The Free Lunch Page 8

  “Who?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to direct your thinking in any one direction just yet. No preconceptions.”

  Mike thought about it. “So what do we do?”

  “We try and think like them.”

  “But we don’t know who they are.”

  “But we know something they’re doing. Forget why, for a moment. Suppose we—you and I—made it our mission to do what they’ve done. How would we go about it?”

  Mike tried to think, but swiftly realized he lacked tools. “I don’t know, Annie. You know this place a million times better than I do.”

  “True,” she agreed, and frowned ferociously. “And I confess that, so far, I come up empty.”

  “Huh? I mean…really?”

  “To smuggle people out of here, you have to smuggle them in, in the first place. As you well know, there are upwards of half a dozen weak points to this place, junctures at which it’s possible to slip a person into the system without them being tagged right away.”

  Mike only knew of three weak points. “Okay. So we—”

  She frowned even harder. “I told you when you came here you would have to listen to me. I said ‘a’ person. There is no point I know at which you could possibly introduce half a dozen people a day…much less outfit them in genuine Dreamworld Troll costumes. We know at least six got through today I’m pretty sure yesterday’s satellite photos show six ringers leaving the parking lot. That many, day after day…no, even with infinite resources, it’s just out of the question. For a start you’d have to alter either the incoming or outgoing totals, and you know yourself how hard that is to do. You’d have to steal Troll suits wholesale, or make your own and smuggle them in, too. On a daily mass production basis, I just can’t see it.” She shook her head. “No, it’s up to you.”

  He was horrified. “What do you mean, it’s up to me?”

  She started to cloud up—then got control of herself with a visible effort. Her voice came out calm. “I will not repeat myself again. You know what all four of those words mean.”

  “Why me?”

  “Mike, I know all there is to know about Dreamworld—and I say what’s happening can’t be happening, so I’m no use. But you broke in here more recently than I did. I’m soaked in thirteen years of indoctrination. My opinions about the security of this place are nearly identical to those of Phillip Avery and his Security staff—and clearly, all of us are wrong. If anybody is qualified to spot the flaw in our thinking, it’s someone who recently outwitted the system.”

  Mike was almost in despair. “But I don’t know how!”

  “Close your eyes.” He did. “Now remember how badly you wanted to come Under.” Again, he obeyed. “You’re right back where you started—outside, wanting in. Only now imagine this—you have two brothers and three sisters, and it’s just as important to get all of them Under, too. All at once.”

  Mike did his best. He thought of all the weak points he’d identified in weeks of careful study. Nothing came to him. Two, maybe; three, conceivably—six, impossible.

  “Hurry,” she said softly. “There isn’t much time. Your little sisters are depending on you.”

  Damn it, it wasn’t fair! The safety of Dreamworld on his back, and the welfare of five imaginary siblings—why was it up to him?

  And then suddenly insights started going off like a string of firecrackers in his mind.

  First, he thought of a reason why it might be his responsibility. He was Under. Annie was, too, but she had spent most of the last thirteen years paying her ticket. Mike hadn’t paid a thing, yet.

  That triggered insight number two: the “Mother Elf” those two mechanics had been discussing in the tunnel was Annie! Mike had almost known that when he heard them, he’d just been too busy and too scared to think about it. Who else could Max have meant? Mike suddenly recalled his first hour Under—remembered Annie stopping at a machine, frowning, and marking it with a curious symbol on the wall, just like the one he’d seen over the defective machine in the tunnel. Annie looked after this place, backstopped the people who kept it in good running order, directed their attention to developing problems, fixed little things that failed to show up on an alert-board before they became big things. She wouldn’t be able to help herself. And she’d be careful, very careful, but still, over thirteen years, the crew—all the crews—would come to sense her existence, and half believe in her and half not. Maybe they left her cookies.

  That was the example he had to live up to. And all he owed her was everything, and she wanted his help.

  So he thought twice as hard as he had so far.

  He pictured a small group of dwarves, dressed as Trolls, suddenly materializing in some unnoticed corner of Dreamworld.

  And all of a sudden it was as if Firefall had suddenly gone off behind his eyelids, the whole thing in that enclosed space. The thought train went by so fast that the shock of slamming to a halt at its conclusion drove most of it from his head—but he never doubted it for an instant. Before he could start to doubt, he opened his eyes and spoke.

  “I think I know how it’s being done,” he said. “And you’re right: that tells us a lot about who’s doing it.”

  Annie was already grinning. Somehow she’d known he had the answer before he did. “Good man. I knew you could do it. Tell me: who are the bastards?”

  “Aliens,” he said. “The outer-space kind, I mean.”

  SHE FROWNED FEROCIOUSLY and opened her mouth, and he was quite certain she was going to tell him he was crazy, or a dumb little kid, or at the very least that he was wrong. But what she finally said was, “Tell me why you think so.”

  Dimly grasping the extent of the implied compliment, he pressed on. “Dreamworld can make fake people appear out of thin air. But even Dreamworld can’t make real people appear out of thin air. Well, somebody else can. Forget why for now—whoever’s doing it has better technology than Dreamworld, and zillions of dollars to spend, right? Okay, who’s on that list? One of the other theme parks? If they had better technology than Dreamworld, they’d be using it to make half as much money for once, not to play games. Some giant multinational? Same thing. The FBI? You told me they can’t even get agents in here without asking permission first—and where would they get all the dwarves? The Chinese government? I don’t believe it—if they could do it, they’d do it at the Pentagon, not here. I keep striking suspects off the list, and pretty soon I’ve eliminated everybody on the planet.” Annie opened her mouth again, but then closed it. “There just isn’t anybody with better technology than Dreamworld. Nobody on Earth. We’ve eliminated the impossible.”

  Annie kept her mouth closed.

  After a while, Mike said. “You asked me the other day if I believed in magic. Do you believe in life on other planets?”

  She glowered.

  “The thing I always hate about movies where the ETs come here,” he said, “is how stupid they always are. They come all this way, and then they aren’t smart enough to observe us without getting caught at it, and then there’s a big stupid fight ’cause they scared us.”

  She said nothing.

  “So suppose you’re an alien, and you’re pretty smart. Smart enough to come light-years. You’ve already seen years of our TV, on the way, so you know a lot about us. You want to send down some observers—not an army or anything, just half a dozen a day or so—without causing a fuss. And you all look like trolls. What spot on the surface do you pick to beam down to? Where do they already have a lot of trolls?”

  This time Annie’s mouth fell open.

  “They’re going Under…on Earth, the way we’re Under in Dreamworld—” Mike kept on talking for a while, but he had the idea Annie wasn’t listening anymore, and shortly she proved him right by interrupting him. “How do we know it isn’t a fucking army?”

  “What?” He was shocked; he had never expected to hear Annie use that word—when she knew he was listening, anyway. “An army? Six or seven soldiers at a time?”r />
  “Suppose you have alien technology, beyond the ken of mere mortals. How many Terminators do you need to take a planet?”

  Guerrillas? Invading through Dreamworld? Mike had been thinking of them as explorers. Annie’s notion was horrifying. “They’re dwarves—,” he protested, and broke off, flustered.

  “Ever see a Gurkha?” Annie asked coldly. “Do you think Darth Vader could take Yoda in a fair fight? Do you think there’s a Security man in Dreamworld who could take me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mike said. “I wasn’t trying to put down little people, okay?” Dumb, tactless and dumb, to tell a midget that little people could never pose a serious threat. And wrong, too—he could see that, Annie was right about that: size was irrelevant if you had advanced technology. Yet he still instinctively resisted the idea of an invading troll army—so he searched for a better argument against it. “Look…what do you think is the longest they could possibly keep this up before somebody else notices? I mean, we did. How long before Dreamworld does?”

  Annie looked surprised. “Why…you’re right, of course, it can’t go on indefinitely. Avery isn’t stupid. I guess I would say…on the order of a month. A month and a half, at the outside.”

  “Okay. If they’re smart enough to dream this up in the first place, they’re smart enough to know that. Let’s say they’re averaging five beam-downs a day. Thirty-five a week. The most they can reasonably expect to get through before being spotted is two hundred and ten guys. And that’s only if they don’t make a single mistake, or have any bad luck—like you.”

  She nodded. “So?”

  “If you had weapons so good that two hundred of you could beat a planet…why would you bother sneaking in through an amusement park?”

  Annie’s face went through interesting changes.

  It was a novel and heady sensation for Mike, being taken seriously by a grown-up, having his opinions listened to and deemed intelligent. He wished he had time to appreciate it.

  “I think they’re here to study us,” he said. “Like Sir Richard Burton sneaking into Mecca. They’ve seen TV—probably even enough to know that’s not what we’re really like: now they want to find out what we are really like. Two hundred of them isn’t enough to whip us; that’s why they’re sneaking in. That and to avoid freaking us out and messing us up—you know: like the Prime Directive on Star Trek.”

  He’d had her up until then, but the last two words brought her up short. She made a sour mouth. “Oh, this is ridiculous. I can’t believe I’m sitting here seriously discussing the motives of spacemen. I accept that I am compelled to, since I can’t think of an alternative explanation for what’s going on—but let’s keep television out of it, all right? The Prime Directive is wishful thinking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Advanced technology does not imply advanced ethics.”

  “Why not? Smart is smart.”

  She hesitated, then continued. “Look at us humans. We’re not a particularly ethical species. Outside of Dreamworld, anyway: that’s why this place is so special. And yet we very nearly have star travel—we could probably do it now, if we really wanted to. Instead we have nuclear weapons. How ethical has our sophistication made us?”

  “We’re more ethical than we used to be,” Mike said. “We’ve had nuclear weapons for more than seventy-five years…and we’ve only used two. Did we do that good with gunpowder?”

  She blinked. “‘That well,’” she corrected absently.

  He ignored it. “Just as we got smart enough to make factories, we invented liberty. You know? The smarter we get, the smarter we start acting. We can afford to, ’cause we’re not starving.”

  Annie blinked again, leaned forward and stared at him closely, then shook her head vigorously. “You are the damnedest little boy.”

  “I know our society isn’t very smart, or kind. Believe me, I know. But it’s the smartest, kindest one that ever was on this planet, so far—from what I learned in school, anyway. Maybe by the time we’re smart enough and rich enough to send two hundred guys to Alpha Centauri and beam them down to a planet there, we’ll be smart enough to be doing it for a good reason. Just to learn, maybe. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  She still did not look convinced, but he had her thinking, he could tell. He had himself thinking, too.

  “Think about this,” he tried. “Is this the only place they could have picked?”

  “Huh?” Annie actually blushed. “I mean, come again?”

  “They could have beamed down to any remote spot. In the mountains somewhere, in a desert. Any dark street at three A.M. If half a dozen aliens materialized in a crack house, they’d get a round of applause. Or if it had to be someplace with a lot of little people, they could have used any big school yard, or Thrillworld or one of the other big theme parks. Of all the spots on Earth they could have picked…”

  “They picked Dreamworld,” Annie finished.

  “That’s gotta mean something.”

  She frowned and chewed her lip. “Yes. But what?”

  “Well…maybe they just like the place. Like me. Like you. Like everybody with half a brain.”

  Annie got a real funny look.

  “Why wouldn’t they?” he went on. “How many places are there in North America where you can be absolutely sure there isn’t anybody carrying a weapon around? Where you couldn’t cause a riot if you tried? You know Dreamworld, Annie: if an angry grizzly bear came roaring down the street, half the kids would run to it and try to pet it, feed it candy. And their parents would let them. It’s not like Thrillworld, where stuff’s getting blown up or killed all the time, and you have to sign a waiver to get in. It’s a nice place to be.”

  She got up from the table, walked over to her computer and then back again. “Then why do these aliens keep leaving, every night?”

  Mike shrugged. “Same reason kids do. They have to go to school the next day.”

  She walked back to the computer, spun the chair to face it, and sat. She fiddled with the keyboard, but did not boot up. Mike resigned himself to a long silence, and suddenly she whirled the chair back to face him and yelled, “I cannot believe I am talking as if I believe this! I don’t believe things like this.”

  “You think we’re alone in the Galaxy?”

  “Of course not,” she said impatiently. “I’ve always believed there’s life out there somewhere. But damn it, boy, this is just like all the stupid flying-saucer stories, with exactly the same logical problem. Intelligent life does not cross light-years to play hide-and-seek!”

  “This isn’t like flying saucers at all,” Mike said stubbornly. “These guys didn’t get spotted by some airliner pilot, or a farmer in a cornfield, or a cult. Nobody saw them…except you. They play hide-and-seek good.”

  Annie clouded up. For a second he thought she was going to erupt, and flinched. She saw that…and got control of herself with a visible effort. She took three deep breaths, each longer than the last, and her features became serene.

  All at once it seemed totally clear to Mike that she was right and he was nuts—that his ingenious theory was nonsense, childish, fantasy bullshit. His conviction evaporated, and he was ashamed. He felt his cheeks grow hot, groped for words with which to backtrack—

  “I have to admit I have no better explanation for the facts,” Annie said slowly.

  Again, Mike did an emotional instant-180. “Holy shit—”

  She held up a hand. “I am going to think now. Very hard, for a long time. You will be as quiet as possible while I do.” She got up from the computer, went to the bed, and lay down. “Think yourself, or read, or play games with headphones on, or go Top-side if you like.” She clasped her hands on her belly, closed her eyes, and appeared to go to sleep.

  Mike was too excited to read or sit quietly, but reluctant to leave. How could he just walk around Dreamworld like a tourist, knowing there were aliens in it somewhere?

  After some contemplation he slouched in his chair, put his ca
lves up on the table, folded his hands in his lap, and did some thinking himself.

  AN HOUR OR so later, Annie suddenly got up from the bed, went to the computer, and sat down. “If you’re right,” she said slowly, staring at the blank screen, “and if they’re as smart as you think they are…and assuming their luck holds…then at some point, the tide will turn. School will be over—this semester, anyway. They’ll start coming back in again, sneaking in with the morning shift and then beaming up to the mother ship or whatever.” She spun away from the keyboard and faced him, but she was still talking to herself. “The longest they could plan on is a month or so…so the turnaround point can’t be later than the end of the second week…and for all I know, they could have been doing this for days already…haven’t been paying as close attention as usual, these last few days, what with a houseguest…so we may have no more than a week to work with…”

  “What do you mean?” Mike asked. “To do what?”

  “To catch the sons of bitches. And kick them the hell out of Dreamworld. I’m going to find out what they’re up to, boy. If I like it, I’ll let them continue—but somewhere else! And if I don’t, I’m going to kill every last one of them.”

  “ANNIE, THAT’S CRAZIER than my whole idea!”

  She nodded.

  “I mean…look, you’re pretty smart, but there’s no way you’re gonna beat an alien civilization by yourself”

  “Of course not. I have you. A godsend, just when I needed one.”

  “Jeepers—”

  “You can say ‘Jesus’ in front of me, boy. You can say anything grammatical, if you—”

  “Jesus, Annie, we can’t do this. We just—”

  “They want quiet,” she said, smiling dreamily.

  “What?”

  “Whatever they’re doing here, they don’t want it on TV. That gives me a lever.”

  Oh. That was certainly true. “But how do you use it? If they catch you spying on them, they could—”

  “You’ve read it at least a hundred times, boy. The hero must deal with a criminal too powerful to threaten. So what does he do? He lets the criminal know he’s left a sealed letter with a third party, with instructions to open it if he doesn’t report back by a certain time. You’re the sealed letter, Mike.”