The Free Lunch Page 5

  “Hell for?”

  “If she’s real—if she’s really been there all along—then she knows every single weakness of the place. Maybe some that even Avery doesn’t know about. Get me a handle on her.”

  “It’ll cost,” Conway said. “She’s way underground. You sure she’s worth it?”

  “One time I looked down at my hand and saw a straight flush, ace high,” Haines said. “Hardly seemed worth it to have the waitress go peek at the other guys’ hands. But there was a lot of money on the table, and what did I care if I wasted her time, so I gave her the sign again anyway. We were playing with wild cards, see, and one of those sons of bitches had five deuces. I was so happy, later that week I let her go back to being a human being again.”

  Conway nodded. “You can always use more information.”

  “How soon can I talk with the Elf?”

  Conway thought a moment. “Soon.”

  Haines was so pleased he squirmed in his chair, and to hell with his hemorrhoids. No, even more pleased than that. “I’m adding a ten percent bonus to your fee,” he said, not quite believing the words even as he heard them leave his mouth. “And another ten after I see the Elf.”

  Now Conway’s face wanted to smile, too, but he managed to control his. That annoyed Haines slightly…and in an odd way he welcomed that small annoyance, clung to it as a lifeline back to the disposition and worldview he knew.

  It made little difference, anyway. Once he had brought down Dreamworld once and for all, once he had scattered its rubble and salted its fields and pissed on the graves of its every defender, then he could afford to crush a Conway a week, for the pure sport.

  Damn, now he was happy again.

  He reminded himself sharply that ultimate victory was impossible. He could conquer Dreamworld, conquer Avery…but the Antichrist himself, Immega, had escaped him into death. Haines could—and now would—beat Thomas Immega…but he could never have the satisfaction of knowing that the son of a bitch knew it.

  There. That helped…

  C H A P T E R 5

  STOOLED TO THE ROGUE

  Annie was still asleep when Mike woke. He slipped out of bed, found his shorts, tiptoed to the toilet, and closed the door behind him before turning on the light.

  At once he had a problem. The toilet bowl was full of water. Full—there was no dry land to aim for: he was going to make a loud splash. This could not be a sound Annie was used to sleeping through. He could try sitting…but he had done that just yesterday, in the girls’ room, and it had made almost as much noise as standing up. The only other solution he could think of—putting his foot into the bowl and peeing down his leg—had limited appeal. The default choice was to hold it until Annie woke up. He turned back to the door—

  —and stopped halfway. Annie must have installed these fixtures herself: her sink was set lower than usual, at a height convenient for her. That made it convenient for Mike…and a sink can be flushed clean much more quietly than a toilet.

  Back outside, he catfooted around in near darkness until he understood the kitchen well enough to use it. The microwave, fridge, and coffeemaker appeared to be standard issue for a small Dreamworld food outlet. The limited selection he found in the fridge consisted almost entirely of prepared breakfasts: mostly egg rollups in assorted flavors, again clearly scavenged from restaurant supplies. The most common flavor was Huevos Jalapeños, his own favorite, so he put two of those into the microwave and set the timer, but did not start it yet. He set up coffee—Dreamworld Sulawezi, the only kind Annie stocked—but did not trigger that, either. He laid out plates, cups, and silverware for two—her entire supply, apparently—on the table. Then he sat down and waited.

  As he waited, he wondered whether the second plate, cup, and silverware implied that Annie ever had other guests, besides himself. Or was it just so that, if she broke something, she wouldn’t have to interrupt a meal to go get a replacement?

  As soon as he heard her breathing change, he got up and switched on the coffee and oven. Annie and the coffeemaker started making burbling sounds roughly simultaneously, but she stopped sooner.

  “Jesus,” she said reverently, as the smell reached her.

  He began serving. It took most of his attention, and by the time he had everything ready, Annie was sitting at the table in a blue robe, scowling. He poured the coffee, noting that she took hers with sugar and cream. Of course: why else would she stock them? He put plenty of both in his own.

  Midway through her first sip, her scowl softened to a frown. “You put salt in it,” she said wonderingly.

  “Just a pinch,” he said, afraid he had blundered. “It makes it less bitter.”

  “I know what it does,” she said. “I’m just surprised that you know the trick.” She toasted him with her cup.

  He relaxed, and returned the gesture.

  They ate in companionable silence, and when they were through, she got up to clear away before he could. He sat back and examined the books on the nearest shelf. Some of the titles were unfamiliar, some even inexplicable to him, but there were also a lot of old friends. Not just Dreamworld-related books like Bridge of Birds or Have Spacesuit—Will Travel, either. He’d half expected to find those, and The Princess Bride and all the rest. But Annie also had a lot of his favorite books that had no connection with Dreamworld. The Flying Yorkshireman. Edgar Pangborn’s Davy. The First and Second Saint Omnibus. The Little World of Don Camillo. John D. MacDonald’s entire Travis McGee series, in sequence, in paperback. All of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder books, in hardcover. Theodore Sturgeon’s masterpiece, Godbody, and some of his story collections.

  And there on the third shelf, a copy of the most recent, eighty-eighth reprinting of his mother’s and grandmother’s favorite book: Will Cuppy’s immortal The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. Mike’s eyes stung. The precious tattered copy of the thirty-fifth printing Mom had given him for his seventh birthday had been the one possession he’d been most tempted to take with him when he went Under. He’d finally abandoned it only because she had used his full name in her inscription: if he’d lost it anywhere in Dreamworld it would have meant disaster, and he could not bring himself to tear out or deface the inscription.

  “Something wrong, Mike?”

  He smoothed his face. “Just the opposite. I like your books.”

  She looked pleased. “You read. Remarkable. Especially these days. Wait until you see those.”

  He looked to the bookcase she indicated, over by the armchair, and squinted. Suddenly he was leaning forward in his chair. “Holy—”

  Ranked in rows in uniform, like the set of encyclopedias he’d taken them for, massive gold volumes with scarlet titles.

  DREAMWORLD BLUEPRINTS. DREAMWORLD SYSTEMS OVERVIEW. DREAMWORLD ENTERTAINMENT (twin volumes: PRODUCTION and PERFORMANCE). DREAMWORLD CYBERNETICS. DREAMWORLD FX. DREAMWORLD ROBOTICS. DREAMWORLD HYDRAULICS. DREAMWORLD ENGINEERING. DREAMWORLD POWER. DREAMWORLD HOLOGRAPHY. DREAMWORLD MAINTENANCE. DREAMWORLD SUPPLY & DISPOSAL. DREAMWORLD PERSONNEL. DREAMWORLD SECURITY. DREAMWORLD MEDICAL. DREAMWORLD MERCHANDISING. DREAMWORLD R & D. DREAMWORLD. PUBLICITY.

  The master manuals. A complete set of the Keys to the Arcana…

  “Close your mouth,” Annie said. “I can see your tonsils.”

  “May I read them?”

  “If you treat them with respect,” she said.

  He stood up, found that his knees were shaky. “I think I can promise you that.” His voice came out shaky, too. He moved forward.

  “But the Pageant starts in twenty minutes.”

  He stopped in his tracks. “Oh gee. We can go up and see it?”

  Her eyes twinkled at his predicament—but her voice was kind. “Every morning for the rest of your life, if you want.”

  He was torn. The mother lode itself was meters away. But—“I only got here early enough to see the Pageant once,” he said.

  “That settles it,” she told him. “Those books aren’t going anywhere. Besides, a gent
leman doesn’t start reading before noon. It’s the first step on the slippery slope to total degeneracy. You wind up sitting in the gutter, unwrapping wet newspaper from a dead fish to get at Continued on Page C-Twelve. Get your shoes on and we’ll go.”

  “Okay.”

  She frowned. “Wait. You have a bogus Dreamband?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Of course.” There was no way you could last more than ten minutes in Dreamworld without one, without being noticed.

  “Let me see it.”

  He showed it to her. “You make this yourself?” she asked, and after some hesitation he nodded. “Nice job. I had one I was going to give you, but this is almost as good.” He felt himself grow slightly larger as he soaked up the praise. “Okay, saddle up.”

  By the time he was ready to travel, she had worked a magic transformation on herself—he almost cried out when he first saw it. She was now Mike’s own age. It wasn’t a mask, it didn’t seem to be makeup. She was just—somehow—a child. The skin of her face was as smooth and unwrinkled as his own, even on her neck.

  His astonishment must have showed. She grinned—and there wasn’t even a smile wrinkle on that face yet, now. “Trust me, those are not attractive tonsils,” she said.

  To his obscure relief, her voice came out the way he remembered it, husky and old. He closed his mouth.

  “That’s better,” she said, and held up her left wrist to display a fake Dreamband of her own. “This way I don’t have to be Cast. We can both be Guests, and walk and talk together without drawing any attention. I’ve got my Command Band in my pocket, in case we need it.”

  He nodded. “That’s good.” He decided to ask. “Will you tell me how you did that? Changed the way you look?”

  She grinned again. “Before or after you dig into those manuals?”

  He thought hard. “Before.”

  “Good instincts,” she replied. “It’s one of the deepest darkest secrets of Dreamworld. But we’ll have to wait till we get back here. It isn’t something you can talk about Topside, where Guests might overhear.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Come on, we better hurry.”

  Halfway to the door he stopped, suddenly too happy to walk. “Annie?”

  “What?”

  “This is gonna be really great, isn’t it?”

  She understood at once. “Yes, Mike,” she said, nodding slowly. “I think it is.”

  LOOKING BACK ON it in later years, Mike would conclude that this was probably the happiest day of his life.

  The Pageant was even better than he remembered; the state of the art was always improving, and today’s Cast were really first-rate. When it was over, he and Annie simply let their feet guide them away from the Plaza, critiquing the newest effects together too intensively to care where they walked. As they passed through Florin, they were politely accosted by one of Mike’s favorite characters—and for the first time in his life he succeeded in beating Fezzik at rhymes, winning a holocaust cloak from the giant and a look of respect from Annie.

  More than once a passing child greeted Annie by name, and Annie introduced Mike to all who did. One or two he had seen around before; regulars like himself. He even saw one grown-up nod and smile at Annie, who waved back.

  They turned east, wandered down Route 25A with the sun in their eyes, had a Coke in Callahan’s while listening to Fast Eddie play “Small Fry.” He was a very good Fast Eddie, too, the best Mike had ever seen—even better than the one on the old TV series. When Mike smashed his glass in the fireplace, his toast was “To freedom”—and behind the bar Callahan said “Amen” and added his own glass, triggering a barrage from all around the room. Mike was grinning proudly when they left. Annie had let him pay for the Cokes—and had flattered him by not even checking first to make sure he intended to pay with cash rather than traceable plastic.

  They turned north on Penny Lane by tacit mutual agreement. There they did all the usual things—said hello to the Barber, bought a poppy from the Pretty Nurse, laughed at the Banker—but today they were somehow even more fun than usual for Mike. To his surprise, Annie let him have a four of fish, and the hell with spoiling his appetite for lunch; he had not realized there was an adult female alive who could countenance such a thing. She had two finger pies herself. This time she paid, using plastic. He sneaked a look; it said her name was Agnes Meade. The wiper accepted it without a hiccup. She disposed of it with the napkin, a few minutes later. He had been wondering what he would do when his small supply of cash was exhausted; now he stopped worrying about it.

  When they finished eating, they wandered over into the Fields—pausing to use the Fields WC—and took the conventional, public elevator up Johnny’s Tree together. Annie held his hand the whole way, so they wouldn’t get separated when they became invisible, and he found the sensation interesting. It was not as weird and embarrassing as he’d always imagined holding a girl’s hand would be…but it wasn’t at all like holding your mother’s hand, either. Actually, it felt kind of good—like when your best bud punched you on the shoulder and made your arm go numb. Mike hadn’t had a best bud in some time.

  When they reached the top, he found that now, in daylight, he could just barely make out the edges of the hidden elevator door. He was careful not to stare at it. They were able to get the same spot they’d had eight or nine hours earlier, out on the branch. He looked around, briefly pictured everything out there crawling in the moonlight, and found nothing repulsive in the image. Because of that, this was now as beautiful as it was. He wished he could tell Annie…then realized she already knew. He could tell by the way she was holding his hand.

  It was, in short, a perfect day. Even more so than a normal day in Dreamworld, enhanced by three powerful spices: he was here illicitly, and he didn’t have to leave at closing time, and he had a friend.

  By midafternoon, after listening to Master Li give a riotous lecture in drunken verse to Number Ten Ox, Mike had reached a state of happiness overload and heard himself ask Annie if they could go back Under again for awhile. She understood at once and slipped her Command Band onto her wrist. They made sure they were unobserved, walked straight into a dragon’s mouth, turned to the right…were back at Annie’s place ten minutes later.

  Where, impossibly, it got better.

  “ALL RIGHT, BOY. I’ll tell you the secrets of Dreamworld. Ask me anything. Want to know why it’s so hard to have a bad time here?”

  Mike hesitated. It would be easy to just say yes. But this was a day for taking risks. “I…” He caught himself before he could say, “uh,” and pressed on. “…think maybe I know that one.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “So? Interesting. What’s your theory?”

  Now he was committed. “Well…I’m really into music a lot. And I read once in a book about the notes that people can’t hear, that are too high or too low. You can only hear from twenty cycles a second up to about twenty thousand, you know. Dogs and cats can hear some of the hypersonics, the ones that are too high. But the subsonics, the ones that are too low…I read there’s this one note, fourteen cycles a second, and if you play that note real loud, nobody can hear anything, but they start to get, like, nervous and uptight and scared, and if you keep it up they freak out—no, really,” he said, seeing Annie’s face.

  She smoothed it over. “I wasn’t arguing. Go on.”

  “Well, it just stands to reason. I think if there’s a note you can’t hear that makes you feel real lousy, there must be another one that makes you feel real good. There’s speakers everywhere you go in Dreamworld. Once I came here with a Walkman, and I just didn’t have as much fun whenever I had the ear things in my ears. And another time when I had a cold and my ears were stopped up…what?”

  Annie was looking at him funny again. “Mike,” she said slowly, “that is one of the lesser secrets of Dreamworld. At least four national governments and perhaps twenty private individuals have figured that one out. It took all of them a great deal of time and effort and a lot
of other people’s money to nail it down; I watched most of them do it. You aren’t old enough to shave, and you cracked it with a Walkman. Is there any chance I could rent that brain whenever you’re not using it? Or do you have such times?”

  “I really figured it out?”

  “In the Far East, there is a temple with only one entrance. You have to stoop to go in. Everybody who does so, without exception, the moment they get inside and straighten up, they burst into tears. Subsonics. The building’s architecture and acoustics combine perfectly to produce and sustain just the right tone. Thomas Immega figured that out and got to experimenting on a computer.”

  He was thunderstruck. “What’s the note?” he asked excitedly. “What frequency?”

  She gestured toward the shelf of master manuals. “Look it up.”

  Somehow he had known that was what she was going to say. “I will. Tell me something else. A big one. How…I know: how do they make you see stuff that’s not there, and sometimes not see stuff that is?”

  Again she raised an eyebrow. “The Black Bird!”

  “Hu…beg pardon?”

  “That’s the biggest big one of all. The main secret. Nobody on earth who isn’t loyal to Dreamworld knows that one, Mike. Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Absolutely positive. I’d keep the secret under torture.”

  She didn’t smile. “I believe you really would. Okay, sit there a second—”

  Dynamite could not have removed Mike from his chair. Annie rummaged, returned with a camcorder. She powered it up, held a fingertip just in front of its lens, and fiddled with the focus. “Okay, look right into it,” she said, and held the camcorder about a decimeter from his right eye. He obeyed. “Look straight ahead; try to keep your eye absolutely still. Hold it…hold it…hold it steady…don’t blink now…fixed stare…good.” She stopped taping, shifted her aim from his face to the monitor across the room, and tapped keys to send it the file. The screen lit and began replaying what she had just taped, in slow motion. “Come here,” she said, and led him closer to the monitor. “What do you see?”