Spider Robinson - The Free Lunch

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The Free Lunch

Spider Robinson

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(if you enjoyed this book please purchase the orginal copy)

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By Any Other Name

*A Tor Book

THE FREE LUNCH

SPIDER ROBINSON

A tom doherty associates book TOR new york

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE FREE LUNCH

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Edited by James Frenkel Design by Jane Adele Regina

A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robinson, Spider.

The free lunch / Spider Robinson.-1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-312-86524-4

1. Runaway teenagers-Fiction. 2. Amusement parks-Fiction. I. Title. PS3568.O3156 F74 2001 813'.54-dc21

2001027196

First Edition: August 2001

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

for herb varley and also for david gerrold and susan allison, unindicted co-conspirators

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book began in 1984 as a conversation at a certain California theme park with my friend John Varley, and quickly

swelled into a full-fledged literary collaboration. By the end of the day, with some help from bystander David Gerrold,

we had our premise, lead characters, and title. Susan Allison of Ace Books then gra-ciously suggested an excellent

plot no one was using at the mo-ment, which helped considerably. The next thing I knew, I was flying from Halifax,

Nova Scotia, to Eugene, Oregon, to spend a week hunkered down in the bunker with Herb - as I call John Varley for no

particular reason - working on the book. (And wearing the same clothes all week: the airline lost my luggage, and Herb,

unlike me, is built like a Viking chieftain.) We refined our characters, fleshed out our plot, defined our themes, and

set-tled on a classic working method: we would alternate chapters, then each do a final rewrite of the total manuscript. I

drew the first straw, typed out a first chapter, passed the ball to Herb, and flew home.

Fifteen years later I broke down and inquired as to his progress, and there wasn't any.

Furthermore, Herb said, he had gone stale on the idea. Some-how. "It was your idea to start with - why don't you write

it yourself?" he suggested. "Oh, by the way, your luggage finally showed up. By now some of the stuff is almost in

style."

And then - in the very next breath - he suggested another col-laboration.

You see why I love this man? So I won't kill him.

Well, the last one had turned out so well, what could I say? And so I'm pleased to report that Herb and I have begun

another book together, tentatively titled The Little Spaceship That Could. (His original idea, this time.) We spent

months of e-mail time plotting it and creating characters together, I completed the first chapter and sent it to him in

May 1997 . . . and I'm sure chapter 2 will arrive any day now. I'm holding my breath, in fact.

Wish us luck. . . .

-Spider Robinson June 1998

TANSTAAFL:

there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. -Robert Anson Heinlein

It is often the fifth ace that makes all the difference between success and failure. -J. B. Morton

THE FREE LUNCH

CHAPTER 1

GOING UNDER

The fourth time was the charm.

At around sunset on a Monday, a well-dressed man in his late forties with a beard and old-fashioned

eyeglasses surrendered his bracelet to the attendant and left Dreamworld, unaccompanied by children or

other adults. He seemed to float through the exit turn-stile, a dreamy smile pasted on his face. He looked, for

the moment, much younger than his age. As he reached the edge of the parking lot, near the roped-off area

where the evening crowd were lining up for admission, his visual-focus distance dropped back from infinity to

things as near as the solar system, and he noticed the pastel sunset. It was more than he could bear. He

stopped in his tracks, drew in a great bellyful of air, threw back his head, and bellowed to the emerging stars,

"Thomas Immega, you brilliant benevolent old son of a good woman,

love you!"

There were giggles from some of the children who waited for admission, and warm smiles from some of the

adults leaving along with him, but only one of the admitting attendants looked up from his work. He was new

at the job.

"I'm going to find out where they've got you planted," the bearded man raved on, "and dig you up and kiss

you right on the moldy lips. You did it

right, Cousin!"

The ticket taker could see how it must have been. The fellow had come to Dreamworld for the first time

old.

Jaded and cynical, he had been told what to expect but had not believed it. He had arrived expecting to sneer.

Now, only hours later, he was stunned by his own monstrous arrogance, and terribly grateful to have been

forgiven for it.

The attendant felt nostalgia and kinship. He hoped the bearded man didn't live too far away. If his home was

outside practical commuting distance to Dreamworld, the bearded man was going to have to move. The way

the attendant had.

He yanked his attention back to his work; his own line was starting to build, and his supervisor would be

offering him help in a minute. But part of his mind remained on the bearded man - who had completed

first-stage decompression and was literally skipping toward his distant car now - and so distracted, the

attendant failed to note that the chubby twelve-year-old before him had only one chin. He took her money,

gave her her map and brochure, fastened a Dreamband around her thick little wrist with something less than

his usual care, and passed her through the gate into Dreamworld without a second thought. He did notice that

her smile of thanks was especially incandescent.

He would have been somewhat puzzled to see it fade, thirty seconds later, as the flaw in her planning became

clear to her.

There were many places in Dreamworld where a child could be alone, and there were some places where

she could be unobserved. But as far as the chubby girl knew, there was only one place she could be both

alone and unobserved - and if she went in there, it might be too dangerous to come out again. She had not

thought Phase Two through far enough - perhaps because subconsciously she had not truly expected Phase

One to succeed.

She wandered aimlessly around the Octagon - the football-field-sized commons from which all eight of the

Paths of Dreamworld originated - for about ten minutes, trying to think of Plan B. The best she could do was

Plan A Prime: go ahead as planned . . . and if it came apart, improvise.

Her bladder cast the deciding vote. She chose the smallest and least popular of the eight available ladies'

rooms, the one way over by the path to the Bounding Main, and forced herself to go in.

No one paid any attention to her. She lingered by the sink, looking at nothing at all, until the stall she wanted

came free: the one nearest the door, with only one neighbor. Once safely locked inside it, she took off her

blouse, turtleneck sweater, breasts, shoes, belly pack, and forearms.

Now he was a twelve-year-old boy with makeup on. He slid his Dreamband off the wrist of his collapsed fake

forearm and put it in his right-hand pocket. He opened the belly pack, took out his own shoes and a

reasonably good counterfeit Dreamband, stuffed everything else into the pack, and zipped it back up. The

sound reminded him of his bladder; he unzipped his fly to attend to the matter. At the last possible instant the

lowered seat reminded him that girls didn't pee standing up; he was able to cut off the flow in time, but it

hurt. Feeling stupid and oddly ashamed, he turned around, sat, and did his business, trying not to wonder

what the napkin disposal unit was.

As he flushed, he blushed, realizing he had not remembered to make any toilet paper noises first. This was

tricky . . .

Now to escape. Improvise. If he could just get as far as the door undetected, he could tell anyone who saw

him emerge that his kid sister had gotten sick, and then maybe he could fade away when they went in to help.

He put his belly pack back on - outside his clothes, this time - and waited, listening hard to traffic sounds

outside the stall. Finally he decided there were as few girls out there as there were going to be. About ten

meters to the exit. Feets, don't fail me now. He threw open the door -

- and relaxed, seeing himself in the mirror opposite. He had forgotten about the wig and makeup. He no

longer looked like the chubby effeminate girl who had come in ... but he could pass as a skinny butch girl. He

ignored the two girls present and made boldly for the exit. The visual barrier that was meant to keep dirty old

men from peering in gave him three strides of concealment in which to whip the wig off and wipe at his

makeup with it. Rehearsing his sick-sister lines, he jammed the wig into the belly pack, opened the door, and

stepped out. Absolutely no one paid the slightest bit of attention to him.

Of course. In Dreamworld, parents did not feel they had to stand guard while their children were using the

toilet. Nothing untoward could possibly happen as long as they were wearing their Dreambands.

That reminded him to remove the fake Dreamband he had fetched with him from his left-hand pocket and put

it on, as unobtrusively as possible.

God, he thought,

I better steady down. Four -

no, five oaf-outs already . . .

and this was supposed to be the easy part!

The hard part was coming up.

BUT OF COURSE he had to wait for Firefall. None of the rides would be running until that was over. Everything

in Dreamworld ground to a halt every night while it was in progress, and just about everything else within a

radius of five kilometers. People dropped whatever they were doing to watch the incredible display of

pyrotechnics, lasers, holograms, and kamikaze nanobots, no matter how many times they had seen it before.

You stood and stared at all that fire cascading from the sky, all those different

kinds of fire, and your busy

chattering monkey mind fell silent, and whatever was in your heart came bubbling to the surface.

He stood with the rest, and his heart threatened to boil over. There was too much compressed within it. He

could not afford that, not yet. He knew how to go to a place in his mind where nothing could reach him - but it

took great effort, and that particular muscle was nearly exhausted. He did it anyway. Maybe, if the gods were

kind, it would be the last time for a while.

He failed to notice when Firefall ended; where he was, fireworks were still going off. He was roused from his

autohypnotic trance by a minor commotion near him. The way he phrased it to himself was

a disturbance in

The Force. He scanned the crowd around him and saw three smiling Cousins in their lemon jumpsuits

converging from afar like yellow corpuscles, without apparent haste or urgency but covering ground fast.

Behind them came two nonsmiling Dreamworld employees in street clothes: backstage personnel. For a

paranoid instant he thought they were after him, but then located their target a few meters away: an adult,

who had elected to watch Firefall reclining in a chaise lounge. Two Cousins were already kneeling beside her;

she must have been taken ill. One of them moved, and he got his first clear look at the elderly woman's face.

Just then the lighting in the local area changed in a subtle way; within seconds they were all in shadow.

But he had seen.

He heard the nearer Cousin sigh, and murmur, "God, look at her smile."

"She doesn't have to go home, now," the other said softly. "Ever. I wouldn't mind going like that myself, when

it's my time."

Then she looked up and saw him. She frowned, pasted a very good smile over it, put a finger to her lips, and

addressed him in a stage whisper. "This poor lady's exhausted - let's let her nap a minute, okay?"

He kept his face straight, nodded, and forced himself to leave the area nonchalantly, as though he had bought

her story. The last thing he needed was a Cousin deciding he was traumatized, putting an arm around him,

asking him questions for which he could no longer remember the lies he had prepared.

He'd intended to dawdle for an hour or so after Firefall, going on a few of his favorite rides for the last time

as a civilian. But all at once he felt he had been given a sign. Someone had died happy in Dreamworld. Time

to finish the last detail, and then get this done.

He drifted over toward the exit, picked out an attendant who looked sleepy, and tugged at his sleeve. "Mister,"

he said, gesturing vaguely behind him, "the Cousin over there asked me to say he needs you for a minute."

"Thanks, son." As he'd hoped, the attendant bought it and started away, looking around for a mythical Cousin.

The genuine Dreamband was already in his hand; hastily he used the attendant's abandoned wand to

deactivate it, and dropped it into the bin with the rest. He had rehearsed this part many times; he was done

well before the attendant stopped and glanced back for directions.

"I guess he changed his mind," he told the attendant. "Sorry."

"That's all right," the man said, resuming his station. "Thanks anyway. You leaving now or what?"

"No," he said, "not for a while," and went back inside.

He stopped at the first trash can he encountered, rummaged in the belly pack for the folded-up hat and false

nose, and stuffed them into his pants pockets. He zipped the pack back up, took it off, and dropped it in the

trash.

He felt an unexpected exhilaration as the lid swung closed. The last of the evidence was disposed of. The only

remaining traces of his old life were the clothes he stood in. He was free as a bird ... or the next best thing.

HE TOOK THE path for the Enchanted Forest, and when he got there went straight to the Unicorn's Glade ride.

As he'd expected and hoped, the line was short, almost nonexistent. Less time to fidget and fret; fewer

witnesses. Once they were inside and the cars were arriving, the crowd around him was so sparse that he

was easily able to grab the seat he needed: the last one in the train. He pulled the safety bar up and

composed his features into what he called his dweeb face. It worked; no one elected to sit with him. His heart

began to pound with elation as the train eased into motion. This was going to work! The last hurdle had been

passed, the last tricky part. From here it was as easy as falling off a log. And so of course he did just that. He

picked his moment with great care, waiting until they emerged from the dark tunnel into the first lighted

section, and everyone else would be most distracted by things ahead of them. He had already weaseled out

from under the safety bar, put the fake Dreamband in his pocket, and put on his elf hat and false nose. But as

he slipped over the side of his car and dashed for cover, he mistook a fake log for a real one, tried to hop up

onto it, slipped off, and fell headlong.

Firefall, reprised -

WHEN HE SAT up, the train was out of sight. He was not sure whether he had lost consciousness or not, or if

so, for how long. With no way of knowing how soon the next train would be through, he had to assume it

would be any moment.

Get up, at least to a crouch, and put on a silly leer, empty your eyes, it's okay to look at them, they expect

that, but empty your eyes first, you are an audio-animatronic robot, here comes the train now, empty your

eyes, here it is, shit, there's somebody in the front seat looking this way, look down, oh shit, move, cover up

that shin, if she sees the blood she might report you're leaking oil, cover it with your hand while you turn that

side away from her, smile, here she comes there they go MOVE!

seven, six, five, four, careful don't knock

over that robot, two, Safe!

think.

He crouched down in his place of concealment behind a pseu-doboulder, and balanced risks. If the girl in the

car had seen his bleeding shin - dammit, it

hurt, now that he had time for it - she might report it, in which

case he was probably screwed. How likely was it that the girl was a busybody?

Well, girls often were, in his experience. But she might simply assume that the blood was fake, part of the

show. A wounded Elf for the Unicorn to heal.

The audio-animatronic robot he had dodged on his way to cover - a wizened old Elf - was coming toward him,

making faintly audible whirring sounds. That was odd - he was sure that none of the robots had an itinerary

that brought them through this space; he had been on this ride dozens of times, studying, rehearsing. Hell -

perhaps this one

was malfunctioning, in some way that was registering on a dial somewhere in Central

Control! Time to move on. But the robot Elf stood between him and the rest of the diorama, coming closer. He

backed out of its way, deeper into cover.

It stopped where he had been crouching, and crouched itself. Its faint little servo-sounds ceased. Its

monkeylike face swiveled to track him.

It winked.

And said, "If you leave that bloodstain out there on the set, they'll know, and they won't rest until they find

you."

SHOCK MIGHT HAVE paralyzed his limbs and tongue, but instead the reverse happened. From his hunkered

crouch he exploded into something very like a Russian saber dancer's four-limbed

hah! kick, and a shout grew

in his stomach and raced like vomit up his throat -

- where he nearly choked on it, because the robot, moving faster than any robot he knew, seemed to have a

hand over his mouth, and another behind his head to brace against. He tried to yank free, and what stopped

him was not the futility of pitting his strength against that of a robot, but the sudden realization of how difficult

it was

not. The robot hands were strong, stronger than his own-but far less strong than they should have

been. They were

warm.

Too many urgent inputs will cause most information systems to crash, and he had been in crummy shape to

start with. He went limp.

The Elf caught him under the arms, gently laid him down in a spot where he would be concealed from view,

and stood back up.

Another train came through. He lay there dizzily and watched the Elf mime a plausible routine for it. The soft

sounds of servomechanisms and hydraulics, the sharp sounds of clattering wheels and laughing children, and

the sequentially fading series of Xerox copies that echo made of all these, all washed over him. They very

nearly overwhelmed the sound of his heart banging in his chest.

"I've had my eye on you for the last week or so," the Elf murmured when the train was past, without looking

at him. "I figured you were going to make your move soon. I like the way you handle yourself. You have

respect, and you're not stupid."

"You're human," he said softly, wonderingly.

The Elf grimaced. "Thanks a lot."

"You're a-a-" He scrambled back up to a crouch. "-

a. girl."

"Make up your mind," she said. "Am I human or not?" She sounded like an aunt or a teacher. As old as her Elf

persona looked, and sour. But she was no taller than he was. "Oh, the hell with it. Wait here."

She straightened up, making soft mechanical humming sounds again - he realized with wonder and some

amusement that she was actually humming them - and walked around the boulder, out onto the set of the

Unicorn's Glade and into view of its patrons. He had practiced imitating robot movements a great deal, but this

. . . person . . . was

much better. He scrambled to the edge of cover to watch her.

She walked in a seemingly random pattern that led her past the spot where he had first fallen and hurt his

shin. When she reached it, she improvised a move which was in character for her Elf persona, and which

brought her down on one knee. She remained on that knee until a train had passed, slid the knee back and

forth along the floor, then rose and returned to his place of concealment. The blood that had been on the

floor was now almost invisible on her dark trouser leg.

"Come on," she said, and continued past him.

Doing his own robot walk, he followed her . . .

CHAPTER 2

UNDER

. . . and she walked straight into a boulder and vanished.

He followed without hesitation - not because he grasped that the boulder was a hologram, but simply because

he was in shock. When he passed through it himself, things changed too fast for him to integrate. Nearly at

once he encountered another wall, and his knees and face proved this one was

not a hologram. He

rebounded, his vision dithering, and would have gone down again if she had not caught him. Both her grip and

her arms were too strong for someone her size.

She smells like a robot, he thought.

Like machine oil.

"Always turn right," she murmured in his ear.

"Huh?"

She stood him on his feet, released him, and stepped back. "In Dreamworld, if you walk through something

you thought was there, always turn right. It's a rule of thumb." She pointed.

Sure enough, the concealed corridor they were in now de-bouched to their right. He filed the information and

studied her.

She was exactly his own height, which was not impressive even for a twelve-year-old, but she was

unquestionably an adult. Face and voice confirmed it, as did body language now that she was no longer

imitating a robot. She was a midget. Not a Dwarf, but a perfectly proportioned small person. With powerful

arms and hands. Her wrinkled features, the smoky rasp in her voice, and the great dignity with which she

carried herself made him think of a maiden aunt or a school principal, but somehow she would not have fit

into either pigeonhole even if she were not dressed as a robot Elf. She was old enough and certainly sour

enough . . . but she wasn't sad enough.

She's not lonely, he thought, and wondered how he could know such a thing about her.

"My fault," she went on. "I should have caught you as you came through. I assumed if you got this far, you

knew that much."

"This is only the third time I've been all the way backstage," he said. "And I got caught right away the other

times. Like under a minute."

"You're getting better," she said. "This was a good place. You'd have made it if you hadn't fallen. This far, at

least."

"Yeah, I guess." He inspected his shin. "Thanks," he added belatedly, realizing he had been complimented.

"Uh . . . who are you?"

"Annie."

"Oh. Uh . . . hi, Annie."

"Don't say uh - it's unbecoming. I have an excuse to grunt; you don't."

"Huh?"

"And 'huh' is even worse."

He was not prepared to debate diction. He reached, and came up with perhaps the only thing left in the world

that he was reasonably certain of. "I'm Mike."

"Hello, Mike. Welcome to Dreamworld Under."

"Uh-" He caught himself. "Sorry. Thanks, Annie. Am I really here? I mean, are we safe now?"

She shrugged. "Probably safer than most of the people on this weary planet, boy. Relax. They can't see in

here, they can't hear in here, they can't smell in here unless I want them to - and they don't even know

that.

And the next inspection team isn't due through this area for weeks, unless something glitches."

The knot of muscle at the base of his neck relaxed just barely enough for him to notice. "Good. Thanks, Annie.

I hope I didn't, uh . . . I mean-"

"Don't mention it. Especially not to anybody else. So what's-" She stopped, frowned at something, and

rephrased. "How long were you thinking of staying in Dreamworld?"

"Well . . . ," he began, so he wouldn't say "Uh," and used the tiny interval to think hard about the question. It

was one he had been postponing himself, for some time now, and he knew she had not asked it casually. "As

long as I can," he said finally.

Something in her serene face changed. For an instant he thought he might have offended her, or perhaps

saddened her somehow, but then she said, "Good answer." She closed her eyes for a few seconds. "Okay,"

she said, opening them again. "You seem lucky. And clever. And reasonably polite. Here is how it will be. I will

help you - but neither of us is ever going to ask the other why they came here. Ever. Is that acceptable to

you?"

"Okay," he said simply.

"Here's your end of the bargain," she said. "You have to listen to me."

He nodded.

"Don't look so dismayed. I don't mean you have to hang a patient look on your face while I blather about my

youth, for God's sake. I mean you have to

pay attention when I tell you things. Talking is very hard work for

me; I hardly ever do it. And if I have to tell you things twice, you're going to make some stupid blunder and

get at least one of us busted out of here. I warn you: if it's

me, this place is going to turn on you."

He digested that. "How long have you been here, Annie?"

"Under, you mean? What year is it?"

"Twenty-three," he said, beginning to be awed. "July something, 2023."

"Thirteen years, then." She turned on her heel and walked away.

Mike knew he must follow her, and still he stood frozen a moment in shock. Dreamworld was only a little over

thirteen years old.

He snapped out of it and raced after her.

IT WAS A little like learning that one unicorn exists. It changed everything.

Mike felt like a biochemist who has labored for years to synthesize a wonderful new drug, then learns

aborigine herb-doctors have known about that one for centuries. As they moved behind the scenes of

Dreamworld, he tried to pay attention to his surroundings, but had trouble keeping his mind on the task. His

eyes kept being drawn to his guide. His hero, now that he knew she existed. Mike's hopeless, desperate,

quixotic quest was actually possible. Someone had done it. This unprepossessing midget auntie before him

had done it. Had been doing it for longer than he had been alive.

No wonder she wasn't lonely! She had the Unicorn, the Warlock, Westley and Buttercup, the Mother Thing,

the Hippogriff, Wanda the Werepoodle, Captain Horatio and his crew, Master Li and Number Ten Ox, Mike

Callahan and his friends, Moondog Johnny, Lummox and John Thomas, and all the countless Elves and Trolls

and Leprechauns and Dwarves for her constant companions. No wonder she looked so serene! For longer

than his own lifetime, she had been living not just in a, but in

the, Dreamworld. No wonder she accepted him.

They were kindred spirits, in a world of clones. He studied her with intense fascination. So that was how she

walked when she wasn't imitating a robot. . . .

It suddenly came to him that he had absolutely no idea how they had gotten from where they started to

where they were now - which was halfway down a long tubular shaft with a ladder on one side. There were

the rumbling sounds of a ride somewhere nearby, but he could neither locate its direction nor identify it, save

that it seemed to be moving too fast to be any part of the Unicorn's Glade. He glanced up, and the shaft

appeared simply to end about fifty meters higher up: no access hatch was visible. He glanced down and saw

only that he was lagging behind.

When he reached the bottom of the ladder, Annie stood aside and made room for him to step down onto the

metal floor. She gestured at a keypad on the wall. "Do what I did up there," she said.

"I didn't see it," he confessed, reddening in shame.

She clouded up. "I told you not to make me repeat myself. What the hell

were you looking at?"

"You," he said miserably.

She closed her eyes. "Oh, my stars and garters. 'God has punished my contempt for authority . . .' " She

sighed and reopened her eyes. "At least have the wit to pay particular attention to my hands, then. I do most

of my best work with them."

"Yes, Annie."

With insultingly exaggerated pantomime, she addressed the keypad and punched in a four-digit number. A

door silently dilated next to the keypad. "Got it this time?"

"How do you know what number to use?" he asked.

"From this." She held up her left wrist to display a Command Band like those worn by Dreamworld's

employees. It resembled a Guest's Dreamband, with pop-up monitor and keypad added. She hadn't been

wearing it during her stint as an Elf; she must have slipped it on while he wasn't looking. "It also makes me

invisible to three different surveillance systems-and you, too, as long as you stay within three meters of me."

She hit

clear on the keypad, and the door winked shut again. "Seven one three nine six fourteen three point

one four one five seventeen eleventy-five," she chanted in a rapid monotone, and stood aside. "Now you try

it."

He went to the keypad, punched four digits, and the door reappeared.

"Better," she said curtly, and shouldered him aside to step through.

At that moment he realized suddenly that he was ravenously hungry. He decided not to mention it and

followed her. He'd been hungry before. He'd never been

Under in Dreamworld before.

They passed through a series of environments in rapid succession. Each time she let him key in the code that

admitted them to the next. Some he could identify at least tentatively as air-circulation tunnels, engine rooms,

repair shops, switching nodes, degaussing zones, and the like. Some were so unfamiliar he could not even

guess their nature or function. Some were noisy, some as silent as a stone. All were well lit and clean. As he

doggedly memorized the route, he mentally labeled such regions things like

place where it smells funny or

room with no room or

inside the dentist's drill. He had the general impression that Annie and he were

gradually descending below ground. At one point they heard approaching voices and footsteps, and she led

him immediately and unerringly to the nearest good hiding place, where they waited together until the danger

was past.

A little while later she stopped short again. Mike looked around for another hidey-hole - but instead of hiding,

she went to a nearby machine, a big complex thing he could not identify. She stared at it, sniffed it, reached

into it and made some adjustment, then bent and put her ear up against the side of it and listened. After

several seconds had elapsed, she frowned and straightened. Taking a red marker from a pocket, she wrote

something on the wall above the machine. A single rune, which Mike didn't recognize. It looked a little like the

classical symbol for "male," but was subtly different. Without explanation she put away the marker and they

continued on their way.

At the end of a long featureless lime-green corridor, they came to another keypad, and he automatically

began to enter the access code. She stopped him with an upraised hand. "This time," she said, "punch in the

date of Opening Day."

He blinked. "The whole thing?"

"If you know it," she agreed.

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Spider Robinson - The Free Lunch

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