Karf looked up from his cards and met Mike’s eyes for a long moment. Mike did his best to send the nonverbal message we mean you no harm, but the squad leader looked dubious. Mike realized his own Troll makeup probably wasn’t helping.
“Any you happena know how the Giants done?” came a booming voice from above and behind Mike.
Karf covered quickly and well, glancing down at his cards. Because Mike happened to be staring directly at his eyes, only he of all of them instantly understood that Karf’s brain had just overloaded and crashed. Karf had absolutely no idea what the question meant, had no clue how to answer it, and had far too many urgent things to think about already: all his circuits were fused. All the other time-travelers would wait for their squad leader to take the lead; by the time they realized he was frozen, and manufactured some response, a most suspicious hesitation would have occurred. Annie couldn’t know anything about sports—hell, she didn’t even watch the news. Mike craned his head around to face the newcomer, for the first time in his life wishing to God he followed sports.
Inspiration came to him in the time it took him to turn his head: he grimaced and, remembering at the last microsecond to deepen his voice, growled, “Christ, how do you think they did?”
“Shit,” the man said, and let his shoulders slump slightly. He was of taller than normal height, which must have helped confuse Karf as to what he’d meant by “giants.” He was a Cousin, already changed into street clothes.
“You got that right,” Annie said. “I don’t even watch anymore.”
Still craning his neck to look up at the tall Cousin, Mike kicked Karf’s foot under the table. “Me, either,” Karf blurted.
“I also stopped,” Durl said, and a few of the other Trolls had the presence of mind to mumble agreement.
The Cousin looked mournful. “If only they got rid of you-know-who…”
“Not much chance of that,” Mike hazarded.
“Why not?” the man asked argumentatively.
Mike was lost now. He put on a knowing look, winked up at the guy, and said, “Think about it.”
There was a pause, and then the Cousin said, “Oh, I get you. Yeah, sure.”
I bluffed him, Mike thought. He has no idea what I’m talking about, but he doesn’t want to admit it and look dumb. Mike’s neck was getting stiff from looking up and over his shoulder at the man. He decided there was no reason to hide the fact, reached up, and began massaging his vertebrae.
The guy took the hint. “Didn’t mean to hold up your game, guys. Catch you later.”
“Later,” Mike agreed, and a ragged chorus of muttered “Later”s came from several of the others at the table. The man left and headed for the exit.
“Nice work, Mike,” Annie murmured.
He had completely forgotten about Conway the moment the Cousin had spoken, had ceased to do his half of holding Conway’s sleeping body upright. He saw now that Annie had picked up the slack for him: she had an unobtrusive death grip on Conway’s belt. “You, too,” he said, and leaned back inward and braced himself so she could let go.
Karf was staring at him. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it.
Mike blushed. “My pleasure,” he said.
Karf stared even closer. Suddenly Mike understood. Karf was trying to figure out how old he was. Mike was presently in character as an adult midget maintenance man, using the adult voice and mannerisms that had been fooling other adults for days now, but something had cued Karf that he was really a kid. The time-traveling Troll opened his mouth to ask the question, and Mike stared back expressionlessly and dared him to ask it, and Karf closed his mouth and went back to his cards.
Mike’s triceps began to ache from the strain of holding Conway vertical with his elbow, and he remembered a minor question that had been nagging at him. He knew Annie would have some brilliant answer for it, but he decided it was time to learn what it was. The room was filling fast, and soon it would be time to do whatever it was she had planned. He turned and muttered past Conway to her, too softly for the others to hear. “So what do we do about this guy?”
She shrugged. “Any suggestions?” she murmured back.
Mike was horror-struck. He realized at the last instant that he’d never be able to control his voice if he spoke aloud, so he only lip-synched the words You haven’t got a plan?
She shook her head.
Unable to consult his wristband without dropping Conway, he looked wildly around the room, located a clock. In a few minutes this room was going to empty out, and it would be time for all of them to leave. Karf and Hormat and Durl and their friends out to the parking lot, and from there to wherever their next port of call might be; Mike and Annie back into Dreamworld. But it was going to be very difficult for them to walk away from a large muscular man who could not sit upright unassisted, without drawing attention to themselves.
Mike sat there and thought furiously, turning over possible scenarios in his mind. None of them worked, even in his fantasies. Seconds ticked away, then minutes. People around him perceptibly began to gather themselves to leave, and Mike began to panic. If Annie couldn’t think of anything, what the hell was he supposed to do? He sneaked another look at her. She seemed utterly serene…but by now he knew her well enough to realize that she was badly worried herself. His heart sank.
He glanced away. Not wanting to meet the eyes of any of the time-travelers and spook them, he looked at the people nearest the table, employees standing around waiting for the hour to strike. Two of them caught his eye, and suddenly a ludicrous picture formed in his mind. His arm throbbed from the strain of supporting Conway.
He measured angles, made his decision, turned to Annie and said, “Follow my lead.”
Her eyes widened slightly, and she nodded.
Just then there came the sound of a bell being gently struck three times.
The room came alive, and under cover of the commotion he said, “Everybody stand up,” just loud enough for the table to hear, and, “Help me get him up,” to Annie.
Between them they got Conway to his feet plausibly. All the Trolls likewise stood up, looking uncertain. Karf gathered in the cards, frowning ferociously.
“Good-bye,” Mike said to them, and nodded toward the exit.
They needed no further urging and left at once.
“Let me have him,” Mike said, and when Annie let go of Conway, Mike gave him a twist and a shove that caused him to fall headlong in front of the two employees he’d picked out. He landed bonelessly and hard, blocking their path.
“His heart,” Mike cried. “He stood up fast and then said something about his heart—”
The two employees bent over Conway, solicitous looks on their faces. Others were watching, but only with idle curiosity. Nothing really bad could happen to you in Dreamworld. Once they were sure Conway wasn’t someone they knew, and the problem was being dealt with, most glanced away and continued heading for the door.
“Start CPR,” Mike barked at one of them, and “You—help him,” at the other. They nodded and obeyed.
Annie was staring at him. Past her he could see the time-travelers approaching the exit, not looking back. As he watched, the first of them passed out the doors.
“His brother just went on shift at Power House Three,” Mike snapped at Annie. “Go tell him what happened. I’ll get the Healers.” He spun her, pushed her ahead of him, and together they ran back into Dreamworld.
Mike couldn’t help grinning as he left the room. Properly done, cardiopulmonary resuscitation often broke ribs, and every Dreamworld employee had passed the course. The one Mike had chosen to administer it was a Frost Giant, muscled like a movie barbarian. If having his chest compressed by a monster brought Conway out of his drugged stupor, he would find himself being kissed by a Bearded Lady from The China That Never Was who, Mike happened to know, had remarkably bad breath.
His feet seemed to have wings. This was fun.
THEY USED MAXIMUM caution in returning to Annie’s place,
doubling back on their tracks four times, but saw no signs of pursuit or surveillance.
It was uniquely exhilarating for Mike to stride through Dreamworld victorious, and full of secrets so marvelous that Thomas Immega himself would gasp to hear them. This whole vast colorful kaleidoscope of compatible fantasies that he loved so well seemed to shimmer around him, more real than it had ever been, more real than Mike had ever dreamed anything but pain could be. He had entered it fully at last; he was a genuine sidekick. Whenever they were above ground, along the way everyone they passed seemed to smile at him. Whenever they were Under, other employees grinned at him. Yet he was absolutely certain that he was not smiling himself: he was doing his best to imitate a sober adult maintenance man just coming on shift. But people smiled. Since none of them challenged his right to be Under, he decided not to fret about it.
Once they were safely back home, with the door sealed, Mike allowed himself a muffled whoop and a victory dance. “We did it, Annie!” Out of sheer exuberance, he tried to bring her into the dance. It was like trying to dance with a tree; he gave up at once. “Sorry.”
“We did what, exactly?” she asked sourly.
He blinked. “Why, we—”
“We know that time-travelers are passing through Dreamworld. They know we know. Apart from that, things stand exactly as they were yesterday. All we basically accomplished today was to get home alive.”
“So…that’s good, right? What’s wrong with survival? I can live with surv—”
“I was surviving just fine before you came along,” she snapped, and turned away and walked very quickly to the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.
Mike was too shocked to move or call after her. He stood there staring stupidly at the closed bathroom door. The sound of running water from the sink came through the door, then intensified as she turned the taps wide open.
It was not ignorance that held Mike frozen. He knew what it meant when they locked themselves in the bathroom and ran the water loud. It was the shifting gears, the instant change from triumph to concern, from thinking of Annie as his partner in crime, hero to his sidekick, to thinking of her as a woman crying in the bathroom. Mike had been doing a lot of instant emotional 180s lately, and it didn’t seem to be getting any easier with experience. His thoughts came slow and hard, like footsteps in deep mud.
She’s crying in there. Got to make her stop. Why is she crying? Doesn’t matter, gotta make her stop. If they go in there and cry and you don’t make them stop, sometimes they try and die in there. Hard to make them stop, though. Be even harder, not even knowing what she’s crying about. What’s she crying about?
The question was beyond him; his first instinct was to take it to some older, wiser head…like Annie. Briefly he fantasized himself knocking on the door and asking Annie to advise him. But then he heard a sob over the sound of the rushing water, and: gotta make her stop! so he thought about it some more.
What’s happened that Annie might be sad about?
Well, let’s see. Her whole life turned upside down without warning. Thirteen years of hermitage shot to hell. Her beloved home threatened by unknown forces of two different kinds, both terrifyingly powerful, both with unknown motives and agendas. The past twenty-four hours spent basically scrambling to stay alive and maintain her status Under, bluffing on a tightrope in a high wind. With a partner who thinks the whole thing is the neatest adventure ever. And all she can do now is try and get a night’s sleep and wait to see who contacts her first tomorrow, Haines or the time-travelers, and hope she can keep outbluffing and out-thinking them.
Okay, maybe you know why she’s crying now. Some of it, at least. Maybe you anyway know enough to construct some sympathetic, soothing things to say. How do you get her to turn off the water and listen to you?
He went to the bathroom and knocked firmly. “Annie? No hurry, but I have to go.”
The door opened almost at once. She had made no effort to disguise the fact that she’d been crying—but it was clear she had stopped. “I’m sorry, Mike.”
“No problem,” he said. “I could have waited.”
“I’m sorry for what I said,” she insisted. “None of this has been your fault.”
“Oh, that,” he said, shrugging it away. People when they cried said unforgettable, unforgivable things they didn’t mean; everybody knew that. “No biggie. You were upset.”
“That doesn’t excuse it.”
It doesn’t? “Okay, then I excuse it.”
She started to smile and stopped herself. “Thank you.”
“Okay if I pee now?”
She did smile then, just a little, and stepped out of the doorway. “Sure.”
“Too bad,” he said. “I don’t have to. I was bullshitting to get you to open the door.”
Now she was grinning outright. “Then make us both some coffee, and soon you will have to pee. Meanwhile, we can discuss the events of the day together, and plan our strategy for tomorrow.”
He grinned back. “Really?”
“Why, do you have to be up early for school in the morning or something?”
He hesitated. “Well, we have a big day tomorrow. Two important messages coming in. They could get posted two minutes after Opening. Actually, I’ll be kind of surprised if they don’t.”
“I don’t recall promising to pick up either message by any particular time. If they don’t like the hours I keep, they can negotiate with somebody else. Let ’em stew—all of ’em! And let us brew…” She made a go-on gesture with her hands, and he went to make the coffee, and she went back into the bathroom and ran the taps again, this time to wash her face.
AN HOUR LATER Annie put down her empty second cup of coffee and frowned so ferociously that her eyes all but disappeared. “We’re spinning our wheels,” she said angrily. “Wasting good skull sweat.”
Unused to coffee in the evening, Mike was still nursing his cold first cup. “We are kind of going in circles,” he admitted.
“Everything depends on the answer to one question. The same one I asked Hormat. What in the name of God’s golden gonads could they possibly be doing here, in our time? That’s why I never believed in time-travel for longer than it took to read a good sci-fi novel—until I had my nose rubbed in it. Altering history is supposed to be utterly catastrophic—well beyond comparative trivia like nuclear winters or asteroid impacts. It seems axiomatic that stupid people don’t develop time-travel. Having developed it, what purpose could induce a sensible person to risk using it?”
She got up and began the process of making herself a third cup of coffee. “I want to like these time-travelers,” she said over her shoulder as she worked. “I’ve met them. They seem like decent enough people. Hormat impressed me, and none of them caused my Jerk Alarm to go off. Furthermore, anyone Haines sends a man like Conway after ought to be a friend of mine.” She slid the filter basket into place, triggered the machine, and with her palms flat on the countertop, stood with her back to him long enough for the carafe to start filling. She lowered her head, and when she spoke again her voice was soft. “But after much thought, I have only one theory on what could have made them take the hair-raising risk of traveling back in time.” She straightened and turned to face him.
“And?” Mike said.
“And, I really, really hate my theory.”
She pushed away from the counter, came back, and resumed her seat. The only sound for a minute or so was the chuckle of the coffee dripping.
“Annie, Hormat and Durl are Good Guys,” Mike began finally. “I’m sure of that.”
“I know,” she said angrily. “I said that. Good Guys can do bad things, Mike. For what seem to them good reasons.”
He knew that was true.
She searched for words. “Try this: describe them in a single word. The way they act—all six of them. What is their predominant emotion?”
He thought about it, took a shot. “Scared?”
She nodded. “And what else?”
He thought harder. “I guess…well, sad.”
She nodded again, more vigorously. “Yes! I’d have said ‘resigned’ myself. But ‘sad’ is just as close. With a subtle little flavor of something else I can’t put my finger on.”
He thought he knew what she meant. “Embarrassed,” Mike suggested.
She nodded a third time and made a pointing gesture at him. “That’s it. Embarrassed. Almost…almost ashamed.”
“So?”
“Mike, they come across like refugees.”
He blinked. “From what?”
The coffee had stopped dripping. She added cream and sugar, then opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of Irish whiskey, added a generous slug to the coffee. She took a deep experimental sip, sighed in approval, and brought the cup back to the table.
“I’m not sure,” she said then. “But they’re acting like people running for their lives, too terrified to count the risk. Either they’re fleeing some unimaginable natural cataclysm, or…”
“Or what?” he asked, starting to get spooked. The fear in her voice, controlled though it was, was contagious.
She took a second long drink of her Irish coffee. “Or else maybe someone—or…something—is after them. I think they met up with something so horrible that they tore a hole in space and time and dove in to get away from it, and they’re scared spitless it might come out of that hole after them at any moment.”
“Like bad aliens. Real scary ones.”
“That is the scenario that springs first to the mind.”
The Free Lunch Page 15