Back at the Hilton we saw another crowd. Police dogs, behaving more like friendly Saint Bernards, were trotting out bottles of the most expensive liquor from the hotel bar and distributing them indiscriminately. In the bar itself policemen and protesters, arms around one another, took turns singing patriotic and revolutionary songs. I tried the basement, but couldn't endure all the converting and cavorting going on in there, so I went to the room with the fire extinguishers to talk to Professor Trottelreiner. To my surprise, he had found three partners and was playing bridge. Quetzalcoatl, a graduate student, trumped his ace; this so angered the Professor that he left the table in a huff. Just then Sharkey stuck his head in the door and announced that he had caught General Aquillo's speech on the radio: they were going to crush the rebellion by dropping conventional bombs on the city. After a brief council of war we decided to retreat to the lowest level of the Hilton, which was an underground sewer system. The hotel kitchen having been totally demolished, there was nothing to eat; hungry demonstrators, phillumenists and publishers stuffed themselves with the chocolate lozenges, aspics and other morsels they had discovered in the abandoned centro erotico at the corner of the hotel wing. I saw how their faces changed when the sexual stimulants contained in those comestibles began to mix in their veins with the benignimizers. One shuddered to think where this chemical escalation might lead. I saw the pairing off of futurologists with Indian bootblacks, I saw secret agents in the arms of hotel janitors, and enormous sleek rats fraternizing with cats-while the police dogs licked everyone and everything in sight. Our progress was slow and difficult, for we had to push our way through a heavy crowd, and I was bringing up the rear, struggling with half the oxygen tanks on my back.