The Golden Globe

Before he knew it, Dodger's long hair had been butchered. It had been blond before; now it was a violent yellow, a yellow never before seen on a human head. On each side it now stuck straight out, like wings. The top of his head was shaved bald, except for a narrow Mohawk strip that was moussed into a topknot four inches high. On each of the strips of bare scalp the hairdresser had tattooed orange lightning bolts. His eyebrows had been shaved and also replaced with lightning bolts.

Dodger looked like a kid who had stuck his finger in an electric outlet.

It was this apparition, not the cherubic child he had left in the waiting room, that now approached John Valentine. That his dismay was not evident on his face—except to Dodger—was tribute to a truly massive acting talent.

But the Dodger could see it in his eyes. He was in big trouble.

There really wasn't anything to say. He held out the paper, and eventually his father took it.

It was crumpled, and there was a big mustard stain right in the middle. But at the bottom was the signature of Gideon Peppy. And at the top were the words Letter of Intent to Tender Offer of Employment.

Stapled to it was a check for twenty thousand dollars.

When I awoke this time I just lay there for a while, remembering that long-ago audition. Ninety-two years ago. Where did the time go?

God, that hair was awful. But I know I liked it at the time.

I shifted and found the clock.

Four days.

Trouble. Big-time trouble.

In the best of circumstances, you can't take your friendly neighborhood drug pusher to the Better Business Bureau to complain about the quality of her wares. You have to handle your complaints yourself, and I would cheerfully have broken her kneecaps and her elbows if I could get my hands on her. But if that had been in the cards she no doubt would never have diluted her product. It was a sweet racket she had going. Anybody she sold deadballs to was on his way off-planet, unlikely to be back in months, or years... or ever, if things worked out right. Right for her, that is. Spectacularly wrong for me. It was outright murder.

Well, what did I expect from a dope pusher?

I chewed slowly on a hard granola bar dipped in honey while I considered my options.

Number one was the most obvious. Simply eat as little as I could during these waking periods, and try to make it through the final forty days on what I had left. Torture, surely... but was it possible? I added it up a dozen different ways and kept reaching the same answer: I don't know. I just didn't have enough data about rates of starvation. I knew people had fasted for very long times, but I didn't have any reliable numbers on it. And hadn't they damaged themselves? I thought I'd heard that. Brain damage can be irreversible.

What I was sure of was that I would be mighty hungry the whole time. And I thought I might go crazy out here with no companion but my appetite.

Option number two involved leaving the Pantech and making my way to the ship's central core. A risky business at best, but I could probably make it. Once I got there, of course, I'd have food. They always carried plenty of good food on these cargo ships, gourmet meals being one of the inducements for taking such a lonely job at all.

Sure, they'd feed me well. And turn me over to the police as soon as they landed. Since I couldn't pay the fare that meant a prison term, and on Oberon that meant the gravity gang. No, thank you.

The third option was a little vague, and was really sort of a suboption to number one. Some of these cargo canisters around me were certain to contain food. If I prowled through them long enough I might find some.

Maybe three hundred tons of onions, or a shipment of parsley, or a tank of diet soda pop that would blow up in my face.

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 ru

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 begi

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.