Wilhelm Krause---the black pessimist, partly insane. Looting, too,
had broken out, but it was halfhearted, so that even the police, grim
soldiers of the street, showed little inclination toward retaliatory
violence. The City, for all its noise and seeming activity, was in a
strangling state of shock.
William found Dr. Krause---whom he had met while hospitalized with
hepatitis (from a rusted syringe)---in his basement laboratory, sunk
ninety feet below the ground, side-cut into solid bedrock at the base of
gigantic Mercy Hospital. For among the towering sky-scrapers, some
reaching over two hundred stories, it was not uncommon for their
foundations to sink another tenth that distance. And along with the
subways, bored farther and farther beneath the level of the streets,
they formed the literal New York underground, a silent world unto
itself, a still, protected inlet in the heart of the maelstrom.
When William burst in upon the aged Krause, the latter did not at first
seem to recognize him. For though he had been preparing for this day
for many years, now that it had come, his mind and heart were simply
overwhelmed. He found himself unable to act, or even think. It was
really happening, not in theory, not in the lecture hall, but in
damnable and undeniable reality.
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