Bremen shut his eyes and let Vanni Fucci direct him through the crowd while wave after wave of desperation washed over him like a heavy surf. It was as if all the urgency in the park … to have fun, to
“Open your eyes, you fuck,” whispered Vanni Fucci in his ear. The muzzle of the pistol dug deep into Bremen’s side.
He opened his eyes, but remained almost blind because of the pain of the neurobabble … the urgent, frenzied, centerless, harried, hurry-up-goddamn-it-we’re-gonna-be-at-the-back-of-the-line will to have fun come hell or high water. Bremen gasped for air through his open mouth and tried not to get sick.
Vanni Fucci hurried him along. Sal and Bert and Ernie should have made the connection with the crazy fucking Colombians now, and Vanni Fucci was supposed to hand over the geek at the Space Mountain thing. Except Vanni Fucci wasn’t a hundred percent sure where the fucking Space Mountain thing was; the swap was usually done at the fucking Jungle Ride, so he’d always gone straight to Adventureland during his other trips here, picked up the suitcase from Sal, and gone straight out on the monorail. He didn’t know why Sal had to change the fucking meeting point to fucking Space Mountain, but he knew the mountain was in fucking Tomorrowland.
Vanni Fucci tried to orient himself.
Vanni Fucci made a circle of the big fiberglass castle, caught a glimpse of a spaceship and some futuristic crap way off to his right, and shoved Bremen along in that direction. Another five minutes and he’d hand this geek over to Sal and the boys.
Bremen stopped. They were in Tomorrowland, almost in the shadow of the vaguely old-fashioned structure that housed the Space Mountain roller coaster, and Bremen stopped cold.
“Move, you son of a bitch,” hissed Vanni Fucci under his breath. He pressed the .38 deeper into Bremen’s ribs.
Bremen blinked but did not move. He did not mean to defy Vanni Fucci; he simply could no longer concentrate on the man. The migraine onslaught of neurobabble lifted him out of himself in an avalanche of otherness, on a cresting wave of alienation.
“Move!” Vanni Fucci’s spittle struck Bremen’s ear. Bremen faintly heard the hammer of the revolver being thumbed back. His last clear thought was,
Bremen watched himself through a middle-aged woman’s eyes as he stepped away from Vanni Fucci.
The thief cursed and covered the pistol again with his jacket.
Bremen continued to back away.
“I fucking
A family from Hubbard, Ohio, stopped to blink at the strange procession—Bremen backing slowly away, the little man following him with both arms raised, the lump under the jacket pointing at Bremen’s chest—and Bremen watched incuriously through their curious eyes. The younger daughter gnawed away a bit of cotton candy and continued to stare at the two men. A wisp of white-spun sugar clung to her cheek.
Bremen continued to back away.
Vanni Fucci began to leap forward, was blocked for a moment by three laughing nuns passing by, and started to run as he saw Bremen backing across a patch of grass toward the wall of a building. The thief let the muzzle of the pistol slide free. He’d be damned if he’d ruin a perfectly good jacket on this fucking geek.
Bremen saw himself reflected as if from a score of twisted fun-house mirrors. Thomas Geer, nineteen, saw the exposed pistol and stopped in surprise, his hand pulling free from Terri’s hip pocket.
Mrs. Frieda Hackstein and her grandson Benjamin stumbled into Thomas Geer and Bennie’s Mickey Mouse balloon floated skyward. The child began to cry.
Through their eyes, Bremen watched himself back into a wall. He watched Vanni Fucci raise the pistol. Bremen thought nothing, felt nothing.
Through little Bennie’s eyes Bremen saw that there was a sign on a door behind him. It read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and, beneath that, EMPLOYEES USE SECURITY ACCESS CARD. There was a slot in a metal box on the wall, presumably for security access cards, but the door had been left propped open an inch by a small stick.
Mrs. Hackstein stepped forward and began shouting at Thomas Geer for making them lose Benjamin’s balloon. For a second she blocked Vanni Fucci’s view.
Bremen stepped through the door, kicked the stick away, and clicked the door shut behind him. Dim lights showed a concrete stairway descending. Bremen followed it down twenty-five steps, followed a turn to the right, and descended another dozen steps. The stairway opened onto a long corridor. Mechanical sounds echoed from far away.
Bremen gasped as if struck in the stomach, sat on the third step for a moment, and rubbed his eyes.
The corridor crossed other corridors, passed other stairways. Cryptic signs on the walls pointed arrows toward AUDIOANIMLABS 6–10 or TRANSWASTEDISP 44–66 or CHARACTLOUNGES 2–5. Bremen thought that the last sounded least threatening and turned down that corridor. Suddenly a giant insect whine rose from an intersecting corridor and Bremen had to hustle back a dozen paces and step up onto an empty stairway while a golf cart hummed by. Neither the man nor the partially disassembled robot in the cart looked Bremen’s way.
He descended to the corridor and moved slowly, ears straining for the sound of another golf cart. Suddenly laughter echoed around the next turn and Bremen took five steps and turned into what he had hoped would be another stairway, but which was only a much narrower corridor.
He walked down the hallway, hands in his pockets, resisting the urge to whistle. The laughter and conversation grew louder behind him as someone turned into the corridor he had just vacated. He realized their destination and his mistake at the same moment.
The hallway ended at two broad doors, above which the sign read: BE SURE TO REMOVE YOUR HEAD BEFORE ENTERING. The doors were stenciled CHARACTER LOUNGE 3 with a no-smoking sign under the stenciling. Bremen could hear more conversation from the other side of the doors. He had about three seconds before the voices behind him reached the hallway.
To his left was a windowless gray door with a single word: MEN. Bremen stepped through just as three men and a woman turned into the long hallway behind him.
The rest room was empty, although a tall figure on the far wall made him jump. Bremen blinked. It was a Goofy suit, at least six and a half feet tall, hanging on a hook near the sinks.
Voices rose outside the door and Bremen slipped into a toilet stall and closed the door, latching it with a sigh of relief. No one would demand an ID badge in here. Doors opened and the voices receded into the Character Lounge.
Bremen lowered his head into his hands and tried to concentrate.
