin the task of relocating the NTC Power Line a full kilometer west of its former position and mounting extra floodlight-towers in the widened gap between East and West Campus. The Nikolayans, thinking themselves menaced by this activity, had actually sent short-order EAT-waves crackling to the very Boundary (at least EASCAC had transmitted them; whether at its own discretion or on orders from the Student-Unionist First Secretary was not clear), which WESCAC had detected and duly reported. Ordinarily in such circumstances no general alarm would have been sounded until the enemy's hostile intentions were unmistakable; but Chancellor Rexford being unavailable for consultation (he was in fact drafting the first of his "Open-Book Test" bills, and refused to be disturbed), the New Tammany professor-generals had blown the whistle. They may or may not have ordered a counter-attack as welclass="underline" they themselves denied it, but the Nikolayans claimed — predictably, yet perhaps not incorrectly — that New Tammany was calling EASCAC's defense-transmissions aggressive in order to justify counter-aggression; and Stoker himself (from whom I learned all this) maintained that WESCAC had indeed set about to EAT Nikolay College, either by its own AIM or at the direction of the professor-generals; only the drain on its power-supply — caused by Stoker's unwonted absence from the Furnace Room and a sudden frenzy of power-consumption by the Library CACAFILE — had prevented Campus Riot III. The situation remained criticaclass="underline" Chancellor Rexford's sudden insistence on "open-book diplomacy" had made practical negotiation impossible between East and West; the separation of the Power Lines ended the defection of malcontents; the Nikolayans maintained that NTC's apparent retreat was a prelude to "loudening" the Quiet Riot, and Tower Hall replied that the Nikolayans were advancing their Power Line under cover of darkness — the new floodlights were barely usable for want of power. The only casualties thus far were among New Tammany's border-guards, numbers of whom fell to their deaths each week from the Power Line because of the poor light and the new "heads-up" collars which the Chancellor obliged them to wear on duty; but pressures were mounting and tempers shortening on both sides, and at any hour the EAT-whistle might sound again, this time in earnest.
Nor was the grave varsity situation the only cause of Rexford's declining popularity. Stoker had returned to the Powerhouse with raped Anastasia after rescuing me from the noose, and in time had restored Furnace-Room output to three-quarters of its normal level; better than that he could not inspire Madge and the rest to do, by reason perhaps of his own loss of energy; even so, a part of the production was stored, or went up the Shaft in smoke, because New Tammany's power-consumption had dropped to fifty percent of normal. The decrease was owing not to reduced demands for power in the College — they had never been higher — but to the problems of distribution raised by Rexford's refusal to have any commerce with Maurice Stoker, whose presence he also forbade in the Great Mall area. This was the first of a series of prohibitions enacted by his administration in the following months: the ill-famed and short-lived "Open-Book Tests" designed to eliminate flunkèdness from New Tammany College. Dormitory-brothels were shut down, their madams prosecuted. Adultery was made a criminal misdemeanor and rape a capital felony on the one hand, while celibacy on the other — at least as represented by bachelor- and spinster-hood — was penalized by fines increased annually after age twenty-one. Homosexuals were flogged, irrespective of gender; flagellants were not. Although one glass of light wine was served with the evening meal in every dining-hall, drunkenness, even in the home, was punished severely, as were fights of any sort and even domestic altercations — wifebeating, in particular, was made punishable by long detention. Tower-Hall patronage was abolished; macing, graft, division of interest, and other abuses of office became grounds for expulsion from the College. Censorship was imposed upon all media of entertainment, communication, instruction, and artistic expression, with the aim of suppressing excess. Exotic dress, grooming, and behavior were condemned from all sides by billboards and Telerama messages, and — what was perhaps the most controversial measure of all — it was proposed that psychotherapy be made obligatory for extreme or intemperate personalities, to the end of schooling them in moderation. This last proposal the Chancellor ultimately vetoed as immoderate, though he himself had drafted it; but the press criticized him all the same — in guarded terms, out of respect for the censorship. So also did the rank and file of New Tammany undergraduates, who had used to adore him; they removed his sunny likeness from their walls and smirked at the rumors that Mrs. Rexford's vacation from Great Mall would be permanent. Yet they submitted to the Open-Book reforms to a degree bespeaking some basic sympathy with their spirit. Criminal violence became rare; so too did loud merrymaking. Sharp cheeses and unsliced rye bread disappeared from menus. Nearly everyone had a C average. Greene Timber and Plastics (in the owner's absence) developed a synthetic material said to be almost indistinguishable from real plastic, and a more efficient way of packaging containers. It was with a faint smile, a faint sigh, or a faint shrug that people nicknamed Tower Hall "Dead Center." No one was happy; on the other hand, no demonstrations were mounted or measures proposed to repeal the new laws.
The Chancellor himself was only moderately concerned about these developments; neither did it stir him to hear that the Founder's Scroll had got lost in the CACAFILE — which, reprogrammed by Mother's office in accordance with my directive, seemed to have declared every volume in the Library sui generis and would file no two in the same category. The evidence of student-opinion polls, the complaints of his party-leaders and lieutenants that he'd never win the next election, the declining wattage of the Light House itself — nothing much troubled him.