"Master Chuck!" It was the stout man in tweeds. "Pardon the interruption. I was so moved by the moment you have captured for us, that I immediately went for the curator. He surely would want to know that you are here. May I present Dante Fidget?" He moved slightly to the right, shouldering Morit aside, to allow another man through.
Master Dante was an energetic man with bright blue eyes, pleasant, knobbly features, a nearly bald pate, and grasshopper-quick movements. He seized Chuck's hand in his large, bony one and threw his other arm around Chuck's shoulders.
"Such a pleasure, Master Chuck!" he said. "Why didn't you let us know you would be in these parts? We would have organized a banquet in your honor!"
"Oh, that's not necessary," Chuck said. "Really, the fuss everyone's making is just unnecessary . . ."
"You're too modest," Alarum said, with a superior smile. "Isn't that the most appealing manifestation? I shall have to make a note in my article."
"Admirable," said Master Dante, rubbing his hands together. "I really must introduce you to your fellow creators, you know. Please, come this way." With his arm still around Chuck's shoulders, he led the way out of the crowd. Chuck had a brief glimpse of the sour look on Morit's face as the couple was left behind in the wake of fulsome praise and compliments.
"Master Chuck, Evy Liston, Torgol Snooze, Berrita and Lugi Noddingoff," said the curator, with pride, drawing him into a small circle of people standing just a little apart from the masses. Chuck recognized the shy housewife, the beefy mustachioed salesman, and the romantic couple whose simple stories had moved him so much when he'd stepped into the world of their artifacts. The little group clustered around him. "Chuck Meadows, everyone."
"Oh!" said Evy Liston, pleasure on her small, tawny face. "How very nice to meet you!" She put out a narrow, soft hand. Chuck took it delicately and gave it a gentle shake.
"A pleasure," Chuck said. "Are any of you from the Waking World, too?" He gestured in a general way toward his navel.
"I am," Evy said, putting a protective hand on her midsection. "This is my third time here. And you?"
"First time," Chuck said. "I'm a novice."
"Oh, not with such an achievement behind you!" she exclaimed.
Chuck clicked his tongue impatiently. The elderly Noddingoffs just smiled at him. Torgol Snooze was an energetic man, much as Chuck recalled from the frame containing a tattered receipt book.
"Good to meet you, Chuck. I can call you Chuck, can't I?"
"Sure."
"Chuck, you're the man of the hour. We're all old news around here, but the bigwigs still treat us like treasures ourselves. Thought I'd let you in on the way things are. Savvy?"
"Uh, right," Chuck said, only half understanding the other man.
"You've got to hang around with the right people. Got it?" Master Torgol laid a knowing finger beside his nose and tapped it. "C'mon. We'll get you started, won't we, people?"
"Oh, yes," Mistress Evy said.
"Right!" said Master Torgol. He pulled Chuck familiarly by the arm through one gallery after another, with the other creators in tow. In the third chamber a man and a woman in white wigs and gold satin clothes from the period of Louis XVI were peering at a rebuilt engine block through gold quizzing glasses. Torgol stopped beside them.
"Your excellencies, may I present Chuck Meadows?" he said, bowing graciously. "The Count and Countess Znoorg."
"Ah, Meadows!" the satin-clad man said, putting aside his eyeglass and presenting Chuck with a hand like a dead fish. "Excellent! This is a most excellent opportunity for both you and us. I will earn grand kudos from bringing you to the attention of other persons of excellence. Master Aloisius!" he called. A man with shoulder-length black hair and a small beard and wearing dark blue and white robes paused in his conversation with Bergold to turn around to peer at them. "I would like to make you known to a truly excellent artist, Master Chuck. Master Chuck, the Astronomer Royal."
"Well, this is a pleasure," Master Aloisius said, coming over to grip Chuck's hand with steel fingers. "My friend from the Ministry of History and I were just saying that there were quite a number of stars here today. I am studying them at close range, for a change. Ha ha ha!" He swept his hand around. Chuck noticed for the first time that the room was filled with men and women who had a certain quality that drew the eye. He'd have to call it star quality.
The Count of Znoorg and the Astronomer Royal carried him off to introduce him around. Suddenly, he found a champagne glass in his hand, shaking hands with people.
Keir was there, too, with most of the other first-class passengers. Though he was still wearing his everyday gray homespun, the guide looked perfectly at home. Pipistrella veritably shone, like one of the stars themselves. She looked gorgeous with her long, blonde hair falling over a dress of buttercup yellow, tripping around airily in tall sandals of sunshine and crystal. Persemid trailed after her, glowering darkly, but she, too, looked natural, even comfortable in these settings. Her normal costume of draperies swirled with an artistic air. Chuck wondered if he was the only one who felt out of place. He stuck his hands in his pockets.
His sense of displacement couldn't last long, though, because statesmen, fellow artists, patrons of the arts, and aristocrats kept coming over to congratulate him. He protested, but they seemed even more impressed that a Visitor could be such a modest individual. People whispered and giggled nervously behind their hands as he went by. He glared at them at first, thinking they were making fun of him, but the awed looks on their faces were enough to convince him they thought he was someone really special. A star. A celebrity. Chuck found himself beginning to enjoy the heady feeling. Praise seemed to make his head light enough to lift him right off the floor.
Reporters clustered around him, scribbling in little notebooks.
"So, what's next for you, Master Chuck?" asked a female reporter wearing a big-shouldered 1940's suit.
"Well," Chuck said, trying to remember what it had meant to him when he'd made the jigsaw puzzle. He folded his arms, and put his chin in his hand. "I want to build on my past successes. Uh, I intend to let the artistic milieu inspire me to greater heights of understanding . . ."
In the midst of the fog, he caught himself about to say something pretentious when Persemid glanced at him over the shoulder of the woman he was talking to, and raised her eyebrows.
"When this is all over," she said, "you'll still only be you. Keep that in mind."
Chuck frowned at her. He couldn't forget just how flawed he was. It was tempting to pretend, but not so easy around people who knew him before he was celebrated. He landed squarely on his feet. It was a hard comedown.
* * *
The museum was getting far too crowded. Chuck began to feel as though he was being crushed by the atmosphere. He waded through the galleries, literally feeling as though he was slogging through mud, bogged down by the adoring regard of the patrons. He spotted Keir near the front door chatting with Hiramus. As he moved toward it, others jumped out of his way.
"How about something to eat?" Chuck asked. "I'm starved."
"Right this way!" Keir said, reaching for the handle.
"Not me," said Kenner brightly, walking with his girl. "Jennie here is going to show me a new place." He winked. Nearby, Mr. Bolster and Mrs. Flannel were still looking at pictures. They didn't seem to mind the crowd.
A young man hurried ahead of him to open the door, "For the Great Visitors," he said, proudly. A pair of very cute teenaged girls let out shrieks and giggles when Chuck looked their way. He shook his head. The rest of Keir's clients followed behind. All of them looked grateful to be outside.
The buzz had hit the streets of Ephemer before Chuck and his companions did. Everyone they passed wore shy smiles, or gave them a salute or thumbs-up. There must be something more special about that gallery than Chuck had deduced. How could they all know what was going on without being told? Unless they were more advanced than other Dreamlanders he'd met so far.
"I don't suppose that Ephemer is close to Enlightenment, is it?" Chuck asked, hopefully.
"Only in the dictionary," Keir said, flatly.
"C'mon, Keir. This wasn't the real thing. I want to reach it before I have to go home . . . all right, I am at home. Or, rather, part of me is home . . ." Chuck gave up. "You know what I mean! I want to reach Enlightenment."
"I've been there," a young man said, overhearing their conversation. He started walking beside Chuck, keeping pace with him. He had a goofy smile on his face. "It was wonderful!"
"Me, too," said a middle-aged woman with soft, graying curls. "It was the best time of my life."
"You were?" Chuck asked, stopping right there in the street. "Can you tell me how to get there?"
"Well," the man said, dejectedly. "Not exactly. I mean, it kind of found me."
* * *
"Will you look at that?" Sean exclaimed, looking in the window of a store. Curious, the other Visitors gathered around the glass with him. Inside, a tiny train that looked almost exactly like theirs was riding little rails that ran through a beautiful landscape filled with glittering, magical scenes. Sean almost sighed with pleasure as he turned away. "That's a fine one. I'd always liked trains as a lad."
"Me, too," Chuck said. "My dad had a layout that filled half our basement."
The young man who earlier held the door for them came running up beside them. He held out a package wrapped in brown paper to Sean. "For you, great Visitor!"
Sean eyed him suspiciously. "And what's this?"
"The train you admired, sir! A gift."
"That's not necessary," Sean said, clearly uncomfortable. "Please, I can't take this." He handed it back. The young man's face fell.
"Oh, please, sir," he said, plaintively. "It would mean a lot to me."
Sean looked from Chuck to Keir to Pipistrella, who was nodding encouragingly at him. "Well, all right, and thank you very much. It's most kind of you."
Spotlights hit the group from above. As Sean threw up his arm to protect his eyes, flashbulbs erupted. A newspaper swirled into existence before their eyes. The headline read: VISITOR ACCEPTS GIFT FROM LOCAL MAN! Hiramus seized it from the air and read it, frowning. Suddenly, the group was surrounded by reporters.
"Tell me how it felt, Master Sean," said the first reporter, a man in a fedora with a card that said PRESS in the hatband. "And you, young man, what possessed you to make a gift to the Visitor?"
All the crowd started shouting questions, not waiting for answers.
"Oops, we're caught up in a Walk of Fame Dream now!" Bergold said. He took Sean and Chuck by the arms and turned them to continue walking along the street. Chuck glanced back. Thousands of people lining the street on both sides were held back by cordons and rows of police linking arms. The mob of newsmen stayed close behind them. Though Bergold steered them in and out of shops, hotel lobbies and more museums, they could not shake off the reporters, who continued to write in their notebooks or talk into oversized microphones every time one of the Visitors or their companions did anything at all. The spotlights somehow stayed above them, bathing them in a pale, flattering light. Everyone around Chuck was young and handsome.
"Limelight," Bergold explained. "It gives those who stand in it a healthy, youthful glow."
"Oh," Chuck said. "I just thought we'd gone through another wave of change."
"No, that's just the limelight," Bergold assured him. "Makes everything it touches more attractive, but does nothing for the inside. Still, everyone will want to share it with you. Many of them will do anything to achieve that."
Every time Chuck stopped to look at something, passersby stopped to stare, either at him or what he was studying. If he admired something in a store window, one of them would jump to buy it for him. After the relief of losing a lot of his luggage, he was suddenly burdened down with gifts from people who wanted to be under the spotlights for just a moment. He admitted that the warm glow felt good. It was a pity it didn't have any lasting effects on the hole inside him.
* * *
"Help me!" a high-pitched voice screamed. A woman wearing a scarlet evening dress torn up the side seam came running towards the group. Chuck and his companions gawked. Behind her stalked a gigantic lizard breathing lightning, a skeleton wielding a scimitar, a man in a white tie, and a hundred zombies. A car came streaking out of nowhere, zoomed past the woman, and plowed into the giant lizard. It picked the car up and chomped off the front end. Four men fell out of the shredded compartment, plummeting sixty feet to the ground. They lay still, their heads twisted to frighteningly wrong angles. The woman stopped, paralyzed, as the monsters marched inexorably toward her.
"We've got to help," Sean said, running out to her. The moment he put his arm around her and tried to help her get away, a voice over a loudspeaker shouted, "Cut!"
The monsters stopped moving. The woman threw her hair back. The corpses on the ground got to their feet. "Places, please!" the voice commanded.
As if by magic, the woman was a hundred yards up the street. The monsters spread to three different points and paused. The car and its occupants waited, hidden behind the facade of a building. Chuck noticed then that none of the buildings were real. He and the others were back where they'd first seen the woman. A man in jodhpurs and a beret came out, grabbed Sean's arm, and held him in place. He held up a megaphone and shouted into it. "All right . . . action!"
The sequence was repeated again, this time with the car striking the woman and knocking her to the ground. The car swerved into the monster, who zapped it with its lightning, ate half of it and dumped the contents on the ground.
The director groaned, and lifted the megaphone to his lips. "Cut! Too nasty! Let's try it again!"
As Chuck watched with fascination, the scene was repeated over and over, with subtle variations. The woman was chased into the arms of the monsters. Men perished in a terrible car wreck, accompanied by booming action music. It ended every time with the director crying out, "No! Try it again!"
"What do you want to have happen?" Chuck asked curiously, while the director waited for his crew to take its places for the eighth time.
"I'm trying for a positive ending," the director said. "All right! For the last time, let's get it right, people!"
Suddenly, the whole scene seemed to come together. The woman outran all the monsters except the vampire, who handed her a picnic basket. The car came out of its hiding place at the same breakneck speed, but it missed crashing into the lizard. It came to a stop, and one man got out. He ran to the woman. They embraced passionately, then sat down with the picnic basket in what had become a meadow. The music playing was a piano concerto.
"What happened?" Persemid asked.
"Directed dreaming," Keir explained. "Somewhere in the Waking World, some sleeper who is capable of lucid dreaming is redoing his dream over and over until he gets the result he wants."
"Can people do that?" Chuck asked, fascinated, watching the man uncork a bottle of champagne and spray the wine all over himself. The director groaned and threw up his hands. He had to retake the whole scene from the entrance of the monsters.
"Oh, yes," Keir assured him. "It's a good deal of work, but requires a kind of control that would make one a being of influence here in the Dreamland."
Chuck was impressed. "I wish I was that organized." More likely, he thought, he wondered if he would bother to take the time to learn how to do it. But the idea was planted. He hoped he could remember when he came out of his trance. The next time he came here, he could go straight to Enlightenment.
| Title: | The Grand Tour |
| Author: | Jody Lynn Nye |
| ISBN: | 0-671-57883-9 |
| Copyright: | © 2000 by Jody Lynn Nye |
| Publisher: | Baen Books |