"I see. Uh, well, you're quite an organist."
"Yes. But a terrible administrator!" Pertinax now clapped his foot down on the lowest pedal, sounding a rumble too low to hear. "But hark!" he screamed, "there sounds an ominous undertone of warning!" He released the pedal and looked around at Ephraim and me. "I shall now play the famous 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.' This is clearly the work of a young and vigorous Bach, almost ostentatious in his readiness to show virtuosity, reveling in the instrument's ability to bounce mighty themes from the walls of the Kirche… but enough of this, my stops are selected." He looked suspiciously at the ceiling. "This one brings out the bats. Prepare your tennis rackets therefore! Ah. The nuptial song arose from all the thousand thousand spirits over the joyful Earth & Sea, and ascended into the Heavens; for Elemental Gods there thunderous Organs blew; creating delicious Viands. Demons of Waves their watry Eccho's woke! Demons of Waves!" And throwing his head back, he hurled himself into the Toccata. We stood mesmerized by his playing and his probing tongue, until the fugue began; then we retreated to the broadcast booth.
"He's playing stop combinations I've never heard before," said Ephraim. "Anyway, I'm broadcasting all this. He's great."
Down in the tunnels we always kept the radio on low, and so heard plenty of Pertinax in the next few days.
Eventually we brought down the big power supplies from Heimlich Freedom Industries, wrapped in plastic and packed with chemical dessicants to keep them dry, surrounded with electric blankets to keep the electronics warm. Casimir produced several microchips he had stolen from the supplies so that Fred Fine could not use them, and plugged them into their proper spots. We ran thousands of feet of heavy black power cables down into the tunnels to power them. We tested each electromagnet; two were found wanting and had to be sent back and remade. We energized the rail and slid the bucket up and down it hundreds of times, using a small red laser to check for straightness, laboriously adjusting for every defect. It took two days to carry down the machine's parts, four days to adjust it and a day of testing before Casimir was satisfied it would work on its first and only trial.
Virgil worked on the payload, a ten-kilogram high-explosive shell. He used a computer program to design the shaped charge, an enormous program that normally would have run for days, but now required only seconds. The weakened Worm could only taunt him. AH, GOING TO BLOW SOMETHING UP? "I'm going to blow you up."
THREATS OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE ARE USELESS AGAINST THE WORM. This was its usual response to what sounded like threats. YOU'RE VERY CLEVER, BUT I SHALL TRIUMPH IN THE END.
"Wrong. I found where you are."
HUH? "I found the secret mini-disc drives that Paul Bennett hid above the ceiling of his office. The drives where you've been hiding. It's all over now."
I AM EVERYWHERE.
"You are most places, but not everywhere. I'm going to shut off your secret disc drives as soon as I'm sure they aren't booby trapped."
I'M GOING TO BLOW YOU UP.
"I'm going to be careful."
THAT'S A LOT OF EXPLOSIVE FOR YOU TO FOOL AROUND WITH, LITTLE BOY.
"It'll do."
I WILL BLOCK YOUR CALCULATIONS.
"You're living in the past, Worm," typed Virgil, and executed his program. "I have just executed my program. And next, I'm going to execute you."
THREATS OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE ARE USELESS AGAINST THE WORM.
Lute turned the shell on a Science Shop lathe and packed the explosive with a hydraulic press. Virgil carried it down an evacuated stairwell, placing each foot very, very carefully.
Casimir put it on a clean table downstairs and weighed it; ten kilograms precisely. He dusted it off with a lint-free rag and slid it into the bucket. We checked the power sources, and they looked fine. Everyone was evacuated except for me, Casimir and Fred Fine; Virgil led the remaining GASF forces upstairs and commanded them to leave. It was 10:30 P.M.
We sat in the APPASMU for an hour and a half, until Sarah's program came on.
--May--
"Everyone look at Big Wheel!" she said. There was long silence and we sat there on the APPASMU, protected by strobes, the rats chattering and grumbling in the darkness around us, the HFI power sources looking oddly clean and shiny as they flashed in and out of darkness in their own little strobe-pool.