'I don't have time to play anything,' deLint said, filling in a square. You could tell by the sound that the other boy's racquet was strung tighter than Hal's.

'When do I get to sit down with Hal directly?'

'I don't know. I don't think you do.'

The journalist's rapid head-movement reconfigured the flesh of her neck. 'Pardon me?'

'It's not my decision. My guess is you don't. Dr. Tavis didn't already tell you?'

'I really couldn't tell what he was telling me.'

'We've never had a kid here interviewed. The Founder let you guys on the grounds, versus Tavis this is an exception your even getting in.'

'I'm here for background only, for your alumnus, the punter.'

DeLint was making his lips look like he was whistling even though no whistling-sound was emerging. 'We've never let somebody do any kind of interview on a kid here while he's still in training and inculcation.'

'Does the student have some sort of say in who he talks to and why? What if the boy wants to chat with me about his brother's transition from tennis to football?'

DeLint kept his concentration on the match and the chart in a way that was supposed to let you know you had very little of his attention. 'Talk to Tavis about it.'

'I was in there for over two hours.'

'You pick up how to do questions with him after a while. Tavis you have to back into a Yes-No corner where you can finally say I need a Yes or a No. It takes about twenty minutes if you're sharp. This is your whole business, getting answers out of people. The answer's not for me to officially say, but I'm guessing a No. The Boston press guys come around after a big event, they get match results and physical stats and hometowns and nothing more.'

'Moment is a national magazine for and about exceptional people, not some sportswriter with a cigar and a deadline.' is a national magazine for and about exceptional people, not some sportswriter with a cigar and a deadline.'

'It's a command-decision, babe. I'm not in command. I know they teach us to teach that this place is about seeing instead of being seen.'

'I'm here only for the human-interest perspective of a talented boy on his talented brother's bold transition to a major sport where he's shown himself to be even more talented. One exceptional brother on another. Hal is not the profile's focus.'

'Get Tavis in the right corner and he'll tell you about seeing and being seen. These kids, the best of them are here to learn to see. Scht.i.tt's thing is self-transcendence through pain. These kids -' gesturing at Stice running madly up for a drop-volley that stopped rolling well inside the service line; mild applause - 'they're here to get lost in something bigger than them. To have it stay the way it was when they started, the game as something bigger, at first. Then they show talent, start winning, become big fish in their ponds out there in their hometowns, stop being able to get lost inside the game and see. f.u.c.ks with a junior's head, talent. They pay top dollar to come here and go back to being little fish and to get savaged and feel small and see and develop. To forget themselves as objects of attention for a few years and see what they can do when the eyes are off them. They didn't come here to get read about as some soft-news item or background. Babe.'

DeLint read Steeply's expression as some kind of tic. The tiniest tuft of nostril-hair protruded from one of her nostrils, which deLint found repellent. She said, 'Were you ever written about, as a player?'

DeLint smiled coolly at his charts. 'Never had the sort of ranking or promise this issue'd even come up for me.'

'But some of these do. Hal's brother did.'

DeLint felt along his lip's outline with his pencil, sniffed. 'Orin was OK. Orin was essentially a one-trick pony as a player. And between you and me and the fence he was kind of a head-case. His game left here on the down-swing. Now his little brother's got a future in tennis if he wants. And Ortho. Wayne for sure. A couple of the girls - Kent, Caryn and Sharyn here,' indicating the Vaught-apparition below them. 'The really gifted ones, the ones that make it out of here still on the upswing, if they get to the Show - '

'Meaning professional you mean.'

'In the Show they'll get all they want of being made into statues to be looked at and poked at and discussed, and then some. For now they're here to get to be the ones who look and see and forget getting looked at, for now.'

'But even you call it "The Show." They'll be entertainers.'

'You bet your a.s.s they will be.'

'So audiences will be the whole point. Why not also prepare them for the stresses of entertaining an audience, get them used to being seen?'

The two boys were at the near net-post, Stice blowing his nose into a towel. DeLint made kind of a show of putting his clipboard down. 'a.s.sume wrongly for a second that I can speak for the Enfield Academy. I say you do not get it. The point here for the best kids is to inculcate their sense that it's never about being seen. It's never. If they can get that inculcated, the Show won't f.u.c.k them up, Scht.i.tt thinks. If they can forget everything but the game when all of you out there outside the fence see only them and want only them and the game's incidental to you, for you it's about entertainment and personality, it's about the statue, but if they can get inculcated right they'll never be slaves to the statue, they'll never blow their brains out after winning an event when they win, or dive out a third-story window when they start to stop getting poked at or profiled, when their blossom starts to fade. Whether or not you mean to, babe, you chew them up, it's what you do.'

'We chew statues?'

'Whether you mean to or no. You, Moment, World Tennis, Self, Moment, World Tennis, Self, Inter-Lace, the audiences. The crowds in Italy f.u.c.king Inter-Lace, the audiences. The crowds in Italy f.u.c.king literally. literally. It's the nature of the game. It's the machine they're all dying to throw themselves into. They don't know the machine. But we do. Gerhardt's teaching them to see the ball out of a place inside that can't be chewed. It takes time and total focus. The man's a f.u.c.king genius. Profile Scht.i.tt, if you want to profile somebody.' It's the nature of the game. It's the machine they're all dying to throw themselves into. They don't know the machine. But we do. Gerhardt's teaching them to see the ball out of a place inside that can't be chewed. It takes time and total focus. The man's a f.u.c.king genius. Profile Scht.i.tt, if you want to profile somebody.'

'And I'm not going to be allowed even to ask the students what it looks like, this inside chew-proof place. It's a secret place.'

Hal mis.h.i.t a second serve and it flew off his frame and way down to where the girls were sending each other squeaks and lobs, and Stice had now broken him to go up 65, and the murmurs in the bleachers were like a courtroom at an unpleasant revelation. DeLint rounded his lips and made a kind of bovine sound in Ortho Stice's direction. Hal chipped his b.a.l.l.s out along the baseline and made some small adjustments in his cross-hatched strings as he walked around for the side-change. A couple of the nastier kids applauded Hal's mis.h.i.t a little.

'Get sardonic with me all you want. I already said it's not my command-decision. I wouldn't get sardonic with Tavis, though.'

'But if it were. Your command.'

'Lady, if it was me you'd be pressing your nose between the bars of the gate down there is as far in as you'd get. You're coming into a little slice of s.p.a.ce and/or time that's been carved out to protect talented kids from exactly the kind of activities you guys come in here to do. Why Orin, anyway? The kid appears four times a game, never gets. .h.i.t, doesn't even wear pads. A one-trick pony. Why not John Wayne? A more dramatic story, geopolitics, privation, exile, drama. A better player than Hal even. A more complete game. Aimed like a f.u.c.king missile at the Show, maybe the Top Five if he doesn't f.u.c.k up or burn down. Wayne's your ideal food-group. Which is why we'll keep you off him as long as he's here.'

The soft-profiler looked around at the scalps and knees in the stands, the bags of gear and a couple incongruous cans of furniture polish. 'Carved out of what, though, this place?'

From the Desk of Helen Steeply Contributing Editor Moment Magazine Magazine 13473 Blasted Expanse Blvd.

Tucson, AZ, 857048787/2 Mr. Marlon K. BainSaprogenic Greetings, Inc.BPL-Waltham Bldg.1214 Totten Pond RoadWaltham, MA, 021549872/4.November Y.D.A.U.Dear Mr. Bain:In Phoenix on other business, it has been my good fortune to meet your adolescent friend, Mr. Orin J. Incandenza, and to have become intrigued with the possibilities of a profile of the Incandenza family and its accomplishments in not only sports but wide-ranging topics such as independent film circa metropolitan Boston, past and present. I am writing to ask for your cooperation in contacting you with questions which you could answer in writing, as I am informed by Mr. Orin Incandenza you dislike to meet people outside your home and office. I am writing to ask for your cooperation in contacting you with questions which you could answer in writing, as I am informed by Mr. Orin Incandenza you dislike to meet people outside your home and office. I am hoping to hear from you in response to this request at your earliest convenience, I am hoping to hear from you in response to this request at your earliest convenience,Etc. etc. etc.

Saprogenic Greetings * *

WHEN YOU CARE ENOUGH TO LET A PROFESSIONAL SAY IT FOR YOU.

Ms. Helen SteepleyAnd So OnNovember Y.D.A.U.Dear Ms. Steepley:Fire away.V.D.,MK BainSaprogenic Greetings/ACMe

From the Desk of Helen Steeply Contributing Editor Moment Magazine Magazine 13473 Blasted Expanse Blvd.

Tucson, AZ, 857048787/2 Mr. MK BainSaprogenic Greetings Inc.BPL-Waltham Bldg.1214 Totten Pond RoadWaltham, MA, 021549872/4.November Y.D.A.U.Dear Mr. Bain:Q, Q, Q (Q, Q[Q], Q, Q, Q), Q, Q (Q), Q, Q. 269 269

Carved out of sedimentary shale and ferrous granite and generic morphic crud - at more or less the same time the hilltop's bulge was shaved off and rolled and impacted level for tennis - are E.T.A.'s abundant tunnels. There are access tunnels and hallway tunnels, with rooms and labs and Pump Room's Lung-nexus off both sides, utility tunnels and storage tunnels and little blunt off-tunnels connecting tunnels to other tunnels. Maybe about sixteen different tunnels in all, in a shape that's more generally ovoid than anything else.

11/11, 1625h., LaMont Chu, Josh Gopnik, Audern Tallat-Kelpsa, Philip Traub, Tim ('Sleepy T.P.') Peterson, Carl Whale, Kieran McKenna - the bulk of the ambulatory sub-14 male Eschatonites - plus ten-year-old Kent Blott - are 26 meters directly below the Hal/Darkness match's Show Court with Glad Handle-Tie 270 270 trashbags and B.P. low-diffusion compact mercuric flashlights. Plus Chu has a clipboard with a pen attached to its clamp with twine. The sounds of compet.i.tive sneaker-movement and spectatorial bleacher-squeaks on the surface, travelling down through meters of compacted crud and polymerized cement tunnel-ceiling w/ parget-layer, sound rather like the stealthy dry scuttle of rodents, vermin. And this heightens the excitement that's part of why they're really down here. trashbags and B.P. low-diffusion compact mercuric flashlights. Plus Chu has a clipboard with a pen attached to its clamp with twine. The sounds of compet.i.tive sneaker-movement and spectatorial bleacher-squeaks on the surface, travelling down through meters of compacted crud and polymerized cement tunnel-ceiling w/ parget-layer, sound rather like the stealthy dry scuttle of rodents, vermin. And this heightens the excitement that's part of why they're really down here.

One part of the reason they're down here is that small U.S. boys seem to have this fetish for getting down in the enclosed fundaments underneath things - tunnels, caves, ventilator-shafts, the horrific areas beneath wooden porches - rather the way older U.S. boys like great perspectival heights and spectacular views encompa.s.sing huge swaths of territory, this latter fetish accounting for why E.T.A.'s hilltop site is one of its trump-cards in the recruiting war with Port Washington and other Eastern-seaboard academies.

Another part is a semi-punitive s.h.i.t detail in which certain players - judged to have been involved in the recent Eschaton nonstrategic-combat debacle, but who are uninjured 271 271 and not in the much severer hot water that the Big Buddies on the scene are in - have been punitively remanded below ground in P.M. shifts on what's supposed to const.i.tute an unpleasant ch.o.r.e, to scout out the tunnelled route the TesTar All-Weather Inflatable Structures Corp.'s professional guys will have to take as they haul out from the Lung-Storage Room the fibergla.s.s struts and crosspieces and dendriurethane folds that compose the Lung, for erection of the Lung, when the E.T.A. administration finally decides that the late-fall weather has gone beyond character-building and become an impediment to development and morale. This will be soon. Because the prorectors live in rooms off the larger tunnels and F. D. V. Harde's Physical Plant and Maintenance guys have their offices and supplies down here, and because Dr. James Incandenza's old optics and editing facilities are down here off one of the main tunnels and get used for Leith/Ogilvie cla.s.ses in entertainment production and for optical science tutorials etc., and because a couple of the secondary and off-tunnels are used for temporary storage by departing seniors who can't tote eight or more years' worth of acc.u.mulated stuff in one post-graduate load - especially if they jet off to some novitiate-pro Satellite circuit for the summer, because that means air travel, two bags plus gear, max - some of the tunnels become badly littered in the warm season with trash-type material. And sometimes there's bulky-possession-type overflow from the little curved storage tunnels off the prorectors' hallway. Smaller kids are perfect for recons into low narrow tunnels partly blocked with dross, and even though it's no secret around E.T.A. that the smaller boys spend a fair amount of time down in the tunnels anyway, a retributive aspect is lent to this recon-detail by making the kids take down Handle-Tie trashbags to clear away littered exam papers and lab-handouts, calculator-batteries and banana peels and Kodiak smokeless-tobacco tins and spirals of synthetic-gut racquet-string, and Maintenance guys' hideous cigar-b.u.t.ts - Sleepy T.P. finds two bright Trojan wrappers just off the prorectors' hallway-tunnel, and then a couple meters farther along the floor the vermiform gleam of an actual condom, and there's some high-register debate about whether it's a used condom or not, and poor old Kent Blott is finally put in charge of picking it up and putting it in a trashbag, just in case it's a used condom - and empty boxes of complimentary corporate gear, and full boxes of f.a.ggy or poorly-absorbent gear n.o.body wants, and Habitant can-wrappers, and senior trunks and dorm-sized fridgelettes, etc.; and also to move whatever boxes they can heft, clear them out of the TesTar guys' access-route into the Lung-Storage and Pump Rooms; and LaMont Chu is supposed to note the location of any boxes or objects too bulky for them to move out of the way, and beefy custodial guys will be dispatched to handle them as they see fit. and not in the much severer hot water that the Big Buddies on the scene are in - have been punitively remanded below ground in P.M. shifts on what's supposed to const.i.tute an unpleasant ch.o.r.e, to scout out the tunnelled route the TesTar All-Weather Inflatable Structures Corp.'s professional guys will have to take as they haul out from the Lung-Storage Room the fibergla.s.s struts and crosspieces and dendriurethane folds that compose the Lung, for erection of the Lung, when the E.T.A. administration finally decides that the late-fall weather has gone beyond character-building and become an impediment to development and morale. This will be soon. Because the prorectors live in rooms off the larger tunnels and F. D. V. Harde's Physical Plant and Maintenance guys have their offices and supplies down here, and because Dr. James Incandenza's old optics and editing facilities are down here off one of the main tunnels and get used for Leith/Ogilvie cla.s.ses in entertainment production and for optical science tutorials etc., and because a couple of the secondary and off-tunnels are used for temporary storage by departing seniors who can't tote eight or more years' worth of acc.u.mulated stuff in one post-graduate load - especially if they jet off to some novitiate-pro Satellite circuit for the summer, because that means air travel, two bags plus gear, max - some of the tunnels become badly littered in the warm season with trash-type material. And sometimes there's bulky-possession-type overflow from the little curved storage tunnels off the prorectors' hallway. Smaller kids are perfect for recons into low narrow tunnels partly blocked with dross, and even though it's no secret around E.T.A. that the smaller boys spend a fair amount of time down in the tunnels anyway, a retributive aspect is lent to this recon-detail by making the kids take down Handle-Tie trashbags to clear away littered exam papers and lab-handouts, calculator-batteries and banana peels and Kodiak smokeless-tobacco tins and spirals of synthetic-gut racquet-string, and Maintenance guys' hideous cigar-b.u.t.ts - Sleepy T.P. finds two bright Trojan wrappers just off the prorectors' hallway-tunnel, and then a couple meters farther along the floor the vermiform gleam of an actual condom, and there's some high-register debate about whether it's a used condom or not, and poor old Kent Blott is finally put in charge of picking it up and putting it in a trashbag, just in case it's a used condom - and empty boxes of complimentary corporate gear, and full boxes of f.a.ggy or poorly-absorbent gear n.o.body wants, and Habitant can-wrappers, and senior trunks and dorm-sized fridgelettes, etc.; and also to move whatever boxes they can heft, clear them out of the TesTar guys' access-route into the Lung-Storage and Pump Rooms; and LaMont Chu is supposed to note the location of any boxes or objects too bulky for them to move out of the way, and beefy custodial guys will be dispatched to handle them as they see fit.

This is why a fair number of the smaller E.T.A. males don't see Stice take a set off Hal Incandenza and nearly beat him, is that they were remanded down here by Neil Hartigan right after post-conditioning showers.

As noted already, they don't much mind it, being down here, now in one of the child-size-diametered off-tunnels between the prorectors' hallway and the Lung-Storage Room. The Eschatonites are down here quite a lot anyway. In fact the sub-14 E.T.A.s historically have a kind of Tunnel Club. Like many small boys' clubs, the Tunnel Club's unifying raison d'etre is kind of vague. Tunnel Club activities mostly involve congregating informally in the better-lit main tunnels and hanging out and catching each other in lies about their lives and careers before E.T.A., and recapitulating the most recent Eschaton (usually only about five a term); and the Club's only formal activity is sitting around with a yellowed copy of Robert's Rules Robert's Rules endlessly refining and amending the rules for who can and can't join the Tunnel Club. A true boy-type club, the Tunnel Club's least vague raison d'etre has to do with exclusion. The vital No-Girls exclusion is the only ironclad part of the Tunnel Club's charter. endlessly refining and amending the rules for who can and can't join the Tunnel Club. A true boy-type club, the Tunnel Club's least vague raison d'etre has to do with exclusion. The vital No-Girls exclusion is the only ironclad part of the Tunnel Club's charter. 272 272 With the exception of Kent Blott, every boy down here on this detail is an Eschatonite and a member of the Tunnel Club. Kent Blott, ineligible for Eschaton because he's a humanities-type kid and hasn't even taken quadrivial Algebra yet, and excluded from the Club under every incarnation of the eligibility requirements thus far, is down here solely because he was heard to maintain at lunch that he was in the north part of the main tunnel between the Comm.-Ad. locker rooms and the subterranean laundry room this A.M., short-cutting back to his room in West House after drills and a sauna, and claimed to have espied - scuttling out of his mercuric light toward one of the secondary tunnels to Subdorms C and D and the East Courts and this same general tunnel-area they're now in - to have sighted what was either a rat or, he said, what looked even more like a Concavitated feral hamster. So the Eschatonites are also enthusiastic to be down here for potential rodent-recon, checking out Blott's claim, and they've brought what's either a very nervous or very excited Blott down with them, so they can trace the possible routes Blott said he saw the rodent maybe take, filling their Glad Handle-Ties and noting heavy items along the way, and also so they can immediately encircle and discipline Kent Blott if it turns out he was yanking people's chains. With the exception of Kent Blott, every boy down here on this detail is an Eschatonite and a member of the Tunnel Club. Kent Blott, ineligible for Eschaton because he's a humanities-type kid and hasn't even taken quadrivial Algebra yet, and excluded from the Club under every incarnation of the eligibility requirements thus far, is down here solely because he was heard to maintain at lunch that he was in the north part of the main tunnel between the Comm.-Ad. locker rooms and the subterranean laundry room this A.M., short-cutting back to his room in West House after drills and a sauna, and claimed to have espied - scuttling out of his mercuric light toward one of the secondary tunnels to Subdorms C and D and the East Courts and this same general tunnel-area they're now in - to have sighted what was either a rat or, he said, what looked even more like a Concavitated feral hamster. So the Eschatonites are also enthusiastic to be down here for potential rodent-recon, checking out Blott's claim, and they've brought what's either a very nervous or very excited Blott down with them, so they can trace the possible routes Blott said he saw the rodent maybe take, filling their Glad Handle-Ties and noting heavy items along the way, and also so they can immediately encircle and discipline Kent Blott if it turns out he was yanking people's chains.

Plus they make Blott be the one to take full trashbags and tie their plastic handles together and drag them back to where the expedition started - the entrance to the large smooth main tunnel by the boys' sauna - since none of them enjoys dragging full trashbags solo through dark tunnels with the rodential squeaking of match play and spectation far above. Chu holds a penlight in his teeth and writes heavy stuff down. They've filled several bags and gotten the lighter s.h.i.t stacked off back enough to create a narrow route almost all the way to the Pump Room, around which Room hangs a strange sweet stale burny smell that none of them can place. The applause as Hal Incandenza barely takes the first set above sounds down here like faraway rain. The off-tunnel's dark as a pocket, but warm and dry, and there's surprisingly little dust. Ducts and coaxials running along the low ceiling make Whale and Tallat-Kelpsa have to crouch as they walk Point, clearing boxes and trying unsuccessfully to move fridgelettes back out of the way. There are several pockets of small but heavy dorm-size Maytag fridgelettes, the kind of thing no graduate takes with him, panelled in dark wood-grain plastic, some of them old models with three-p.r.o.ng plugs instead of chargers. Some of the empty fridgelettes have been indifferently scrubbed out and have their doors partway open and smell stale. Most of Chu's inventory for beefy-adult removal are either fridgelettes or locked trunks full of what sound like magazines and eight-year acc.u.mulations of pennies. The m.u.f.fled rodential squeak of sneakers far overhead excites the Tunnel Club boys and puts them on edge. Philip Traub keeps making little squeaky noises and secretly tickling the back of people's necks, causing enormous excitement and much stopping and starting and tightly-enclosed whirling around, until Kieran McKenna captures Traub tickling Josh Gopnik in the bright beam of his P.B. light and Gopnik punches Traub in the radial nerve, and Traub clutches his arm and weeps and says he's quitting and going topside - Traub's the youngest kid here except for Blott and is a probationary second-string launcher in most Eschatons - and they have to stop and let Chu note and mark two discarded fridgelettes while Peterson and Gopnik try to distract and amuse Traub into staying and not retreating back up to Nw.a.n.gi and making a high-pitched stink.

Discarded fridgelettes, empty boxes, immovable and complexly-address-labelled trunks, used athletic tape and Ace bandages, the occasional empty Visine bottle (which Blott stashes in his sweatshirt-pouch, for Mike Pemulis's next contest), Optics I & II lab reports, broken ball machines and stray tennis b.a.l.l.s too dead even for the repressurization machine, broken or discarded TP cartridges of stroke-a.n.a.lysis filmings or worn-out entertainments, an anomalous set of parfait gla.s.ses, fruit peels and AminoPal energy-bar-wrappers that the Club itself had left down here after meetings, discarded curls of grip and tensile string, several incongruous barrettes, several old broadcast televisions some older kids used to like to keep around to watch the static, and, along the seam of wall and floor, brittle limb-shaped husks of exfoliated Pledge, expanses of arm and leg already half-decayed into fragrant dust - this comprising the bulk of the crud down here, and the kids don't much mind scanning and inventorying and bagging it, because their minds are diverted by something else very exciting, a kind of possible raison d'etre for the Club itself, unless Blott had been tweaking their Units, in which case look out Blott, is the consensus.

Gopnik to a sniffling Traub, while Peterson shines his flashlight on the clipboard for Chu: 'Mary had a little lamb, its fleece electrostatic / And everywhere that Mary went, the lights became erratic.'

Carl Whale pretends to be immensely fat and moves along the wall with a blimpish splay-legged waddle.

Peterson to Traub, while Gopnik holds the light: 'Eighteen-year-old top-ranked John Wayne / Had s.e.x with Herr Scht.i.tt on a train / They had s.e.x again / And again and again / And again and again and again,' which the slightly older kids find more entertaining than Traub does.

Kent Blott asks why a wispy-d.i.c.ked blubberer like Phil gets to be in the Tunnel Club while his own applications get turned down, and Tallat-Kelpsa cuts him short by doing something to him in the dark that makes Blott shriek.

It's utterly dark except for the dime-sized discs of their low-diffusion B.P.s, because they've left the tunnels' strings of bare overhead bulbs off, because Gopnik, who's originally from Brooklyn and knows from rodents, says only a complete booger-eating moron would do rat-reconnaissance in the light, and it seems reasonable to a.s.sume that feral hamsters, also, have a basically ratty att.i.tude toward light.

Chu has Blott see whether he can lift a bulky old doorless microwave oven that's lying on its side up next to one wall, and Blott tries and barely lifts it, and pules, and Chu marks the oven down for the adults to lift and tells Blott to drop it, which invitation Blott takes literally, and the crash and tinkle infuriate Gopnik and McKenna, who say that scanning for rodents with Blott is like fly-fishing with an epileptic, which cheers Traub up quite a bit.

Feral hamsters - bogey-wise right up there with mile-high toddlers, skull-deprived wraiths, carnivorous flora, and marsh-gas that melts your face off and leaves you with exposed gray-and-red facial musculature for the rest of your ghoulish-pariah life, in terms of late-night hair-raising Concavity narratives - are rarely sighted south of the Lucite walls and ATHSCME'd checkpoints that delimit the Great Concavity, and only once in a blue moon anywhere south of like the new-border burg of Methuen MA, whose Chamber of Commerce calls it 'The City That Interdependence Rebuilt,' and anyway pace pace Blott are hardly ever seen solo, being the sort of rapacious locust-like ma.s.s-movement creature that Canadian agronomists call 'Piranha of the Plains.' An infestation of feral hamsters in the waste-rich terrain of metro Boston, to say nothing of the clutter-tunnelled E.T.A. grounds, would be an almost grand-scale public-health disaster, would cause simply no end of adult running-in-circles and knuckle-biting, and would consume megacalories of displaced pre-adolescent stress for the E.T.A. players. Every ear-c.o.c.ked eye-peeled bag-toting kid in the off-tunnel this afternoon is hoping hamster in a big way, except for Kent Blott, who's hoping simply and fervently for some sort of rodential sighting or scat-sample that'll keep him from being disciplinarily hung upside-down in a lavatory stall to shriek until a staff-member finds him. He reminds the Tunnel Clubbers that it's not like he'd claimed he espied the thing actually Blott are hardly ever seen solo, being the sort of rapacious locust-like ma.s.s-movement creature that Canadian agronomists call 'Piranha of the Plains.' An infestation of feral hamsters in the waste-rich terrain of metro Boston, to say nothing of the clutter-tunnelled E.T.A. grounds, would be an almost grand-scale public-health disaster, would cause simply no end of adult running-in-circles and knuckle-biting, and would consume megacalories of displaced pre-adolescent stress for the E.T.A. players. Every ear-c.o.c.ked eye-peeled bag-toting kid in the off-tunnel this afternoon is hoping hamster in a big way, except for Kent Blott, who's hoping simply and fervently for some sort of rodential sighting or scat-sample that'll keep him from being disciplinarily hung upside-down in a lavatory stall to shriek until a staff-member finds him. He reminds the Tunnel Clubbers that it's not like he'd claimed he espied the thing actually heading heading in this direction, he'd only seen the thing scuttling in a way that seemed to suggest a in this direction, he'd only seen the thing scuttling in a way that seemed to suggest a tendency tendency or like or like probability probability of heading in this direction. of heading in this direction.

One whole box on its side with its frayed strapping tape split has spilled part of a load of old TP-cartridges, old and mostly unlabelled, out onto the tunnel floor in a fannish pattern, and Gopnik and Peterson complain that the cartridge-cases' sharp edges put holes in their Glad bags, and Blott is dispatched with three bags of cartridges and fruit rinds, each only about half full, back to the lit vestibule outside the Comm.-Ad. tunnel's start, where a serious pile of bags is starting to pile fragrantly up.

Plus a confirmed feral-hamster sighting, Chu and Gopnik and 'S.T.P.' Peterson have agreed, could well distract the Headmaster's office from post-Eschaton reprisals against Big Buddies Pemulis, Incandenza and Axford, whom the Club's Eschatonite faction doesn't want to see reprised against, particularly, though the consensus is n.o.body would much mind seeing the malefic Ann Kittenplan hung out to dry in a serious way. Plus hamster-incursions could be posited to account for the occult appearance of large and incongruous E.T.A. objects in inappropriate places, which started in August with the thousands of practice b.a.l.l.s found scattered all over the blue lobby carpeting and the carefully arranged pyramid of AminoPal energy bars found on Court 6 at dawn drills in mid-September and has gained momentum in a way no one cares for one bit - feral hamsters being notorious draggers and rearrangers of stuff they can't eat but feel compelled to f.u.c.k with anyway, somehow - and so ease the communal near-hysteria the objects have caused among aboriginal blue-collar staff and sub-16 E.T.A. alike. Which would make the Tunnel Club guys something like heroes, foreseeably.

They move along the tunnel, their mercuric lights Xing and separating and forming jagged angles, colored faintly pink.

But even a confirmed rat would be a coup. Dean of Academic Affairs Mrs. Inc has a violent phobic thing about vermin and waste and insects and overall facility hygiene, and Orkin men with beer-bellies and playing cards with naked girls in high-heeled shoes on the backs (McKenna's claim) spray the bejeesus out of the E.T.A. grounds twice a semester. None of the younger E.T.A. boys - who have the same post-latency fetish for vermin they have about subterranean access and exclusive Clubs - none of them has ever once gotten to see or trap a rat or roach or even so much as a lousy silverfish anyplace around here. So the unspoken consensus is that a hamster'd be optimal but they'd settle for a rat. Just one lousy rat could give the whole Club a legit raison, raison, an explicable reason for congregating underground - all of them are a bit uneasy about liking to congregate underground for no good or clear reason. an explicable reason for congregating underground - all of them are a bit uneasy about liking to congregate underground for no good or clear reason.

'Sleeps, you think you could lift that and carry it?'

'Chu man I wouldn't even get up next to whatever that is much less touch it.'

Blott's footfalls and tuneless whistling can be heard from far away, returning, and the distant squeak of overhead sneakers.

Gopnik stops and his light pans, playing on faces. 'OK. Somebody farted.'

'What's this up next to it, Sleeps?' Chu backing up to widen his light's beam on something broad and squat and dark.

'Could I get some lights over here on this you guys?'

'Because did somebody go ahead and cut one cut one in this little unventilated s.p.a.ce?' in this little unventilated s.p.a.ce?'

'Chu, it's a room fridge, that's all.'

'But it's bigger than the room fridges.'

'But it's not as big as a real fridge.'

'It's in-between.'

'I do smell something, though, Gop, I admit.'

'There is is a smell. If somebody farted, speak up.' a smell. If somebody farted, speak up.'

'Otherwise it's a smell.' smell.'

' Don't try to describe it.' Don't try to describe it.'

'Sleeps, that's no human fart I've ever smelled.'

'It's too powerful for a fart.'

'Maybe Teddy Schacht was having an attack and staggered down here just to cut one.'

Peterson trains his light on the midsized brown fridge. 'You don't possibly think...'

Chu says 'No way. No way.'

'What?' Blott says.

'Don't even think it,' Chu says.

'I don't even think any kind of mammal mammal could fart that bad, Chu.' could fart that bad, Chu.'

Peterson's looking at Chu, both of their faces pale in the mercuric light. 'No way way somebody'd graduate and leave and put their fridge down here without taking the food out.' somebody'd graduate and leave and put their fridge down here without taking the food out.'

Blott goes 'Is that the smell?'

'Was this Pearson's fridge last year?'

Sleepy T.P. turns around. 'Who smells a, like, a like decay-element?'

Lights on the tunnel ceiling from upraised hands.

'Quorum on decay-type odor.'

'Should we check?' Chu says. 'Blott's hamster might be in there.'

'Gnawing on something unspeakable, maybe.'