"I mean, in a goddamned parallel dimension, why shouldn't the parallel people speak parallel English?"
It didn't explain, however, why he was unable to read their parallel writing, but he was learning very quickly that it was wise to stay away from these interdimensional brain twisters. They only confused him and ultimately made his head hurt. Better by far to stick to practical puzzles while he was on this mental roll, like the fact that the huge scoreboards at the far end of the game-show set not only showed the contestants' amassed winnings but also demonstrated the relationship between the cash prizes and the merchandise that was being given away. A car that looked not unlike a mid-fifties Studebaker was equated with a prize of ten thousand. That meant the two thousand sitting in the wallet wasn't a fortune but was quite enough juice to ease him out of trouble. He even learned the name of the currency. In Luxor, they wheeled and dealed and probably also lied and died for the almighty kudo.
The moment that he knew the value of the bundle of bills in the wallet, alarms started going off in Gibson's head. It could hardly be an oversight that the streamheat had set him up with an apartment in Luxor that came with an almost adequate fake ID, a decidedly adequate amount of walking money, a supply of booze, and a gun. In his experience, the streamheat didn't go in for oversights of this magnitude. So, if it wasn't an oversight, what was it? Were they hoping he would do something? Knowing the contempt in which they held him, he could only imagine that they expected him to take the money and the gun and go out and get drunk. It was crazy. Or was it? Maybe they expected him go to out and get drunk and then get arrested. That made a little more sense, and Luxor certainly had enough cops to bring him in if he were to cause a disturbance. The next question was why. By now, a theory was starting to develop. In the event of being arrested, he would almost certainly use the look-alike's ID, and that would mean an official report of some kind. Gibson frowned. Was he being set up as some sort of alibi for his double, creating the illusion that the man was in the local drunk-tank while, in reality, he was out doing something nefarious at the streamheat's bidding? Bringing Gibson across the dimensions seemed one hell of an elaborate way to set up an alibi unless, of course, it was going to be one hell of a crime.
Gibson poured himself another drink. Conjecture was making him weary. He realized that he was now at the point where he didn't believe anything that the streamheat had told him unless it was confirmed by another source. That meant doubting almost everything he'd heard about Luxor and challenging every supposition. He slowly sipped his Scotch and let the warmth course through him. The trouble with the intellectual rigor was that it was too much like hard work. He flipped the TV to the second channel to see if this might provide some new insight or inspiration, but all he got was an ugly and violent cop show in which, without too much benefit of plot, officers in heavy body armor blew away the bad guys with a selection of shotguns and automatic weapons. Gibson supposed that it was inevitable that this kind of show was popular in Luxor. Cultures that were big on law enforcement in reality were usually big on it as entertainment as well. He noticed that a large proportion of the bad guys in this show were genetic freaks, dramatically evil versions of the family on the game show. Gibson sighed. Was this how they siphoned off mass frustration, by turning up the hate against the atomic mutations?
"Jesus, this really is the fifties."
The cop show gave way to local news, and Gibson discovered that news presentation in Luxor was primitive, not unlike the old movie-house newsreels, with grainy photography, military band music, and a strident voice-over. The lead story was about the preparations for the president's forthcoming visit to the city, and it featured footage of Lancer riding in an open car, smiling and waving at a cheering crowd. Gibson instinctively didn't like Jaim Benson Lancer. The man was too handsome and too smooth, too many teeth and too much boyish hair. Gibson operated on the principle that anyone who looked so good just couldn't be trusted.
Gibson yawned. He had lost track of how much Scotch he'd poured into himself, and his eyelids were starting to droop. His sense of time was shot, but it was getting dark outside and the TV wasn't helping any. One channel was showing some grim movie about a bunch of chronically depressed peasants trying to eke out a living in some bleak, radiation-blasted rural hell, sort of Little House on the Nuclear Wasteland, and, on the other, an equally dour family drama, set in a apartment almost as wretched as the one that he was in, made him think of a version of the Honeymooners in which the humor had been replaced by raging angst and miserable screaming kids. He wondered if he ought to sleep or if he was in danger of psych attack in Luxor. Even though it meant taking the word of the streamheat, he had to assume that he was at least marginally secure. He couldn't spend the rest of his life staying awake because he was afraid of what might come at him out of his dreams. Whatever their ultimate intentions for him, he couldn't see that he would be much use to the streamheat either as a ringer or a rat in a maze with his brain fried by nightmares or crazy from exhaustion.
It was at some point around that thought that his eyes closed of their own accord and he went out into a merciful blackness without dreams, either good or bad.
The next thing he knew was that he was wide awake, and something was coming out of the TV at him.
The White Room
"IT'S INTERESTING THAT you always talk about this imaginary show-business career of yours as a failure."
"I rucked up at the end but it wasn't a total failure. There was a period when we were the biggest thing there was."
"So what went wrong."
"I guess we got too crazy."
"Can you be a bit more specific."
Gibson's face creased into a sly grin. "Does it really make that much difference? I mean, it's only a fantasy, right?"
"Why don't you tell me about it anyway?"
"What's the point?"
"Stay with it. The creation of an extremely vivid full-life fantasy such as this can frequently be a way in which we hide a very serious trauma."
Gibson was back in session with Dr. Kooning. Dr. Kooning had started treating him like her star patient. His hours with her had been increased. Instead of an hour a day, Monday through Friday, she'd bumped his hours up to a double deal on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with the regular single on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a total of eight hours a week on the couch, although Gibson still refused to lie on the couch. Even though Gibson was doing his best to make nice and try to produce what would pass as a plausible recovery, the idea of lying on the couch still gave him the horrors. Eight hours a week of pouring out his soul to Kooning wasn't exactly appealing, either. He would much rather have spent the time talking to John West. Although West was definitely a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, he had some paranoid conspiracy theories that were world-beaters. He was dropping hints that he was, in fact, a top-rate intelligence operative who, after an attempt at resigning, had been confined in the clinic to be driven demonstrabty mad so no one would believe him if he was ever in a position to tell what he knew. He was also the only person since Gibson's return who unreservedly accepted the story of his adventures in Luxor and the dimensions he'd fled to after the debacle there.