"Spider Robinson - The Free Lunch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

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.
He punched in the six digits of the date on which Thomas Immega had opened the gates of his mighty dream
for the first time, thirteen years earlier. At once he heard the familiar, barely audible sound of a door dilating,
but no doorway appeared where he was expecting it. He decided the sound might have come from off to one
side, though he wasn't sure which, and glanced quickly in both directions. Still no door. But he had not heard
it sigh shut again yet. Or had he only imagined hearing it in the first place?

He looked at Annie. She was trying not to smile. It made him mad. He closed his eyes, thought furiously . . .
then turned on his heel and walked directly into the left wall of the corridor.

As he passed through it, he was already turning right. He was in a small room; before him was a door - a
real old-fashioned door, with hinges and a knob-and in front of it lay a welcome mat. He stopped and waited
for Annie to catch up.

She came through the hologram wall still trying not to smile, but having trouble with it. "Not bad. How did you