It takes more than one man to lead the way to Waterloo! Jonathan Relevant decided. And you spell that V-I-E-T-N-A-M! he added to himself. He decided to voice the thought aloud. “This sort of escalation is what got America so deeply involved in Vietnam,” he told the chancellor.
“You’re speaking figuratively, of course.”
“No.”
“But the situations aren’t analogous. What we have here is just a bunch of spoiled kids throwing a temper tantrum.”
“Even if that were true, you wouldn’t cure a child’s tantrums by cracking his skull open.”
“You’re exaggerating. It won’t come to that.”
“Won’t it?”
“Well, if it does, the dissidents will have no one but themselves to blame.”
“Tell yourself that when you’re sitting all alone on St. Helena.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing.” There's no point in picking an old bone apart. Jonathan Relevant finished his drink and stood up to leave.
The chancellor saw him to the door. “Do you like grape jelly?” he asked Jonathan Relevant as they shook hands in parting.
“Yes, I do.”
“I’ll have my wife send you a jar,” the chancellor promised.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jonathan Relevant walked up the front steps of the main building of the Science Research Institute. At the front door he was stopped by a young man with scraggly long hair and a patchy beard which tried hard to be full but didn’t quite succeed. The young man looked at Jonathan Relevant and saw a young man with scraggly long hair and a classically full beard right off a Smith Brothers Cough Drop box. “This is where it’s at.” He grinned at Jonathan Relevant. “Welcome to the barricades.”
“Up the revolution!” Jonathan Relevant returned the grin and walked inside to the center hall.
“Peace.” A co-ed in a see-through blouse and blue jeans held up by a length of clothesline greeted Jonathan Relevant.
“Peace and love everywhere.” He extended his fingers in the V symbol and headed for the entrance to the hall leading to the room he’d occupied earlier.
“Hey, buddy!” Passing one of the doorways, Jonathan Relevant was hailed sotto voce by another young man. This one’s face was smeared with war paint and he was wearing the buckskins and feathered headdress of a Sioux Indian. “In here!” Tugging his Buffalo Bill moustache, he jerked his head to indicate that Jonathan Relevant should enter the room behind him. When Jonathan complied, he closed the door behind them. “Just a second and I’ll get us a light.” In the dark he rubbed two sticks together.
“Will this help?” Jonathan Relevant struck a match.
“Oh. Yeah. Thanks.” The Indian lit an oil lantern and turned the Wick down very low. “I sure am glad to see you,” he said, his war paint gleaming phosphorescently in the flickering light. “I thought I was the only one.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. But I spotted you right off.”
“How?”—as the Indian said to the Mermaid, Jonathan Relevant quipped to himself.
“How.” The Indian held up his hand and returned the greeting. “Sixth sense.” He answered Jonathan Relevant’s question. “You know how it is. When you’ve been in awhile you get so you can spot your own. I mean, you could tell about me, couldn’t you?”
“No.”
“On the level? Hey, that’s good. Real good. I’ve been afraid the kids would peg me. But if you didn’t spot me, they won’t.” The Indian blew his nose and sniffed. “I think I’m allergic to this damn war paint,” he confided. “Let’s get down to cases.” He sneezed. “I’ve already set myself up as the provocateur. So the thing for you to do is to play it cool. Try to get in with the leadership. What do you think?”
“It sounds logical.”
“Good. Then we understand each other.”
“We do?”
“And I’ll get word to Pigbaigh that there’s two of us and the CIA’s on the job.” The Indian sneezed again.
“Where is Pigbaigh?”
“The kids are holding him hostage. Some of the other personnel here too. He’s really fuming.” .
“I’ll bet he is.”
“Yeah. Listen, the kids are having a strategy meeting and we’d better get to it so we know what’s happening. But we’d better separate. It isn’t smart for us to be seen together.”
“All right.”
The Indian blew his nose. He put his finger to his lips to signal Jonathan Relevant to be quiet, snuffed out the oil lamp, opened the door, and looked both ways down the hall. “All clear.” He motioned to Jonathan to leave.
Jonathan went back to his room, took a quick shower, and changed his clothes. Then he proceeded to the meeting of the student dissidents. A little while after he’d sat down, the Indian entered and carefully seated himself on the other side of the room from Jonathan.
“The trouble is the establishment’s got all this modern technology going for them,” one of the SDS-ers was saying. “Just look at one small aspect of it. Communications. They’ve got all kinds of transistor gadgets. . . .”
The Indian lit a pipe, covered it with his palm, then quickly raised and lowered his hand so that a series of smoke signals wafted toward the ceiling over Jonathan Relevant’s head.
“Wrist radios and electronic cigarette packs and all that jazz so that they’re always in contact. . . .”
Jonathan Relevant pulled out a handkerchief and semaphored a noncommittal reply to the CIA Indian.
“We’re getting off the track.” Minerva Kaufman took charge of the meeting. “What we’ve got to decide is what we’re going to do tomorrow morning when push comes to shove.”
“What can we do?” another girl asked. “We can’t fight barehanded against armed police and National Guard. It would be futile. We’ll have to get out.”
“We could resist nonviolently. Lock arms and go limp. Force the pigs to carry us out,” a boy with long, blond hair suggested.
“And passively get our nonviolent heads busted,” a second boy sneered. “I want to see you stay limp when the tear gas hits.”
“What this college needs is a compulsory course in non-violent resistance,” someone suggested. “It’d come in a damn sight handier than Am. Lit. One.”
“My folks sent me to college
“To gain a lot of knowledge
“That I'll probably never never ever use . . .”
So sang a cynical frosh.
“AIYEE!” The CIA Indian was on his feet. His sudden whoop captured the attention of the others. “It’s a sellout!” He shook his fist. “Leave peacefully . . . nonviolence . . . is that why we liberated this building? No! We did it to shake up the establishment, to demand a voice in the running of this place. And now you want to chicken out! To give up and leave with your tail between your legs! Where are your guts? This is revolution! Bring on the pigs! Bring on the clubs and the Mace and the tear gas! We’ll stand up to them with our bare bodies! That’s what commitment means!”
There was a smattering of applause. The Indian sat down and winked at Jonathan Relevant. Gravely, he returned the wink.
“R.O.T.C. must go!” a boy shouted.
“Rotsy must go!” Others picked up the chant.
“If we’re going to resist, then we need a battle plan,” Minerva pointed out practically. “We need to set up a chain of command. And we’ll have to have discipline.”
“Rotsy must go!”
“Rotsy is where you find it,” Jonathan Relevant decided.
“Power to the people!” the students shouted.
“This operation has to be strictly programmed,” Minerva added.
“Power to the people!”