I put those options to one side, and concentrated on number four.
I almost hate to mention option number four, because it was nebulous, at best. I asked myself, is there any way to extend the periods of sleep back to the full week I had been counting on? And the answer to that was... could be. What I had in mind was self-hypnosis.
One of the things I do to tide myself over times of no work is magic. Not just three-card monte and its infinite variations, though I have been known to run a game. And not the manipulation of cards to gain an advantage at the poker table, though I am quite capable of that, too. The same skills useful in running a street con can also be put to use on the semilegitimate stage where no money hinges on the outcome. Prestidigitation. Sleight of hand. Misdirection and showmanship. In my luggage beside the Punch and Judy show are the basic tools of The Amazing Klepto, Mentalist Extraordinary. It consists mainly of a black cape, top hat, and magic wand, and in a pinch I can do without the wand. Most of the tricks I do can be performed with found or hastily manufactured objects. I can work up close in a small room or on the street, on a cabaret or theater stage, and I'm available for birthdays, charivaris, menarches, and bar mitzvahs.
I'm up-front about it. There is no real magic, so far as I know. It's all illusion, and I tell you so before I begin. I'm known as Klepto because a good part of the close-in work involves relieving the audience of jewelry, wallets, and other items worn or carried about the person, then producing them again to amused astonishment all around.
Or not, if I think the item won't be missed.
No real magic, I said, but hypnotism always seems close to it, even to me. I can hypnotize others and have them go through the ancient repertoire of parlor tricks mesmerists have been putting their victims through for centuries: making animal sounds, reverting to childhood, removing their clothing, and generally making damn fools of themselves. Or I can hypnotize myself, and certain parts of the act become much easier for me. Call it yoga if you wish. It is mostly increased control of involuntary body functions, and I learned most of what I know from—who else?—a gypsy woman in a hobo jungle just outside Marsport. Most of the lessons took place in bed.
The trick is to convince yourself you are able to do some unlikely thing. If it is not utterly impossible—I wouldn't recommend trying to fly by flapping your arms—you'd be surprised at the things you can do. Could I convince myself to sleep for a week?
The trick of hypnosis is to fool yourself into believing that something that is possible is in fact true. Sleep was the end result I was seeking, but that was the end. What I proposed was to start at the beginning, with the means of sleep.
So I dissolved two of the white pills in a glass of water, and I held it up before me. I gazed into the milky depths.
You are powerful, I told the potion. You will make me sleep for a week. Yeah. Right.
I made my bubble transparent and assumed the lotus position on my mattress. The cold stars looked down at me, but I ignored them. I looked instead at the gently rocking horses of the future carousel. They were sleeping peacefully. If they could do it, so could I.
"Oh, money pump mayhem. Oh, money pump mayhem." This was my mantra, suitably dodgerized for my delectation. The gypsy woman had her own version, some unpronounceable Romanian or Romany transliteration of the original... Hindi? Urdu? Sanskrit? I didn't know, but most people would recognize the ancient chant of Om mani padme hum. The words don't mean anything, anyway, unless you're a Buddhist, and my version was better than the one an old girlfriend of mine had used: "Oh, Mommy! Pop, me humped!" I never got around to asking her if it was true. "Oh money-pumpmay hem! Oh, money pumpmay hem!" I did that for half an hour. I succeeded in getting myself into a dreamy, receptive state, but not deep enough to believe the deadball was full strength. That was okay. I hadn't expected to.
But didn't I have something in my medicine chest that might help...? I opened it and pawed through the meager contents, and there it was. It was a bottle half-full of white pills. The label said ASPIRIN. Ah, yes, but hadn't I replaced them back on... was it Brementon? Yes, yes, it was. On Brementon I had replaced the innocent white headache pills with innocent white powerful narcotics. Very powerful narcotics. I remember doing so. I could see myself emptying the aspirin. I saw myself dump the aspirin in the trash. I saw myself opening a brown bottle, pouring powerful narcotic pills into my hand, and carefully putting them into the aspirin bottle. I heard them rattling down through the narrow neck.
Great! Now I had a bottle of powerful narcotics. Maybe they would enable me to sleep for a week, along with the deadballs.
I shook two of the pills into my hand. No, better make it four.
On each of them, in tiny red letters, was the word ASPIRIN.
For a moment the whole house of cards wavered, threatened to topple.
Ah, but wait!
I would have laughed, except for the rarefied state of Zen bliss I was in, so I contented myself with a beatific smile. Foolish boy! Don't you recall? Of course you do. The... the... the guy you bought them from told you, he said... he said... he had written ASPIRIN on the powerful narcotics so if anybody looked at them, they would see ASPIRIN, and think they weren't worth stealing. But they were really powerful, powerful narcotics.
In fact, they might be too powerful. Don't take four of them. I put one back into the bottle. Three should be enough.
I popped them into my mouth and washed them down with the chalky deadball solution. Then I set about tidying things up, knowing I'd be asleep soon.
I came across the frog and skull netsuke and I picked it up. I stared at the frog, and it stared back at me.
I liked the way it felt in my hand, so I kept it out. I resumed the lotus position, and stroked the ancient, cool ivory with my thumb. It gradually warmed under my hand. I could feel a pulsing in the frog's throat.
I fell asleep.
Dodger hurried through the busy passenger terminal of the King City Spaceport, clinging to his father's hand, feeling a little like a balloon at the end of a string. It wasn't a bad feeling, but it wasn't a real secure one, either. There was nothing to be done about it. When his father got excited, he moved very fast.
Father and son were dressed in white pants and shoes, long white coats that buttoned all the way down the front and had stiff, upright collars. They wore orange turbans wrapped around their heads. The skin of their hands and faces was now a light brown color, and John Valentine sported a neatly trimmed black beard and mustache. Under the turban Dodger was bald as an egg. The shocking yellow hair was all gone, and so were the lightning-bolt tattoos.
Valentine hurried up to the Inner Planet Budget counter and smiled at the young woman who stood behind it. She smiled down at Dodger, who looked cute as could be, a scale model of his handsome father but without the whiskers.
"Good morning," Valentine said, with a slight accent. "I am seeking a reservation in the person of Rajiv Singh, and his most esteemed son, Rahman. We have been booking two passages of an inside stateroom to Flip City, Mars, with connectings to New Amritsar."
"Yes, Mr. Singh, I have your reservation here." The young woman did something at her ticketing machine and produced a clear plastic rectangle that flashed in rainbow colors when the light hit it. "That will be five hundred and fifty-seven dollars and nineteen cents, including transportation tax, excise tax, amusement tax, transaction tax, value added tax, spaceport usage fees, and the mandated voluntary oxygen-indigent support assessment. May I have your credit number, please?"