To keep track of the foremen who could not be counted on to reliably number themselves, Omeb marked the back of foreman 2, who just like foreman 3, was also tripedal with a left leg quite short of the ground. The foreman who was really foreman 2 but had earlier called himself foreman 1 led the party to the watchtower, but they were interrupted by the cart driver who had taken them from the stadium. The cart driver wanted to know: what did they intend to do with the remaining passengers who had fallen asleep, and who, he added passively, happened to be the heaviest among them. These were [[Xena]] and Chichi the orangutan, snoring in the back. Omeb shook Xena awake, and argued that she ought to take one of the dissolving oral strips from inside his coat and place it on her tongue, that somehow this would empower her to help them free the orphans from the trammels of their labor. But Xena was not interested in the fate of the children or Omeb’s wares with suspicious provenance, because she did not believe any of the children were capable of killing her, so she excused herself to go home to her penthouse at the top of the tallest tower in [[Outpost B]]. The party could visit her any time, she said, “just tell the doorman you’ve come to kill me.” On the Chichi front, Omeb woke him up and sent him to blend in with the children. In spite of Chichi’s best attempt at disguise, Chichi remained rather obviously an orangutan (except to Squints, to whom he appeared as an underage laborer like the others). But the children were happy for the help and continued singing their packing shanty: > PACKING PACKAGES > FOR TODAY > FOR TOMORROW > ALWAYS PACKING PACKAGES When the party reached the foreman’s office in the watchtower, he climbed over the counter, dropped his voice an octave, and greeted them as Foreman 1. Declan chose the least moldy bed in the back corner to sleep in. Squints noticed that Foreman 1 had on the counter a Book of Death with similar binding to Squints’ own Book of Life. When asked to read a verse, Foreman 1 read aloud: “Be grateful every day.” But Squints corrected him. According to Squints the verse read: “Eat a grapefull every day.” (Of wrath, probably.) Then he read from his Book of Life: “A wild horse must be wild, never tamed,” and climbed over the counter to sit against the wall and lower his wide brim hat over his face for a peaceful sleep right next to Omeb, who had just earlier neighed like a horse and situated himself on the floor as comfortably as he could manage. Sansan, while exploring the room, noticed that one particular floorboard raised above the flush finish of the rest emitted the yelp of a child in pain whenever she stepped on it, which she did three times to be sure she’d heard what she thought she heard. From the little gap under the raised plank, she was able to see a child wearing a potato sack with arm holes. The foreman assured them this child was “Under instruction to learn the value of obedience,” and would be better off in the long run for his participation in the Advance Instruction program. “UNDER INSTRUCTION?” Squints said, scandalized, and without awaiting reply launched his lasso in a preemptive strike. Omeb awoke to the commotion in the corner where he’d neighed and nodded off, and, piecing together the developing conflict, unpacked his chemistry kit and synthesized some chloroform into a small glass vial. Declan, who had only begun to drift asleep and was still tuned into the happenings with one ear, stirred alert and threw the comforter (which was the least moldy in the room) aside and came to assist Sansan lifting the floorboard. With his brass thumbs, he freed the board from the loose nails holding it in, and in fact more than freed it: launched it. Its trajectory carried it out the little window with the mounted flower box and into the courtyard below where it impaled (both corner nails) the elder foreman (index unknown) who had earlier, during the party’s tour of the grounds, presided over the children’s underground panopticon housing. The nails punctured the elder foreman’s back just between his shoulder blades. He shrieked and fell to his knees, frail and startled. No one was around to help or pity him. Meanwhile, Squints’ attempt to lasso Foreman 1 resulted in Squints binding his own wrists to each other. But this was not wholly useless because Squints had formed an embrace around the foreman first and so his wrist binding trapped the foreman in a tight hug from behind. The child under the floorboard, a boy of eight, said, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for all the trouble.” The foreman presently identifying as Foreman 1 stomped on the ground and raised his shoulders. In response to this movement and to his intention, the counter which he’d been working behind rose into the air and launched with significant force outward into the room, where Sansan and Declan were standing. The foreman was a [[wood bender]]. Sansan attempted to dodge the desk, but failed, diving instead into the desk’s immediate trajectory with her hands out ahead of her. Fortunately, Declan chose a different approach. Declan fortified his stance and met the projective counter with his formidable strength as a [[higher ape]] who was already preternaturally strong. In the collision, the desk splintered into thousands of pieces, and Sansan only sprained her wrist by hyperflexion instead of what other nasty consequences might have befallen her. At the same time, Squints initiated his titled move: Frontier Wrangle. In a blink, he and the foreman, who he was still hugging as a result of his bound wrists, were in the air, upside down, and fast descending. The foreman’s head broke the momentum on impact, and because of the sudden bending of his neck, he tore his spinal nerve root at C5-C6, paralyzing his left arm. Omeb had, at the same time as Squints initiated his Frontier Wrangle, leapt across the open space between him and the foreman to cover the foreman’s mouth with chloroform, which Omeb had soaked into some of the papers found on the counter, which featured a grid and drawings of the children the foreman said he had been keeping for the benefactor that provided the Advance Instruction program its research grants. For what research these grants were offered, no one but the foremen knew. In any case, Omeb did not reach Foreman 1 with the chloroform-soaked paper. A projectile splinter from Declan’s shattering of the desk hooked it and sent it out the window, to some unknown destination. Omeb marked the number ‘2’ on Foreman 1’s head using a pen from the counter, not to keep track of him, because he’d already been marked earlier on the back, but to deny him forever (or until the ink washed off) the capacity to identify as his more masculine one-index identity. The war orphan, helped out from the under floorboards by Sansan, said he knew they would come, as prophesied: the Pied Piper and the Big Man.