“Anything to do with our plan for tomorrow?”
“Today, you mean. It must be a long time after midnight. No, it isn’t.”
“You got your locker open. I checked. That’s good, that was the test. What we’re going to do—”
“I’m not going,” he said.
There was a long silence. At last North said, “You think you’ve got a better way now.”
“That’s right.”
“I need somebody to drive me. You’re the only one around.”
He asked, “Can’t you drive?”
“Hell, yes. But I’m not going to.”
He hesitated. Marcella (who might or might not be the same as Lara, though he was sure she was) was going to try to get him out. But would her chances be worse if he’d gotten himself out before? “All right,” he said. “But there’s a price.”
“Name it.”
“You’re from the real world—the world where Richard Nixon was President. So am I. But I think you’ve been in this one a lot longer than I have. How long?”
North shrugged, his shadowy shoulders almost invisible in the faint light. “I’ve lost track.”
“More than a year?”
“Sure.”
“Then I want you to answer three questions for me, openly and honestly. Three questions about this world. Will you do that?”
“Shoot.”
He hesitated. There were so many questions, and some of them were questions he had to ask himself. Did he want to go home? Or to find Lara? He asked, “Who is the woman they call the goddess?”
“Hold it,” North said. “I can’t answer questions that don’t make sense. Do you mean the real goddess?”
“When I first got here, I bought a doll. The clerk said it was the goddess at sixteen. I mean whatever goddess he meant.”
“All right, that’s the real goddess. Only she’s not real. She’s just like Christ or Buddha, you get me? She represents the God-damned feminine ideal or whatever. There’s a big place out west that’s sacred to her—ten thousand square miles, they say. Nobody can live out there. Nobody’s even supposed to go into it.”
“No one ever sees her?”
“That’s your second question?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Sure, people see her. They see ghosts and flying saucers—all sorts of crap. She’s supposed to go around looking for her lost lover, some guy she ditched thousands of years back.” North paused; it was impossible to make out his expression in the faint light from the doorway. “If you ask me, she’s Mary Magdalene, and she’s looking for Jesus. Anyway, sometimes they see him too—the lost lover.”
“This is my third. What do they call him?”
There was a noticeable hesitation before North answered. “I won’t count this one. There’s a bunch of names, and I’ve never paid much attention to them.” Another hesitation. “Attis, he’s one. He’s got something to do with spring, and the harvest. Or he did.”
“I still have a question left?”
“Right.”
“Then I’ll save it for later. Are you going to tell me how we’re going to get out? Or do you want me to play it by ear?”
“I’m going to tell you. Just before noon they’ll herd all of us into the rec room. It’s called group recreation, but it’s really a get-acquainted party and gripe session. All the staff will be there, so that’s the best time for it. What we have to do then—”
The light came on.
Indoor Moopsball
He had barely gotten into bed when W.F. carried in his breakfast tray. “You was pretty good,” W.F. said, “so you get’nanas with your cereal.”
He said, “You work some awful hours.”
“Not really. I work days. See, the first time I see you yesterday, I was ‘bout to go off. Then I went to the arena to handle Joe. Then I come back with him, ’cause I live out this way. I had a little talk with Joe ‘bout strategy an’ all that after you gone. I always do it with him after a fight, but he won’t do it
“You can’t have had much sleep.”
“Don’t
