A man with a pony tail and rustic clothing comes into the library, checks out the women, and then goes up to the reference desk. "Can I get this report, uh: Conference on Kinetics, Equilibria, and Performance of High Temperature Systems?"

"H'm. Let me see - you mean," gesturing to his screen, the clerk says diffidently, "Conference on Performance of High Temperature Systems. Performance of high temperature systems. Proceedings? Would that be it?"

The other man peers at the radiant text from beneath excessively bushy eyebrows. The clerk watches him as he reads, thinking, Three children could play hookey in those eyebrows. Finally the man blinks ten or fifteen times and says:

"Yeah, that's it. How do I find it?"

"Well, the number you see there — "

"That where it is? ISSN 0589123X?"

"No, it's this number here, 'TL 784 C6 C6', but you have to — "

"Where do I find that?"

"It's in the — "

"C'mon, get with it! No time for monkeying around, this is rocket science! Let me remind you, your VCR wouldn't work if it weren't for we scientists, so — !"

"Yes, I know. But you have to go to the 'Science Library' for this book, which is — "

"No time for monkeying around!"

"I see. I see. This is not the 'Science Library'. Let me tell you something, no goddam self-respecting physicist in the goddam postwar period has been helped, even a little bit, by goddam poets or movie star sons-of-bitches", says the man. "Not even — this much," he adds, holding thumb and forefinger minimally apart to demonstrate the paucity. "So why can't I get this book right here, right now?"

The clerk says, after a moment's reflection, "You sound a bit like Patton, if you don't mind my saying so. I think he was a great general, in any case."

The man starts doing a slow rain dance in the space before the desk. Raising his fists, knees bent, head back, turning around in giant steps, as if wearing leaden boots. Sometimes he leans his upper torso forward, sometimes back. He adds to the performance a facial expression of ultimate agony, of one who is in the very throes of death: the very effective silent scream. All this lasts for probably no more than a quarter of a minute.

"Actually," says the clerk, "the 'Science Library' is right next door. You'll need to go to the third floor, turning left as you leave the elevator. Five minutes. Just out that way. There's also a sign, a map, actually. Just behind you."

The man looks at the clerk blankly, and then slaps himself hard on the forehead and goes back to doing his rain dance, this time making little wheezing noises. The clerk watches him, and soon other people stop what they are doing and come to watch as well. Several people sit down on the floor at a judicious distance from the dancer. Others watch from behind some waist-high shelving units, where binders containing a complete (and, as far as possible, current) list of periodicals may be consulted. After a while someone comes up to the reference desk and whispers:

"Is there anywhere you can get, like, popcorn?"

"No," says the clerk. "Sorry about that."