Book One, Occam's Razor; Chapters 6-10 Summary

Hank Devereaux walks through the campus, on the way to the cafeteria in the student center. Along the way he passes the future sight of the Center for Technological studies is to be constructed. Hank wonders if the giant hole in the ground doesn't look more like a mass grave site, a location to dump the bodies of tenured faculty fired due to budget cuts. He finds it hard to believe that there can be budgetary issues when so much money is being spent on this new building. Near the site is a pond where thirty or forty ducks and geese live year round. Devereaux has a brief conversation with Finny, a goose he's named after Finny Coomb, a member of the English department. Leo, an aspiring writer from one of his classes...