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Chapter 27

Though they left the set where the director was still trying to get his scene to go the way he wanted, the Visitors did not escape from the air of theatricality that suffused this part of Ephemer. The sidewalks were lined with concrete handprints and terrazzo starbursts, and the buildings were covered with silver tinsel that glittered when it fluttered in the wind. Every store had its own spotlights to single out each customer and make him feel special.

Chuck and his companions continued to be minor celebrities wherever they went. He'd stopped accepting gifts, but the donors seemed to be delighted just to be in his presence. Chuck was getting tired of them. He wasn't having any fun sightseeing with so many people watching him, and the gifts, however generously meant, weren't filling in the steadily-growing gap in his heart.

The waving, white beams from a quartet of carbon-arc lights pointing straight up beside the doorway of the next building must have been visible for miles. But it wasn't the glitter that astonished Chuck. It was the shape of the building. It was in the form of a gigantic hat.

"We've got a reservation here for dinner," Keir said. "You'll like it. It's different."

"I guess so," Persemid said, wonderingly.

To Chuck's relief, the crowd following them stopped on the sidewalk, letting them walk unaccompanied under the canopy past a uniformed doorman who gave them a snappy salute. They could finally have a little time to themselves.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen!" A large blob of matter oozed up to them and coalesced into an unctuous maitre d' wearing a pencil-thin mustache and a tuxedo. "Your table awaits!"

Morit took Blanda by the arm and pulled her into the Big Hat after the Visitors. A harried-looking man in glasses stopped them.

"Let us by," Morit said. "The rest of our party is in here."

"That would be the Waking Worlders?" the man asked, flipping through the pages on a clipboard. "Ah, yes, that's right." He looked up at them through the thick lenses of his spectacles. "I'm sorry, but you are not in this scene."

"Certainly we are," Morit said, glaring. "We go where we please."

"Sorry," said the man, flipping a few more pages. "You can't go in. This is a closed set."

"Aarrgh!" Morit growled. He lowered his shoulder and tried to charge past the man. The clipboard in the man's hand became a high wall with spikes sticking outward. Morit ignored them, shoving the wall back a fraction of an inch at a time. Blanda clung to his arm, looking apologetic. "For Nightmare's sake, woman, push!"

"Security!" the man shouted. Two guards in gray uniforms and hats appeared as out of nowhere, took Morit's arms and turned him, heading him out the door. Flashbulbs burst in his face, dazzling his eyeballs. The headline on the swirling newspaper read: ELYSIAN COUPLE TRY TO CRASH DINNER!

The next thing he knew, he and Blanda were in line at a cafeteria full of people in costumes, human-sized animals with vastly oversized heads, sitting and chatting.

"Central Casting!" he exclaimed. "How humiliating."

* * *

When Keir and his clients entered the dining room, a kettle drum began its low roll. Big, round searchlights hit them in the eyes. A waiter, clad in an impeccable, short black coat and a white napkin over one arm appeared and bowed before them.

"This way, ladies and gentlemen," he said, with the confidence of all good waiters, sweeping a hand to indicate they should follow him through the mass of tables. He whispered to Chuck, who was the closest behind him. "Is the back of my coat all right?"

"Fine," Chuck said, glancing at the perfect expanse of black serge. Not so much as a dust mote marred it.

"Thanks," the waiter said, nervously. Then his back straightened, and he began to glide through the crowd, gesturing ahead of him with a hand. He came to a halt at a table covered by snow-white cloth. A model of efficiency, he deftly seated the ladies first without ever seeming to slight the men. Chuck was impressed.

WAITER: (with a liquid accent) And here you are, m'sieur. Sank you.

PERSEMID: Merci beaucoup.

WAITER: (raising his hands to heaven) Ah! Madame 'as a sharming accent! Bon! S'il vous plait, peruse the menu. I will describe to you the especials. Per'aps you would like to begin with one of our celebrated opening acts? A trio of cheeses in full harmony, a well-aged ham, piquant hors d'oeuvres?

Chuck looked around him at what the other diners were having. The glasses and platters didn't seem to be filled with any substance that he could see, yet men and women dipped spoons into bowls and sipped, or sawed with knife and brought bite to lips with fork. What seemed to sustain them most was attention. The happiest- and healthiest-looking people in the restaurant were the ones at the tables in the center. Chuck could hear one of the waiters spooling out a line of almost sycophantic praise to a mink-clad woman and cashmere-suited man at a two-top just a few feet away. The man grew visibly more handsome, and the woman's complexion went from wan to rosy. Other tables were visited by reporters or fellow diners, to the enhancement of the ones seated there. The poor folk who sat around the perimeter, out of the charmed circle, who had gone without attention for a long time seemed listless and gaunt. Some were so obscure that they faded away completely.

Chuck decided that they must all be actors. He'd heard they lived on praise. That would explain the dog. Accompanied by the same fanfare and roll of drums, a large German shepherd was escorted to his own table, where a monogrammed silver bowl awaited. His supporters, men and women, but mostly women, crowded into the banquette seats around him. Not one of them was a dog, in any sense of the word, yet the tray the waiter brought to their table contained only bowls. The groupies ate from them face-down just like the dog.

Sylphlike creatures attached themselves to people who looked prosperous or successful, gaining substance from reflected glory until they were completely solid and entitled to tables in their own right. One of these fragile-looking women battened onto Chuck's arm like a limpet. She had red, red lips and sharp white teeth like a succubus, and her luscious body was encased in a peach satin gown so tight it looked as though it was painted on. Chuck felt weak just from having her touch him. She fluttered her eyelashes seductively. He felt his pulse race.

SYLPH: (breathily) And who are you?

CHUCK: (nervously) Nobody special.

SYLPH: Oh. (lets go) What a shame.

She tossed her lovely hair and undulated away. Chuck watched her go, half with regret and half with relief. He didn't want to be anyone's meal ticket, or meal, for that matter.

He decided he'd better find the lavatory before dinner. He cleared his throat, which brought the waiter to his side, pencil poised.

CHUCK: Where can I wash my hands?

WAITER: That way, m'sieur. (points stage right)

CHUCK: Thanks.

Chuck pushed back from the table and started toward the discreet little sign the waiter had indicated. It was embarrassing having a spotlight follow him to the toilet. He tried to pretend he was just having a look around.

The restaurant's décor was mostly dark brown wood. Framed images of glamorous men and women crowded the panels. They were all smiling, but he realized that the eyes in the photographs slewed back and forth, keeping an eye on one another.

He smiled and stood back to let someone else out of the men's room, then stepped inside.

On the other side of the door, he found a forest of wooden braces, not a hallway. He glanced back. The restaurant was nothing but painted canvas! The whole thing was one big movie set, just like the jet that had brought him to the Dreamland. A knot of people holding sheaves of paper or pacing nervously waited to go out through one of the two doors fixed into the scenery flat. Chuck started to say something, when a young woman with round wire glasses on her serious face came rushing over to him.

"What do you want?" she whispered.

"I need . . . you know," Chuck said, a trifle embarrassed. She nodded sharply, and sent him through the supports to a sixty-foot trailer at a short distance from the set. It looked like a miserable cardboard box. For a moment Chuck thought he might be better off finding a spot in the bushes, but inside the trailer was astonishing luxury. He was going to have to learn not to judge by initial appearances. Chrome gleamed in between panels of red and yellow enameled tile that shone so perfectly he could see his reflection in every square. Every stall door had a star on it, and the seat within, well, it was a throne in truth, not just in jest.

When he came out, two women in casual clothes descended upon him. He was shocked, not expecting to see them in the men's room. They didn't give him time to protest. One of them pushed him into a canvas chair while the other smacked him in the face with a huge powder puff. The dust made him cough. When she was finished with that, she picked up a small pencil and outlined the corners of his eyes. The second woman pulled his hair back and started to comb it with brutally efficient strokes. Chuck glanced at his reflection in the wall-sized mirror. He still looked thirty, thirty-five years old. He sighed a little for lost youth.

"Too long," she muttered, twisting his hair. "No time. Got to add something . . . there!" She reached into a huge fishing tackle-box that Chuck had not noticed before, and came up with a little band. She pulled back his hair and gathered it into a little ponytail at his neck. "Better. All right, you're done!"

The other woman, who had been dusting broad shadows on his jawline with a triangular sponge, jumped back. The door opened, and Chuck felt himself propelled toward the restaurant once again.

"You'll never believe what just happened to me," Chuck began, as he sat down, but Keir plopped a huge leatherbound book into his hands.

KEIR: Choose your meal first. The menu contains your script. You'll have to read from it exactly as it's written, or they start over and make you read it again, and we'll be here all night.

Chuck looked at the page, and realized that what was printed on it was exactly what people had been saying since he came into the restaurant. He ran a finger down the page.

PIPISTRELLA: (blankly) Why is it so bright in here?

PERSEMID: (groans)

Chuck gawked. That was exactly what was typed in the book before him.

WAITER: And what may I bring you?

KEIR: (looking around at everyone) Try the specials of the house.

CHUCK: I think I'll have the rhubarb.

He frowned. He hated rhubarb. The maitre d' came bustling up, waving his arms. He shouted into a megaphone.

MAITRE D': Cut! Try again.

KEIR: Put some life into it or we'll never get out of here.

CHUCK: (brightly) I think I'll have the rhubarb!

He smiled at the people at his table. Around him, the noise grew louder.

"That was very good!" the waiter said.

"What did you say?" Chuck asked, unable to hear him clearly.

"I said, that was very good!"

Chuck more or less caught his meaning by lip reading, because the crowd sounds were booming at him from every side. Then he listened to what they were saying.

ALL: Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb (repeat ad infinitum).

Persemid sat at Chuck's left. She tried to order, but the noise was too great. Even her shout was drowned in the racket coming from the other patrons. The waiter didn't seem to hear her.

WAITER: (to Pipistrella) Madame?

PIPISTRELLA: (smiling at waiter) I'll have the poetry and asparagus.

WAITER: Very good, madame. (to Sean) Sir?

Persemid glared, but she waited for a moment until the man had taken Sean's order. But as soon as she drew breath to speak, the crowd started chanting again.

ALL: Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb (repeat ad infinitum).

WAITER: (to Hiramus) Sir?

HIRAMUS: (indicating Persemid) You missed the lady.

WAITER: What was that, sir? I did not compre'en' you.

CHUCK: (shouting) He said, you forgot to take the other lady's order! Excuse me! What about this lady?

WAITER: I am so sorry, madame. (cocks his head and holds pencil ready) What would you like?

PERSEMID: (angrily points to something at random in the menu)

CHUCK: I'm sorry that happened.

She was as angry that someone had to help her as she was for having the waiter ignore her. Having Chuck be nice about it only made her feel worse.

PERSEMID: Forget about it. It happens all the time.

CHUCK: (outraged) But, that's wrong. Nobody should be ignored, especially when you're the paying customer.

PERSEMID: (snapping) Forget it!

She turned her back on Chuck, leaving him alone to observe his surroundings.

Newspaper clippings were passed around like platters of appetizers, offering everyone who was mentioned in them a little taste of fame. The wine stewards were reviewers, too. The pop of champagne bottles that heralded the receipt of good news gave way to the fizzing of the wine in glasses. Chuck thought he could hear voices coming from the wine that offered the same heady intoxication as verbal praise. Everyone wanted to be a part of a success. When the corks popped, people came from all over the restaurant, even literally from out of the woodwork.

Chuck glanced up as a plate was put down before him. It was empty. Perhaps the food in the Big Hat was like the dancers at the duke's palace: invisible. Following Keir's example he picked up his knife and fork, but they discovered only the surface of the china. He frowned at his guide, who was happily sawing and chewing. Chuck glanced at Persemid, who looked as if she agreed how ridiculous the situation was. Still, Keir was their guide. Chuck pretended he had something good to eat before him, cut off an invisible bite, and chewed on an intangible mouthful. He felt silly, but it wasn't so bad since they were all doing it.

A deep drum roll sounded, and the warm, resonant voice of an unseen announcer broke in on their conversation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Big Hat is very pleased to be able to welcome the heir to the throne of the Dreamland, her serene highness, Princess Leonora! Let's give her a big hand!"

A spotlight traveled through the crowd and lit on the front door. Chuck craned to see as a woman entered the room.

"Yes, here she is, wearing an off-the-shoulder evening dress in periwinkle. You all know that that's her highness's favorite color. Yes, she's greeting the great Dyer Sandman. He's smiling, as who wouldn't, to receive the mark of favor from such a great lady. And now, she's approaching the center of the room!"

Chuck found himself gawking, and ordered his tongue back into his head. Princess Leonora was beautiful, even more beautiful than Pipistrella, whom he had thought was the absolute ideal. In comparison, his fellow Visitor looked artificial and shallow. He found, to his amazement, that there was a notch above perfection; Pip was . . . ordinary. He had a mental adjustment to make.

"Isn't she lovely?" the announcer crooned, over the public address system. Chuck joined in the wild applause as the princess was escorted to a table. She looked over at them, beaming and waving, then sat down, still smiling vivaciously, and dropped her eyes to the menu handed to her by the deferential headwaiter. The applause cut off as if a switch had been thrown. But a change had been wrought. Something real, more than real, had been introduced into this completely artificial setting. Chuck felt an imbalance take hold. Tinsel began to flutter down from the ceiling. The illusion was failing.

CROWD: (suddenly) Boo!

Chuck looked up. A big man with thick black eyebrows was slinking toward the exit, glaring at the people all around him. They were hissing and shouting catcalls at him.

CHUCK: What happened?

WAITER: (dramatically) He . . . didn't leave a tip.

Chuck felt like grinning. Unreality reestablished itself again.

MAITRE D': All right, scene two! And . . . action!

* * *

"So no one here currently has a job, that is what you're saying?" Morit asked, cutting off another would-be actor's sad and rambling story. Every one of the hundreds of people in the shabby, utilitarian room paused, reluctant to speak.

"We're . . . between contracts," said a woman, throwing back her long, blonde hair. She was halfway pretty. Her face was frighteningly asymmetrical, with eyes on different levels, and a nose that took a distinct leftward turning around a large wart.

"It isn't fair!" a man complained. He was a strapping, burly man with an admirable cleft chin and flashing eyes, but his voice was so high it hurt Morit's ears. "There ought to be room for non-standard characters."

"Sleepers know," a woman with heavy five-o'clock shadow said, "it's not our fault we don't fit the molds."

"Sleepers," snorted a man with ping-pong paddles instead of hands. "It's the Sleepers' fault we look like this!"

Morit smiled, his teeth growing points like sharks. "It's the Sleepers' fault that you're like that at all," he said, persuasively. "Not only do they gift you with endless misery, they do it to make themselves feel better. How do you like that? You suffer throughout your existence for their self-esteem!"

"Well, if we didn't, we might not exist at all," said an elephant-faced woman, with a wistful expression on her wrinkled, gray brow, but she was wavering. "That's something."

"We ought to be self-actualizing," Morit said, warming to his subject. He had found allies. Converting them to the cause was easy. "Not only do we serve them to better their mental health, but we get no peace from them even when they are not employing us! They come in person to view their chattels, to look down in amusement upon the puny beings that they have engendered—to laugh at us!"

"Dear!" Blanda said, warningly. "That's not true. The Visitors have shown you no harm."

"Visitors?" demanded the ping-pong man. "Are there Visitors here?"

"Yes," said Morit. "I am offering you an opportunity to send a message to our manipulative creators in the Waking World! We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it any more!"

All the actors in the cafeteria raised a rousing cheer, although the majority looked uncomfortable. Morit jumped to his feet. "I know where they are! Let's give them a proper Dreamlander reception! We'll set a trap to catch them when they least expect it! Down with the Visitors!"

"Down with the Visitors!" As one, the actors rose to their feet. Morit threw an arm over his head and started marching, leading his audience toward the door. After a few paces, three quarters of them flitted away, mumbling apologies. Fools, Morit thought. They were unwilling to commit to action that would set them free.

"Dear, don't do this!" Blanda called after him. "My love, this is wrong!"

Morit left her behind in the cafeteria, a troubled look on her normally placid face.

Back | Next
Contents
Framed

Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 27

Though they left the set where the director was still trying to get his scene to go the way he wanted, the Visitors did not escape from the air of theatricality that suffused this part of Ephemer. The sidewalks were lined with concrete handprints and terrazzo starbursts, and the buildings were covered with silver tinsel that glittered when it fluttered in the wind. Every store had its own spotlights to single out each customer and make him feel special.

Chuck and his companions continued to be minor celebrities wherever they went. He'd stopped accepting gifts, but the donors seemed to be delighted just to be in his presence. Chuck was getting tired of them. He wasn't having any fun sightseeing with so many people watching him, and the gifts, however generously meant, weren't filling in the steadily-growing gap in his heart.

The waving, white beams from a quartet of carbon-arc lights pointing straight up beside the doorway of the next building must have been visible for miles. But it wasn't the glitter that astonished Chuck. It was the shape of the building. It was in the form of a gigantic hat.

"We've got a reservation here for dinner," Keir said. "You'll like it. It's different."

"I guess so," Persemid said, wonderingly.

To Chuck's relief, the crowd following them stopped on the sidewalk, letting them walk unaccompanied under the canopy past a uniformed doorman who gave them a snappy salute. They could finally have a little time to themselves.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen!" A large blob of matter oozed up to them and coalesced into an unctuous maitre d' wearing a pencil-thin mustache and a tuxedo. "Your table awaits!"

Morit took Blanda by the arm and pulled her into the Big Hat after the Visitors. A harried-looking man in glasses stopped them.

"Let us by," Morit said. "The rest of our party is in here."

"That would be the Waking Worlders?" the man asked, flipping through the pages on a clipboard. "Ah, yes, that's right." He looked up at them through the thick lenses of his spectacles. "I'm sorry, but you are not in this scene."

"Certainly we are," Morit said, glaring. "We go where we please."

"Sorry," said the man, flipping a few more pages. "You can't go in. This is a closed set."

"Aarrgh!" Morit growled. He lowered his shoulder and tried to charge past the man. The clipboard in the man's hand became a high wall with spikes sticking outward. Morit ignored them, shoving the wall back a fraction of an inch at a time. Blanda clung to his arm, looking apologetic. "For Nightmare's sake, woman, push!"

"Security!" the man shouted. Two guards in gray uniforms and hats appeared as out of nowhere, took Morit's arms and turned him, heading him out the door. Flashbulbs burst in his face, dazzling his eyeballs. The headline on the swirling newspaper read: ELYSIAN COUPLE TRY TO CRASH DINNER!

The next thing he knew, he and Blanda were in line at a cafeteria full of people in costumes, human-sized animals with vastly oversized heads, sitting and chatting.

"Central Casting!" he exclaimed. "How humiliating."

* * *

When Keir and his clients entered the dining room, a kettle drum began its low roll. Big, round searchlights hit them in the eyes. A waiter, clad in an impeccable, short black coat and a white napkin over one arm appeared and bowed before them.

"This way, ladies and gentlemen," he said, with the confidence of all good waiters, sweeping a hand to indicate they should follow him through the mass of tables. He whispered to Chuck, who was the closest behind him. "Is the back of my coat all right?"

"Fine," Chuck said, glancing at the perfect expanse of black serge. Not so much as a dust mote marred it.

"Thanks," the waiter said, nervously. Then his back straightened, and he began to glide through the crowd, gesturing ahead of him with a hand. He came to a halt at a table covered by snow-white cloth. A model of efficiency, he deftly seated the ladies first without ever seeming to slight the men. Chuck was impressed.

WAITER: (with a liquid accent) And here you are, m'sieur. Sank you.

PERSEMID: Merci beaucoup.

WAITER: (raising his hands to heaven) Ah! Madame 'as a sharming accent! Bon! S'il vous plait, peruse the menu. I will describe to you the especials. Per'aps you would like to begin with one of our celebrated opening acts? A trio of cheeses in full harmony, a well-aged ham, piquant hors d'oeuvres?

Chuck looked around him at what the other diners were having. The glasses and platters didn't seem to be filled with any substance that he could see, yet men and women dipped spoons into bowls and sipped, or sawed with knife and brought bite to lips with fork. What seemed to sustain them most was attention. The happiest- and healthiest-looking people in the restaurant were the ones at the tables in the center. Chuck could hear one of the waiters spooling out a line of almost sycophantic praise to a mink-clad woman and cashmere-suited man at a two-top just a few feet away. The man grew visibly more handsome, and the woman's complexion went from wan to rosy. Other tables were visited by reporters or fellow diners, to the enhancement of the ones seated there. The poor folk who sat around the perimeter, out of the charmed circle, who had gone without attention for a long time seemed listless and gaunt. Some were so obscure that they faded away completely.

Chuck decided that they must all be actors. He'd heard they lived on praise. That would explain the dog. Accompanied by the same fanfare and roll of drums, a large German shepherd was escorted to his own table, where a monogrammed silver bowl awaited. His supporters, men and women, but mostly women, crowded into the banquette seats around him. Not one of them was a dog, in any sense of the word, yet the tray the waiter brought to their table contained only bowls. The groupies ate from them face-down just like the dog.

Sylphlike creatures attached themselves to people who looked prosperous or successful, gaining substance from reflected glory until they were completely solid and entitled to tables in their own right. One of these fragile-looking women battened onto Chuck's arm like a limpet. She had red, red lips and sharp white teeth like a succubus, and her luscious body was encased in a peach satin gown so tight it looked as though it was painted on. Chuck felt weak just from having her touch him. She fluttered her eyelashes seductively. He felt his pulse race.

SYLPH: (breathily) And who are you?

CHUCK: (nervously) Nobody special.

SYLPH: Oh. (lets go) What a shame.

She tossed her lovely hair and undulated away. Chuck watched her go, half with regret and half with relief. He didn't want to be anyone's meal ticket, or meal, for that matter.

He decided he'd better find the lavatory before dinner. He cleared his throat, which brought the waiter to his side, pencil poised.

CHUCK: Where can I wash my hands?

WAITER: That way, m'sieur. (points stage right)

CHUCK: Thanks.

Chuck pushed back from the table and started toward the discreet little sign the waiter had indicated. It was embarrassing having a spotlight follow him to the toilet. He tried to pretend he was just having a look around.

The restaurant's décor was mostly dark brown wood. Framed images of glamorous men and women crowded the panels. They were all smiling, but he realized that the eyes in the photographs slewed back and forth, keeping an eye on one another.

He smiled and stood back to let someone else out of the men's room, then stepped inside.

On the other side of the door, he found a forest of wooden braces, not a hallway. He glanced back. The restaurant was nothing but painted canvas! The whole thing was one big movie set, just like the jet that had brought him to the Dreamland. A knot of people holding sheaves of paper or pacing nervously waited to go out through one of the two doors fixed into the scenery flat. Chuck started to say something, when a young woman with round wire glasses on her serious face came rushing over to him.

"What do you want?" she whispered.

"I need . . . you know," Chuck said, a trifle embarrassed. She nodded sharply, and sent him through the supports to a sixty-foot trailer at a short distance from the set. It looked like a miserable cardboard box. For a moment Chuck thought he might be better off finding a spot in the bushes, but inside the trailer was astonishing luxury. He was going to have to learn not to judge by initial appearances. Chrome gleamed in between panels of red and yellow enameled tile that shone so perfectly he could see his reflection in every square. Every stall door had a star on it, and the seat within, well, it was a throne in truth, not just in jest.

When he came out, two women in casual clothes descended upon him. He was shocked, not expecting to see them in the men's room. They didn't give him time to protest. One of them pushed him into a canvas chair while the other smacked him in the face with a huge powder puff. The dust made him cough. When she was finished with that, she picked up a small pencil and outlined the corners of his eyes. The second woman pulled his hair back and started to comb it with brutally efficient strokes. Chuck glanced at his reflection in the wall-sized mirror. He still looked thirty, thirty-five years old. He sighed a little for lost youth.

"Too long," she muttered, twisting his hair. "No time. Got to add something . . . there!" She reached into a huge fishing tackle-box that Chuck had not noticed before, and came up with a little band. She pulled back his hair and gathered it into a little ponytail at his neck. "Better. All right, you're done!"

The other woman, who had been dusting broad shadows on his jawline with a triangular sponge, jumped back. The door opened, and Chuck felt himself propelled toward the restaurant once again.

"You'll never believe what just happened to me," Chuck began, as he sat down, but Keir plopped a huge leatherbound book into his hands.

KEIR: Choose your meal first. The menu contains your script. You'll have to read from it exactly as it's written, or they start over and make you read it again, and we'll be here all night.

Chuck looked at the page, and realized that what was printed on it was exactly what people had been saying since he came into the restaurant. He ran a finger down the page.

PIPISTRELLA: (blankly) Why is it so bright in here?

PERSEMID: (groans)

Chuck gawked. That was exactly what was typed in the book before him.

WAITER: And what may I bring you?

KEIR: (looking around at everyone) Try the specials of the house.

CHUCK: I think I'll have the rhubarb.

He frowned. He hated rhubarb. The maitre d' came bustling up, waving his arms. He shouted into a megaphone.

MAITRE D': Cut! Try again.

KEIR: Put some life into it or we'll never get out of here.

CHUCK: (brightly) I think I'll have the rhubarb!

He smiled at the people at his table. Around him, the noise grew louder.

"That was very good!" the waiter said.

"What did you say?" Chuck asked, unable to hear him clearly.

"I said, that was very good!"

Chuck more or less caught his meaning by lip reading, because the crowd sounds were booming at him from every side. Then he listened to what they were saying.

ALL: Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb (repeat ad infinitum).

Persemid sat at Chuck's left. She tried to order, but the noise was too great. Even her shout was drowned in the racket coming from the other patrons. The waiter didn't seem to hear her.

WAITER: (to Pipistrella) Madame?

PIPISTRELLA: (smiling at waiter) I'll have the poetry and asparagus.

WAITER: Very good, madame. (to Sean) Sir?

Persemid glared, but she waited for a moment until the man had taken Sean's order. But as soon as she drew breath to speak, the crowd started chanting again.

ALL: Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb (repeat ad infinitum).

WAITER: (to Hiramus) Sir?

HIRAMUS: (indicating Persemid) You missed the lady.

WAITER: What was that, sir? I did not compre'en' you.

CHUCK: (shouting) He said, you forgot to take the other lady's order! Excuse me! What about this lady?

WAITER: I am so sorry, madame. (cocks his head and holds pencil ready) What would you like?

PERSEMID: (angrily points to something at random in the menu)

CHUCK: I'm sorry that happened.

She was as angry that someone had to help her as she was for having the waiter ignore her. Having Chuck be nice about it only made her feel worse.

PERSEMID: Forget about it. It happens all the time.

CHUCK: (outraged) But, that's wrong. Nobody should be ignored, especially when you're the paying customer.

PERSEMID: (snapping) Forget it!

She turned her back on Chuck, leaving him alone to observe his surroundings.

Newspaper clippings were passed around like platters of appetizers, offering everyone who was mentioned in them a little taste of fame. The wine stewards were reviewers, too. The pop of champagne bottles that heralded the receipt of good news gave way to the fizzing of the wine in glasses. Chuck thought he could hear voices coming from the wine that offered the same heady intoxication as verbal praise. Everyone wanted to be a part of a success. When the corks popped, people came from all over the restaurant, even literally from out of the woodwork.

Chuck glanced up as a plate was put down before him. It was empty. Perhaps the food in the Big Hat was like the dancers at the duke's palace: invisible. Following Keir's example he picked up his knife and fork, but they discovered only the surface of the china. He frowned at his guide, who was happily sawing and chewing. Chuck glanced at Persemid, who looked as if she agreed how ridiculous the situation was. Still, Keir was their guide. Chuck pretended he had something good to eat before him, cut off an invisible bite, and chewed on an intangible mouthful. He felt silly, but it wasn't so bad since they were all doing it.

A deep drum roll sounded, and the warm, resonant voice of an unseen announcer broke in on their conversation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Big Hat is very pleased to be able to welcome the heir to the throne of the Dreamland, her serene highness, Princess Leonora! Let's give her a big hand!"

A spotlight traveled through the crowd and lit on the front door. Chuck craned to see as a woman entered the room.

"Yes, here she is, wearing an off-the-shoulder evening dress in periwinkle. You all know that that's her highness's favorite color. Yes, she's greeting the great Dyer Sandman. He's smiling, as who wouldn't, to receive the mark of favor from such a great lady. And now, she's approaching the center of the room!"

Chuck found himself gawking, and ordered his tongue back into his head. Princess Leonora was beautiful, even more beautiful than Pipistrella, whom he had thought was the absolute ideal. In comparison, his fellow Visitor looked artificial and shallow. He found, to his amazement, that there was a notch above perfection; Pip was . . . ordinary. He had a mental adjustment to make.

"Isn't she lovely?" the announcer crooned, over the public address system. Chuck joined in the wild applause as the princess was escorted to a table. She looked over at them, beaming and waving, then sat down, still smiling vivaciously, and dropped her eyes to the menu handed to her by the deferential headwaiter. The applause cut off as if a switch had been thrown. But a change had been wrought. Something real, more than real, had been introduced into this completely artificial setting. Chuck felt an imbalance take hold. Tinsel began to flutter down from the ceiling. The illusion was failing.

CROWD: (suddenly) Boo!

Chuck looked up. A big man with thick black eyebrows was slinking toward the exit, glaring at the people all around him. They were hissing and shouting catcalls at him.

CHUCK: What happened?

WAITER: (dramatically) He . . . didn't leave a tip.

Chuck felt like grinning. Unreality reestablished itself again.

MAITRE D': All right, scene two! And . . . action!

* * *

"So no one here currently has a job, that is what you're saying?" Morit asked, cutting off another would-be actor's sad and rambling story. Every one of the hundreds of people in the shabby, utilitarian room paused, reluctant to speak.

"We're . . . between contracts," said a woman, throwing back her long, blonde hair. She was halfway pretty. Her face was frighteningly asymmetrical, with eyes on different levels, and a nose that took a distinct leftward turning around a large wart.

"It isn't fair!" a man complained. He was a strapping, burly man with an admirable cleft chin and flashing eyes, but his voice was so high it hurt Morit's ears. "There ought to be room for non-standard characters."

"Sleepers know," a woman with heavy five-o'clock shadow said, "it's not our fault we don't fit the molds."

"Sleepers," snorted a man with ping-pong paddles instead of hands. "It's the Sleepers' fault we look like this!"

Morit smiled, his teeth growing points like sharks. "It's the Sleepers' fault that you're like that at all," he said, persuasively. "Not only do they gift you with endless misery, they do it to make themselves feel better. How do you like that? You suffer throughout your existence for their self-esteem!"

"Well, if we didn't, we might not exist at all," said an elephant-faced woman, with a wistful expression on her wrinkled, gray brow, but she was wavering. "That's something."

"We ought to be self-actualizing," Morit said, warming to his subject. He had found allies. Converting them to the cause was easy. "Not only do we serve them to better their mental health, but we get no peace from them even when they are not employing us! They come in person to view their chattels, to look down in amusement upon the puny beings that they have engendered—to laugh at us!"

"Dear!" Blanda said, warningly. "That's not true. The Visitors have shown you no harm."

"Visitors?" demanded the ping-pong man. "Are there Visitors here?"

"Yes," said Morit. "I am offering you an opportunity to send a message to our manipulative creators in the Waking World! We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it any more!"

All the actors in the cafeteria raised a rousing cheer, although the majority looked uncomfortable. Morit jumped to his feet. "I know where they are! Let's give them a proper Dreamlander reception! We'll set a trap to catch them when they least expect it! Down with the Visitors!"

"Down with the Visitors!" As one, the actors rose to their feet. Morit threw an arm over his head and started marching, leading his audience toward the door. After a few paces, three quarters of them flitted away, mumbling apologies. Fools, Morit thought. They were unwilling to commit to action that would set them free.

"Dear, don't do this!" Blanda called after him. "My love, this is wrong!"

Morit left her behind in the cafeteria, a troubled look on her normally placid face.

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Framed