Meyer Kahaha came and sat on me.

“Get off me, you schlemiel! I know how to save us, it's been here all the time, we never needed that creep snuffle butterfly Kadak!”

So he got off me, and I looked at them with great pleasure because I was about to demonstrate that I was a folks-mensh of the first water, and I said, “Under a ruling in Tractate Berakhot, nine Jews and the holy ark of the law containing the Torah may, together, hey nu, nu, do you get what I'm saying, may together be considered for congregational worship!”

And Reb Jeshaia kissed me.

“Evsise, Evsise, how did you remember such a thing? You're not a Talmudic scholar, how did you remember such a wonderful thing?” Reb Jeshaia hugged and kissed and babbled in my face at me.

“I didn't,” I said, “Kadak did.”

And they all looked up, as I'd looked up, and there was that not-such-an-altogether-worthless-after-all Kadak, sitting up on top of the Holy Ark, the Aronha-Kodesh, the sacred cabinet holding the sacred scrolls of the Lord. Sitting up there, a butterfly, always to remain a butterfly, sitting and beating his wings frantically, trying to let someone know what he knew, something even a Rabbi had forgotten.

And when he came down to perch on Reb Jeshaia's shoulder, we all sat down and rested for a minute, and then Reb Jeshaia said, “Now we will sit shivah. Nine men, the Holy Ark and one butterfly make a minyan.”

And for the last time on Zsouchmuhn (which means look for me) we said the holy words, this last time for the home we had had, the home we would leave. And all through the prayers, there sat Kadak, flapping his dumb wings.

And you want to know a thing? Even that was a mechaieh (which means a terrific pleasure).

Los Angeles, California/1973

Joe Bob Hickey had no astrological sign. Or rather more precisely, he had twelve. Every year he celebrated his birthday under a different Pisces, Gemini or Scorpio. Joe Bob Hickey was an orphan. He was also a bastard. He had been found on the front porch of the Sedgwick County, Kansas, Foundling Home. Wrapped in a stained army blanket, he had been deserted on one of the Home's porch gliders. That was in 1992.

Years later, the matron who discovered him on the porch remarked, looking into his eyes was like staring down a hall with empty mirrors.

Joe Bob was an unruly child. In the Home he seemed to seek out trouble, in no matter what dark closet it hid, and sink his teeth into it; nor would he turn it loose, bloody and spent, till thunder crashed. Shunted from foster home to foster home, he finally took off at the age of thirteen, snarling. That was in 2005. Nobody even offered to pack him peanut butter sandwiches. But after a while he was fourteen, then sixteen, then eighteen, and by that time he had discovered what the world was really all about, he had built muscle, he had read books and tasted the rain, and on some road he had found his purpose in life, and that was all right, so he didn't have to worry about going back. And tuck their peanut butter sandwiches.

Joe Bob attached the jumper cable, making certain it was circled out far enough behind and around him to permit him sufficient crawl-space without snagging the bull. He pulled the heavy-wire snippers from his rucksack, cut the fence in the shape of a church window, returned the snips to the rucksack, slung it over one shoulder and shrugged into it-once again reminding himself to figure out a new system of harness so the bullhorn and the rucksack didn't tangle.

Then, down on his gut; he pulled himself on elbows tight to his sides, through the electrified fence, onto the grounds of the University of Southern California. The lights from the guard towers never quite connected at this far comer of the quad. An overlooked blind spot. But he could see the State Trooper in his tower, to the left, tracking the area with the mini-radar unit. Joe Bob grinned. His bollixer was feeding back pussycat shape.

Digging his hands into the ground, frogging his legs, fiatworm fellow, he did an Australian Crawl through the nomansland of the blind spot. Once, the Trooper held in his direction, but the mini-radar picked up only feline and as curiosity paled and vanished, he moved on. Joe Bob slicked along smoothly. (Lignum vitae, owing to the diagonal and oblique arrangement of the successive layers of its fibres, cannot be split. Not only is it an incredibly tough wood-with a specific gravity of 1.333 it sinks in water-but, containing in its pores 26% resin, it is lustrous and self-oiling. For this reason it was used as bearings in the engines of early ocean-going steamships.) Joe Bob as lignum vitae. Slicking along oilily through the dark.

The Earth Sciences building-Esso Hall, intaglio'd on a lintel -loomed up out of the light fog that wisped through the quadrangle, close to the ground. Joe Bob worked toward it, idly sucking at a cavity in a molar where a bit of stolen/fried/enjoyed chicken meat had lodged. There were trip-springs irregularly spaced around the building. Belly down, he did an elaborate flat-out slalom through them, performing a delicate calligraphy of passage. Then he was at the building, and he sat up, back to the wall, and un Velcro-ing the flap of a bandolier pocket.

Plastique.

Outdated, in these times of sonic explosives and mist, but effective nonetheless. He planted his charges.

Then he moved on to the Tactics Building, the Bacteriophage Labs, the Central Records Computer block and the Armory. Charged, all.

Then he pullcrawled back to the fence, unshipped the bullhorn, settled himself low so he made no silhouette against the yawning dawn just tingeing itself lightly in the east, and tripped the charges.

The Labs went up first, throwing walls and ceilings skyward in a series of explosions that ranged through the spectrum from blue to red and back again. Then the Computer Block shrieked and died, fizzing and sparking like a dust-circuit killing negative particles; then together the Earth Sciences and Tactics Buildings thundered like saurians and fell in on themselves, spuming dust and lath and plaster and extruded wall-dividers and shards of melting metal. And, at last, the Armory, in a series of moist poundings that locked one after the other in a stately, yet irregular rhythm. And one enormous Olympian bang that blew the Armory to pieces filling the night with the starburst trails of tracer lightning.

It was all burning, small explosions continuing to firecracker amid the rising sound of students and faculty and troops scurrying through the debacle. It was all burning as Joe Bob turned the gain full on the bull and put it to his mouth and began shouting his message.

“You call this academic freedom, you bunch of earthworms! You call electrified fences and armed guards in your classrooms the path to learning? Rise up, you toadstools! Strike a blow for freedom!”

The bollixer was buzzing, reporting touches from radar probes. It was feeding back mass shape, indistinct lumps, ground swells, anything. Joe Bob kept shouting.

“Grab their guns away from them!” His voice boomed like the day of judgment. It climbed over the sounds of men trying to save other buildings and it thundered against the rising dawn. “Throw the troops off campus! Jefferson said, 'People get pretty much the kind of government they deserve!' Is this what you deserve?!”

The buzzing was getting louder, the pulses coming closer together. They were narrowing the field on him. Soon they would have him pinned; at least with high probability. Then the squirt squads would come looking for him.