He was supposed to call only in emergencies.
John Valentine was suspicious of most technological advances, regarded even the ones he took advantage of as no better than necessary evils. To him, the telephone was still a newfangled gadget. He refused to have one implanted in his head, like most people. But one could never tell when one's agent might be frantically looking for one, so he carried a pocket portable.
Telephones for children were both improper and an unwarranted expense. Dodger had no instrument at all, internal or otherwise. There were public phones for emergencies.
But telephones also functioned as the omnipresent ears of the government, of law enforcement, and John Valentine had never been on good terms with either. Every conversation was monitored and recorded, he was convinced. So it had damn well better be an emergency.
This was the problem Dodger had been wrestling with, then. He was already beyond hoping he could get out of this without consequences he didn't even like to think about. Father was going to be angry no matter what. Would calling make things worse, or better? And even more important, did he dare make a call when the people from the State School were listening in?
"So what would your name be?"
"Huh?" Dodger had almost forgotten about Mr. Dowd. "Oh, I'm Kenneth. Kenneth Valentine."
"No. You don't say. You wouldn't be Dodger Valentine, John B. Valentine's son, would you?"
Dodger looked up in astonishment, and momentary hope.
"Do you know my father?"
"Why, sure I do. To speak to, anyway, it's not like we're buddies. And I certainly know his work. Anyone who knows theater knows John Valentine's work."
"Mr. Dowd, could you—"
"Call me Elwood. Everybody calls me Elwood."
"Elwood, I've got a—"
"Why, I believe I saw him not thirty minutes ago. Now where was that...?"
Dodger was jumping up and down in his excitement.
"Mist—Elwood, please remember. I've just got to find him."
Elwood squatted down and looked at Dodger, then took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the boy's eyes.
"Yes, sir. I believe you do. Well, we'll just have to do something about that, won't we? He stood and took Dodger's hand.
They went around one corner, down a long hallway with doors on each side, then two more corners and there he was, John Valentine, standing tall as he always did, smiling at passersby. Giving no hint of the agitation he was certainly feeling.
Dodger swallowed hard, started forward, then looked around for Elwood.
He was gone.
Then he looked again toward his father, and there was Elwood, standing beside him. The differentness about Elwood was even more pronounced when he saw him standing by his father. Dodger couldn't quite put his finger on it. Elwood's presence was not as solid, somehow. He was not translucent. He cast a shadow. But Dodger knew he wasn't like other people.
He started forward again, and in a moment his father saw him. John Valentine turned toward his son, and something dangerous flashed in his eyes. Dodger kept coming but he reached into his pocket and pulled out the papers he had been given, then held them out before him like a shield.
"What have you done to your hair?" his father asked.
Dodger clapped his hand to his head. He had forgotten!
After everything settled down in the audition room a makeup man had been called. Dodger was swept into a chair and before he quite knew what was happening the man was cutting his hair. This was over the ineffectual protests of Auntie Equity, who kept asking where the boy's parents were. Peppy had turned on his considerable charm, pointing to the signature at the bottom of the release form, and reading a paragraph about agrees to undergo such changes in personal appearance as may be required pursuant to the audition. Dodger thought it best to keep quiet at that point. Maybe signing the paper in his father's name hadn't been such a good idea after all.
Before he knew it, Dodger's long hair had been butchered. It had been blond before; now it was a violent yellow, a yellow never before seen on a human head. On each side it now stuck straight out, like wings. The top of his head was shaved bald, except for a narrow Mohawk strip that was moussed into a topknot four inches high. On each of the strips of bare scalp the hairdresser had tattooed orange lightning bolts. His eyebrows had been shaved and also replaced with lightning bolts.
Dodger looked like a kid who had stuck his finger in an electric outlet.
It was this apparition, not the cherubic child he had left in the waiting room, that now approached John Valentine. That his dismay was not evident on his face—except to Dodger—was tribute to a truly massive acting talent.
But the Dodger could see it in his eyes. He was in big trouble.
There really wasn't anything to say. He held out the paper, and eventually his father took it.
It was crumpled, and there was a big mustard stain right in the middle. But at the bottom was the signature of Gideon Peppy. And at the top were the words Letter of Intent to Tender Offer of Employment.
Stapled to it was a check for twenty thousand dollars.
When I awoke this time I just lay there for a while, remembering that long-ago audition. Ninety-two years ago. Where did the time go?
God, that hair was awful. But I know I liked it at the time.
I shifted and found the clock.
Four days.
Trouble. Big-time trouble.
In the best of circumstances, you can't take your friendly neighborhood drug pusher to the Better Business Bureau to complain about the quality of her wares. You have to handle your complaints yourself, and I would cheerfully have broken her kneecaps and her elbows if I could get my hands on her. But if that had been in the cards she no doubt would never have diluted her product. It was a sweet racket she had going. Anybody she sold deadballs to was on his way off-planet, unlikely to be back in months, or years... or ever, if things worked out right. Right for her, that is. Spectacularly wrong for me. It was outright murder.
Well, what did I expect from a dope pusher?
I chewed slowly on a hard granola bar dipped in honey while I considered my options.
Number one was the most obvious. Simply eat as little as I could during these waking periods, and try to make it through the final forty days on what I had left. Torture, surely... but was it possible? I added it up a dozen different ways and kept reaching the same answer: I don't know. I just didn't have enough data about rates of starvation. I knew people had fasted for very long times, but I didn't have any reliable numbers on it. And hadn't they damaged themselves? I thought I'd heard that. Brain damage can be irreversible.
What I was sure of was that I would be mighty hungry the whole time. And I thought I might go crazy out here with no companion but my appetite.
Option number two involved leaving the Pantech and making my way to the ship's central core. A risky business at best, but I could probably make it. Once I got there, of course, I'd have food. They always carried plenty of good food on these cargo ships, gourmet meals being one of the inducements for taking such a lonely job at all.
Sure, they'd feed me well. And turn me over to the police as soon as they landed. Since I couldn't pay the fare that meant a prison term, and on Oberon that meant the gravity gang. No, thank you.
The third option was a little vague, and was really sort of a suboption to number one. Some of these cargo canisters around me were certain to contain food. If I prowled through them long enough I might find some.
Maybe three hundred tons of onions, or a shipment of parsley, or a tank of diet soda pop that would blow up in my face.