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

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