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

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, I 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