Dancing in Dreamtime (13 page)

“What provokes this ferocious appetite?” he had asked Lyla early in their acquaintance, imagining that as a neuroscientist she might know the answer.

“It comes from living in the mall, where you're surrounded by food and bombarded by ads,” she said. “That's all the more reason to move in with me.”

She had something there, he conceded, as he shuffled past eateries, taverns, snack shops, and sandwich carts. Even the eros parlors, feelie booths, and game arcades sold food and drink. The incessant dome shows beamed down mouth-watering ads, alternating with weight-loss promos.

Thinking of dome shows, he glanced up, and was startled to see one of his own vintage sky-paintings. Thunderheads that actually looked like surly clouds instead of mashed potatoes and gravy; dragon kites playing against a lavender haze; a flight of Canada geese beating their way across the face of a late-afternoon sun;
around the horizon a rim of hills topped by trees. He had painted that sky at least a dozen years earlier, while still a teenager, before moving into the mall. It already showed his characteristic strokes with the lightbrush. Yet by comparison with his recent work, overstuffed with allusions to food, this early painting seemed to him fresh and powerful. Every detail in it was authentic, something he had
seen
rather than vaguely hungered for. It was a creation of the eye, not the belly.

Had he lost so much power? he wondered, standing outside a Never Say Diet store (“Open for Eating 25 Hours a Day”), a pudgy silhouette so familiar that shoppers paused to gape at him. He was surprised by tears slithering through his beard and over his multiple chins.

For such misery there was only one antidote—Lyla. He barged straight for her, like a draft horse headed for the barn, riding the shuttle through its translucent tube out to the military base in the Hoosier National Forest. She would scold him for bothering her at work, something he had never done before. But this was an emergency. Most likely she would be dousing rats with exotic rays, turning them into spies or torpedoes, and how important was that by comparison with restoring her lover's self-esteem?

He did not fully grasp Lyla's research, and was not certain he wanted to. It involved poking about in the brain with vibrations, or perhaps devising ways of preventing enemies from poking about in the brain, or some such business. Her scientific jargon might as well have been the language of dolphins, for all the sense he could make of it. Never having progressed beyond arithmetic and
Bunsen burners in school, Sir Toby drew a blank when confronted with equations or graphs. He was grateful that he did not need to understand electronics in order to use a lightbrush or understand holograms in order to have his skies broadcast in malls.

The shuttle quivered to a halt. He glanced at the signboard: Old Bloomington. Two more stops to go. Ads beckoned from walls and ceilings, sales patter oozed from speakers. During the lull at the station, the sounds of chewing filled the air like subdued applause, reminding him that he had emptied his pockets in the mall. There were vending machines two cars down, but he could not bring himself to squeeze through the aisle past all those staring faces. Lyla would have nothing to eat in her lab. She seemed to subsist on air, like the wispy plant she had given him to brighten his bathroom. He would have to endure the hunger. Only two more stops. Surely there would be a snack bar at the base. Or perhaps he could persuade a guard to sell the contents of his lunch-bucket.

First the guard must be persuaded not to arrest or shoot him. In his haste, Sir Toby had not sufficiently pondered how to gain admission to this ominous facility. Perhaps he could introduce himself, note that he paid substantial taxes, and declare that he wished to evaluate Ms. Bellard's research. But what if they required a security clearance? And wouldn't he be doubly suspect as an artist? Allow him inside, and he might discover military secrets and paint them into his next sky, which would be broadcast in malls around the world. Spies would stop in the midst of shopping, gaze up at his revelations, and snap photos to smuggle back to hostile governments.

No, they would never let him in.

Another quiver of the shuttle. His stop. He might as well try. He could propose that Lyla vouch for him and lead him
blindfolded to her rat maze lab. He stood up, smacked his jacket and trousers into a semblance of neatness, and stepped onto the platform. No one else left the shuttle and no one boarded. In fact, there were no people visible, no vending machines, no benches or ticket booths. The Fort Hoosier station consisted of a windowless building, painted porridge gray and surrounded by razor wire. The blank steel door was plastered with warning signs.

Before he could budge, a camera mounted above the door swiveled to focus on him and a voice boomed: “
STATE YOUR BUSINESS
!
CLEARANCE CODE
!
PASSWORD
!”

Sir Toby blinked at the camera. “I've come to see Dr. Bellard on urgent business.”

Evidently this answer flummoxed the guard, for several seconds of electronic hum ensued. Presently the same male voice, but considerably less belligerent, inquired: “Excuse me, sir, but you wouldn't be the guy who paints the skies, would you? Sir Toby Something?”

“Moore,” Sir Toby answered, bowing slightly. “May I speak with Dr. Bellard? I promise not to steal any secrets.”

A moment later the combined breathing of several onlookers, who had evidently gathered near the monitor, was audible through the speakers. “Look,” whispered a female voice. “It's really him.” There was a muffled discussion, of which he could decipher only two words,
Toby
and
Lyla
. This conference was terminated by a round of laughter, and then the guard's chastened voice: “One moment, sir, while I page Dr. Bellard.”

Sir Toby, who was beginning to feel like a zoo exhibit, turned from the camera's scrutiny to wait. Out of habit, he searched his garments once again for provisions. To his surprise, he discovered a joybar in the watch pocket of his plaid vest. To his even greater
surprise, he felt no desire to eat it. Indeed, he felt crammed to the gullet, as if he could go a month before his next meal. With a shiver of revulsion, he slipped the joybar back into its hidey hole. What was happening to him? He studied the oatmeal-colored walls suspiciously. Maybe they were beaming rays at him to quench his hunger. They did such things at these labs. Poking about in the brain.

He felt woozy. There being no seat, he propped himself against the wall. Lyla would make them stop experimenting on him. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths. In his dizziness, he did not hear the door open or footsteps lightly approach.

“Toby, darling,” came a gentle voice, “whatever's the matter?”

It was as if birds had begun singing in his heart. He opened his eyes and engulfed her in a hug, murmuring, “Lyla, dearest, they're tormenting me.”

“Who?” she demanded, pulling back to gaze at him with luscious brown eyes.

“Everybody. The paparazzi with their videos. The Sleek of Araby bosses with their teeth and needles. Gawkers in the mall. And even here,” he protested, gesturing at the camera's glass eye, “the guards are beaming some kind of—” he groped for a word, “
fullness
rays at me.”

“Fullness rays?” she repeated skeptically.

He explained to her about the uneaten joybar, the loss of appetite, the faintness.

“Nobody's messing with your brain at the moment,” she assured him. Her small hand played like a mouse in his beard. She wore an olive-green uniform, with her name and rank stitched on the breast pocket, instead of the white coat he had expected. It was always disconcerting for him to be reminded that this tiny
woman, with her ponytail and mice-size hands, actually worked for the Psy-Ops division of the Pentagon.

“I just feel strange,” he said.

“Why don't you take a vacation from the mall?” she suggested, as she had so often suggested before. “Stay at my place.”

“The evening news would love that.”

“What more can they say about us than they've said already?”

He wavered. “Yes, but I've got a sky-mural due in two days.”

“I'll bring a lightbrush and projector from the lab.”

“But I've already got a painting started on my ceiling.”

“Then zip the file out here.” She looked at him intently, a slight smile on her face. “Have you run out of excuses?”

He shrugged, and returned her smile. He had always offered the same excuses. Publicity. Work. Deadlines. Yet, in his heart of hearts—or perhaps in his stomach of stomachs—he had been reluctant to leave the mall itself, with its eateries and domeshows and pleasure arcades. Now the mere thought of food filled him with loathing. As for pleasure, there was always Lyla.

“The change might do me some good,” he agreed at last.

“Delightful!” She took one of his great paws in her tiny one, and with her other hand she waved at the camera. The featureless door clicked open. Of course someone had been watching.

The partially finished sky glimmered on the ceiling of Lyla's apartment. After prolonged frowning at the chicken-liver sunrise, chocolate birds, and mashed-potato fog, however, Sir Toby could not bring himself to add another stroke of the lightbrush. Lyla had dubbed it “the great floating smorgasbord.” Only a starving man
could paint such toothsome skies, and Sir Toby, lounging like a walrus upon his lover's couch, was not the least bit hungry. He still had cravings, but not for food. With the flick of a switch he erased it all, the popcorn and giblets, the gravies and syrups, the sugary constellations. He closed his eyes and waited for inspiration.

He was still waiting when Lyla summoned him to the guest bedroom. Ordinarily he avoided this room, for it housed a colony of white rats, which had retired here after finishing their careers in the lab. “Come,” she said, “I have something to show you.”

With foreboding, he shuffled down the hall, but only after tucking his trouser cuffs into his socks as a precaution against inquisitive rats. He was relieved to see that a stout gate sealed off the lower half of the guest room doorway. Lyla stood just outside.

“Closer,” she insisted, drawing him to the threshold by his elbow. He peered into the room, where perhaps a dozen rats were nosing through mazes, working out on rodent-scale exercise equipment, or otherwise frolicking, apparently indifferent to the food heaped in a trough along one wall. “Here goes,” said Lyla, pushing a button on a control wand.

The ceiling was suffused with a rose-colored glow, which darkened to the color of tomato soup. Within that goop, creamy pasta-shapes slowly congealed. Sir Toby recognized this as the overture to one of his recent skies, broadcast within the past six months. “How did you get hold of it?” he asked.

“Military channels,” she answered. “Now watch what happens.”

He knew only too well what would happen. After the tomato soup would come lasagna, eggplant Parmesan, and so on through a five-course Italian meal, all smeared across the ceiling in shades of
catsup and cheese. A scrabbling noise made him look down, afraid the rats might be assaulting the gate. But they were scurrying toward the food trough, fighting for position, gorging themselves. Bits of kibble flew as the furry jaws snapped. Watching them made his skin crawl. The rats nipped one another in their frenzy to get at the food. They hauled themselves from dish to dish, their bellies sagging.

“They'll kill themselves,” he said with horror.

“Some of them would if I left it running long enough.”

“My art is doing that?” Standing in the doorway, he realized that a feeling of hunger was mixing with his nausea.

“Not your art, but what your sponsor blended with it.” Lyla pressed a hand against his back. “Stick your head inside the room and see how it feels.”

Fascinated, frightened, he leaned over the threshold, and was immediately seized by an overwhelming craving. He clutched his stomach, screaming, “Turn it off!”