The Free Lunch

by Spider Robinson

  But it should have diminished when he’d opened the door…

  He stopped altogether—stopped breathing, stopped moving, stopped everything but thinking. The sound continued to swell, a susurration without a sibilant, like a hundred whispers overlaid with the treble control spun all the way to minimum, its volume still slowly increasing. Mike could feel the air itself roiling, feel it against his skin, and the noise wasn’t anywhere near loud enough to do that. There was a funny smell in the room now, one he didn’t know—

  He moved before he understood why, was still thinking it through as he stepped out into the hallway, let the door almost close behind him, stopped it with his toe and put his ear to the crack.

  At once he heard a sound like the cracking of a whip played through a guitar amplifier, at low volume but with way too much reverb and flanging—then, a second later, another one just like it—then utter silence.

  “Jizz,” a hoarse dwarf’s voice said in hushed tones. “Like something out of a story-bead it is.” His accent was barely understandable, and unlike any Mike had ever heard.

  “Something out of a bead it is,” said a second, even more liquid voice. “And we the editors are. Come.” This one’s accent was worse.

  “Pause. A minim I need.”

  “No—hurry is!”

  “Oh, crot!”

  On the other side of the door, Mike came close to fainting, grabbed the wall to steady himself. He had just begun to grasp the enormous realization that somehow he had been right all along, that aliens were indeed beaming down into Dreamworld—and now almost at once he knew he had to cancel that idea and start over.

  If an alien beams down to Earth, it either arrives speaking Alien…or, if it is planning to pass as human and wants to stay in character for practice, it arrives speaking unaccented English, in correct local contemporary idiom.

  These were not aliens. Their true nature burst over him all at once, he knew what they had to be, and he was simultaneously stunned and furious with himself for not having thought of it sooner. He clenched his teeth so hard he saw sparks behind his eyes.

  He heard the sound of a urinal being flushed. “Unbelievable,” the first voice said. A faucet was turned on and off, and the same voice said, “The arrogance!” A stall door banged open—

  “Zhin, come!” the second voice insisted. “Later futz.”

  Zhin grunted a reluctant assent.

  Two sets of heavy footsteps sounded.

  At once Mike let go of the door, sprinted ten paces—turned on a dime, and began walking, slowly, back toward the washroom. As the two newcomers emerged, he strolled past them and on down the hall, giving them only the casual and disinterested flicker of a glance any employee would give two others he passed in a corridor.

  Two dwarves costumed as Trolls. Exceptionally ugly even for Trolls. Bad skin. Deeply sad eyes. Both of them rather on the large side as dwarves went, but somehow frail-looking just the same. The taller of the two Mike guessed to be Zhin; he was the more indignant-looking.

  Mike looked away at once, but kept his peripheral vision working. Both Trolls flinched slightly when they saw him, but both recovered smoothly when they saw he was ignoring them, and walked away in the opposite direction. He listened to their footsteps recede behind him, calculated that they were going as fast as they dared. He took the first turn he could, put his Command Band up to his ear and signaled Annie.

  “Red alert,” he said softly.

  “Report,” came the reply nearly at once.

  “Two bogies.”

  “Where?”

  “Number-uh-forty-seven, between—”

  “I know where it is. On my way.”

  “Wait!”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Look, I know this is gonna sound stupid. But I’m sure, okay? Absolutely sure. And I want to say it now, in case some more come before you get here and I get caught or something.”

  “Slow down. Say it.”

  “They’re time-travelers.”

  There was no reply at all for a long time. Then Annie said only, “I’m on my way. Watch yourself! Out.”

  HE WAITED FOR her in the corridor just outside the washroom. After some thought he had decided that more time-travelers might arrive at any moment. By loitering in the corridor, he would know that any Troll walking out of that washroom was one who had not walked into it first…but they would not know that he knew that.

  It half killed him to wait outside; with all his heart he yearned to see a time-traveler materialize. But he knew he couldn’t afford the risk of being caught watching. The only hiding place in there was the stalls, and he’d heard Zhin look into one of them. Besides, for all Mike knew, their time machine had some kind of fail-safe that kept them from arriving when anyone else was in the room—hadn’t they only arrived when he was halfway out the door? Better not to chance it. He consoled himself with the thought that there hadn’t seemed to be any interestingly gaudy visual effects involved—none that showed through a crack in the door. Just weird sounds. Probably they’d simply…flicked into existence, like on a TV show with no budget. Boy, Annie was going to—

  Two more Trolls emerged from the washroom.

  Mike nearly panicked. He had neglected to prepare a cover story, to explain what he was doing there loitering outside a washroom. Somehow the same instinct that kept him from flinching warned him not to try and improvise one now. Damnit, they were the ones who needed a cover story! Instead of looking for a way to melt into the scenery, he simply stood his ground and stared right at the two Trolls, as if at any moment he might decide to ask them a question or a favor.

  However instinctive, the strategy worked. The instant they became aware of him looking at them, both Trolls visibly ceased to be aware of his existence, walked past him with the sublime disassociation of a cat walking away from a turd on the rug.

  Mike was momentarily tempted to make up a question and hurl it after them, just to see how they’d handle it. But he suppressed the urge; he had more important things to think about.

  Such as whether to wait for Annie or follow these two bozos. He could probably come up with some kind of equivalent to a trail of bread crumbs to leave behind. Come to think of it, he could just call her on his Command Band and tell her what he was doing, and let her track him herself, with her own—

  While he dithered, Annie arrived.

  Seeing her expression, and knowing how little time there was, he chose his words carefully.

  “Listen to me,” were the first three, and only when he was sure she would did he continue. “I’d just checked this bathroom out. I was in the doorway, leaving. Two Trolls materialized out of thin air. They didn’t see me. They spoke English—but in weird accents, with words and expressions nobody uses even in old books. Guys from outer space wouldn’t do that. Guys from the future probably would. They came out of the can and left. I called you and waited right here. A few seconds ago, two more came out. I’m going after them.” He turned to go.

  “Mike!”

  “There’s no time, Annie, there might not be any more of them coming—but there might be, so you gotta wait.”

  She took a deep breath that lasted a hundred years, and held it, frowning, for fifty more. “Be careful,” she said at last.

  He spun and ran after the second pair of Trolls.

  C H A P T E R 11

  OUT OF KIN TROLL

  At first Mike ran as fast as he could, conscious of the long lead they had on him. But he didn’t want to attract attention…and he knew they wouldn’t be running because they didn’t want to attract attention, either…and the more he thought about it, he was pretty sure he knew where they were going anyway. They would be taking the most direct route toward the employee area, since every minute they loitered in Guest country increased their risk of being accosted by some child who wanted to play, and if they were like the first pair, they probably didn’t speak contemporary English well enough to pass. Also, he was afraid they might spook if they heard h
im come thundering up from behind. So he gradually slowed his pace, first to a trot and then to a fast walk, and by the time he left the staff corridors and entered Dreamworld proper, Guest country, he was moving at almost normal pedestrian speed, which turned out to be a good thing.

  Otherwise he might have failed to notice until too late that he was not the only one following those Trolls.

  He spotted the followers before he saw the Trolls—knew them for what they were the instant he saw them, even from behind. They were a pair of thugs, just like the ones who’d tried to kidnap Annie except that both of these were of normal adult height and costumed as employees, one of them a Neanderthal and the other a Centurion. Each moved like a panther and kept his right hand in a pocket. Mike could not have said just how he knew they were following the Trolls—like him, they were trying not to look like they were following someone—but from the moment he saw them he never doubted it.

  Sure enough, just then the crowd ahead parted and he got a glimpse of the two Trolls in the far distance. So did the thugs. They picked up their pace slightly and began to close the gap. Mike kept pace, frowning.

  Until that moment, he had assumed these two were escorts, in league with the Trolls, following them to make sure nobody else was doing so, ready to move in fast if anybody tried to stop them. But now their body language told Mike they were stalking the Trolls, just like him. They were Conway’s thugs, working for him and thus for Haines and Thrillworld—and they were not allied with the time-travelers. They meant to follow these Trolls until they reached some out-of-the-way spot, and then grab them, the way they’d tried to grab Annie.

  Mike felt immediate panic, and a strong urge to intervene, quickly.

  It took him a few moments to work out why. He had absolutely no idea what was going on here, no clear idea of which side he was on. Perhaps these were not thugs but Good Guys, trying to neutralize invading time-travelers—

  Either they succeed or they fail. If they succeed, I don’t get to learn anything more about those particular time-travelers, who may be the last ones I’ll ever see. If they fail, there’s liable to be a fight gaudy enough for other people to notice and alarms to start going off. If that happens, Dreamworld Security will not fail: they’ll move in from all sides and snatch everybody up, and interrogate them. And if they do—

  —oh holy shit, if they do—

  The whole universe—everything—could end.

  Anyone who’d ever seen a Star Trek movie knew that time travel had to be kept secret. Changing history was supposed to be major-league Bad News. Time travelers from the future would not have tried to enter the year 2023 by stealth if the record of history said they were doomed to fail. So if the Trolls’ cover was blown, if they were revealed as time-travelers, they would enter public record, become a part of history—would change that history—creating a paradox that could tear the universe apart.

  MIKE WALKED AS fast as he dared now. Good Guys or not, those two clowns had to be stopped. And soon—ideally, well before they could make their move.

  Where would they do that? He thought hard.

  The two Trolls were already leaving the Heinlein section, just entering the outskirts of Strawberry Fields. The two goons were closing the gap—Mike estimated that if nothing happened to slow them up, they would overtake their quarry just about the time they all crossed Penny Lane…

  Something clicked in Mike’s memory. The Fire Engine on Penny Lane only actually got used there once an hour, in the show. The rest of the time it pooted randomly all around Dreamworld—and four times a day it actually left the grounds and took a swing around the parking lot, exiting and reentering via the large-vehicle gate near the Main Gate. If you could get a Troll into one of the many alleyways off Penny Lane, render him quickly unconscious, and somehow load him inside the Fire Engine, you could get him out to the parking lot without having to go through the turnstiles!

  Mike was just leaving Heinlein’s Centerville now. As he approached the tunnel he nodded automatically to Oscar the Space-suit…and as suddenly as that, the germ of a plan was born in his mind. No time to examine it for flaws. He slowed, stepped out of the traffic, and stopped beside Oscar, doing an elaborate pantomime of nonchalance. At the last possible instant he remembered that he was dressed and made up to look like a midget maintenance worker, and he deepened his voice what he hoped was appropriately as he murmured, “Trouble in the house.”

  The man playing Oscar answered at once, just as softly. “What’s the problem, brother?”

  “Two gorillas about a hundred meters ahead,” Mike said without moving his lips. “Caveman and Roman soldier. I think they’re bogus.”

  Oscar’s opaque helmet did not turn. “The dirty blonde and the one with the shoulders?”

  “Yah. Little girl about eight, fifty meters farther on. They’ve both been following her since she left the Enchanted Forest, and I think they’re moving in on her. I smell a custody snatch. At least, I hope that’s what I smell.”

  “Okay, I’ll call Security—you try and get between them and her.”

  Mike nodded. “Thanks.”

  He continued on his way, starting off slow but picking up speed as he went. By the time he got out of the tunnel, he had taken his shirt off, used it to wipe off as much makeup as he could, and wrapped it around his left forearm like a bandage: he entered Strawberry Fields as a child.

  Maintenance men were not supposed to run in Dreamworld—you could start a panic that way—but kids in T-shirts did it all the time. Paradoxically, Mike became invisible to the two goons by approaching and then passing them at a dead run, grinning like a fool and humming a little tuneless song.

  He timed it so that he seemed to run out of steam and slow to a fast walk when he was well past them, and about ten or twenty meters behind the two Trolls. He kept station there until he heard the commotion behind him—angry voices, shouts. Without looking behind him, he picked up the pace. Without looking behind themselves, either, so did the Trolls. Even so he overtook them almost at once. Too quickly to suit him: the problem of exactly how to approach them was one he could have used more time to ponder.

  When he was right on their heels he thought of a way that might work. He stopped muffling his own footsteps, let the Trolls become subliminally aware of him behind them, and then insinuated himself between them—just another impatient kid overtaking some grown-ups in Dreamworld. As he passed between them, without looking at either he said softly, “Don’t stop walking. Welcome to 2023.”

  TO HIS RELIEF, both Trolls were good. Of course they reacted—but no more than any adult might when suddenly jostled by a rude child in a hurry. Both had finished flinching before they had passed out of Mike’s peripheral vision…and they proceeded to do what any startled adult might do in such a situation: speeded up their pace slightly to catch up to the rude child and give him a piece of their mind.

  As they pulled up even with him, one on either side, the one on the left said, “How do you know about us? Who are you?” His voice sounded as if he’d been gargling broken glass.

  Like any lectured child, Mike answered him but would not look at him. “I’m the guy who just took out those two goons behind you. They were going to jump you on Penny Lane and smuggle you out of here in the Fire Engine. Their backup could be along any minute. Follow me and I’ll get you to a safe place; then we can talk.”

  The one on the right glanced over his shoulder and then quickly back again. “Crot!” he said softly but emphatically. The one on the left gave Mike the indignant glare of the adult whose kindly intended advice has been rejected by the rude child. “Why should we trust you?”

  Mike shrugged. “Don’t. See how that works,” he said, and picked up his pace.

  A good ten seconds later, just as he was about to turn around and go back and try reasoning with them, they finally caught up with him. He sighed with relief and slowed down to normal walking pace again: the rude child who has decided to relax to the inevitable and let the indignant
adults lecture him.

  “Where do we go?” the spokesman said. “We schedules have, and keep them must.”

  Mike glanced at him for the first time. Like the first pair he’d seen: exceedingly ugly even for a Troll in costume. Nose bristling with hairs, skin like rice puffs, rheumy cataracted eyes, wrinkles deep enough to conceal small change, and an apelike protruding lower lip. “What’s your hurry?” Mike asked him. “We’re about ten minutes’ walk from the employee area, and the shift doesn’t end for another hour at least.”

  Hairy Nose and his companion exchanged a sharp glance. It was not lost on Mike. He knew he was on the verge of over-playing his hand: by trying to impress them with how much he knew (because he knew hardly anything), he had succeeded in alarming them. They were both mentally debating whether it might not be better if this rude child had an accident and fell down, and didn’t wake up until they were both far, far away. He addressed the one on his right, who had not spoken so far except to curse. “You saw those guys get taken down back there, right?” This one was, if anything, even uglier than the first, with a nasty squint that made him look as paranoid as he sounded now. “Yes. Hunters they were.”

  “And you know it’s you they were after.” Squinty nodded. “Even as with the guards they argued, at us they kept looking.”

  Mike nodded back. “Okay. Two groups of people know about you. There’s me and my friend Annie, and there’s those guys and their pals. They want to kidnap you. We don’t. You can spend the next forty-five minutes running, and leave here knowing no more than you do now—if you’re lucky—or you can hang out in a place where they won’t find you, and spend the time finding out whether or not it’s safe for me to know what I know, and how I found out. You pick.”