Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

anymore?"

  "For the sake of argument, sure. Being destroyed and recreated isdifferent from not being destroyed at all, right?"

  "Brush up on your quantum mechanics, pal. You're being destroyed andrecreated a trillion times a second."

  "On a very, very small level --"

  "What difference does that make?"

  "Fine, I'll concede that. But you're not really an atom-for-atom copy.You're a clone, with a copied _brain_ -- that's not the same as quantumdestruction."

  "Very nice thing to say to someone who's just been murdered, pal. Yougot a problem with clones?"

  And we were off and running.

  #

  The Mansion's cast were sickeningly cheerful and solicitous. Each ofthem made a point of coming around and touching the stiff, starchedshoulder of my butler's costume, letting me know that if there wasanything they could do for me. . . I gave them all a fixed smile andtried to concentrate on the guests, how they waited, when they arrived,how they dispersed through the exit gate. Dan hovered nearby,occasionally taking the eight minute, twenty-two second ride-through,running interference for me with the other castmembers.

  He was nearby when my break came up. I changed into civvies and wewalked over the cobbled streets, past the Hall of the Presidents, notingas I rounded the corner that there was something different about thequeue-area. Dan groaned. "They did it already," he said.

  I looked closer. The turnstiles were blocked by a sandwich board: Mickeyin a Ben Franklin wig and bifocals, holding a trowel. "Excuse our mess!"the sign declared. "We're renovating to serve you better!"

  I spotted one of Debra's cronies standing behind the sign, a self-satisfied smile on his face. He'd started off life as a squat, northernChinese, but had had his bones lengthened and his cheekbones raised sothat he looked almost elfin. I took one look at his smile and understood-- Debra had established a toehold in Liberty Square.

  "They filed plans for the new Hall with the steering committee an hourafter you got shot. The committee loved the plans; so did the net.They're promising not to touch the Mansion."

  "You didn't mention this," I said, hotly.

  "We thought you'd jump to conclusions. The timing was bad, but there'sno indication that they arranged for the shooter. Everyone's got analibi; furthermore, they've all offered to submit their backups forproof."

  "Right," I said. "Right. So they just _happened_ to have plans for a newHall standing by. And they just _happened_ to file them after I gotshot, when all our ad-hocs were busy worrying about me. It's all a bigcoincidence."

  Dan shook his head. "We're not stupid, Jules. No one thinks that it's acoincidence. Debra's the sort of person who keeps a lot of plansstanding by, just in case. But that just makes her a well-preparedopportunist, not a murderer."

  I felt nauseated and exhausted. I was enough of a castmember that Isought out a utilidor before I collapsed against a wall, head down.Defeat seeped through me, saturating me.

  Dan crouched down beside me. I looked over at him. He was grinningwryly. "Posit," he said, "for the moment, that Debra really did do thisthing, set you up so that she could take over."

  I smiled, in spite of myself. This was his explaining act, the thing hewould do whenever I fell into one of his rhetorical tricks back in theold days. "All right, I've posited it."

  "Why would she: one, take out you instead of Lil or one of the real old-timers; two, go after the Hall of Presidents instead of Tom SawyerIsland or even the Mansion; and three, follow it up with such a blatant,suspicious move?"

  "All right," I said, warming to the challenge. "One: I'm importantenough to be disruptive but not so important as to rate a fullinvestigation. Two: Tom Sawyer Island is too visible, you can't rehab itwithout people seeing the dust from shore. Three, Debra's coming off ofa decade in Beijing, where subtlety isn't real important."

  "Sure," Dan said, "sure." Then he launched an answering salvo, and whileI was thinking up my answer, he helped me to my feet and walked me outto my runabout, arguing all the way, so that by the time I noticed weweren't at the Park anymore, I was home and in bed.

  #

  With all the Hall's animatronics mothballed for the duration, Lil hadmore time on her hands than she knew what to do with. She hung aroundthe little bungalow, the two of us in the living room, staring blanklyat the windows, breathing shallowly in the claustrophobic, superheatedFlorida air. I had my working notes on queue management for the Mansion,and I pecked at them aimlessly. Sometimes, Lil mirrored my HUD so shecould watch me work, and made suggestions based on her long experience.

  It was a delicate process, this business of increasing throughputwithout harming the guest experience. But for every second I could shaveoff of the queue-to-exit time, I could put another sixty guests throughand lop thirty seconds off total wait-time. And the more guests who gotto experience the Mansion, the more of a Whuffie-hit Debra's peoplewould suffer if they made a move on it. So I dutifully pecked at mynotes, and found three seconds I could shave off the graveyard sequenceby swiveling the Doom Buggy carriages stage-left as they descended fromthe attic window: by expanding their fields-of-vision, I could exposethe guests to all the scenes more quickly.

  I ran the change in fly-through, then implemented it after closing andinvited the other Liberty Square ad-hocs to come and test it out.

  It was another muggy winter evening, prematurely dark. The ad-hocs hadenough friends and family with them that we were able to simulate anoff-peak queue-time, and we all stood and sweated in the preshow area,waiting for the doors to swing open, listening to the wolf-cries andassorted boo-spookery from the hidden speakers.

  The doors swung open, revealing Lil in a rotting maid's uniform, hereyes lined with black, her skin powdered to a deathly pallor. She gaveus a cold, considering glare, then intoned, "Master Gracey requests morebodies."

  As we crowded into the cool, musty gloom of the parlor, Lil contrived togive my ass an affectionate squeeze. I turned to return the favor, andsaw Debra's elfin comrade looming over Lil's shoulder. My smile died onmy lips.

  The man locked eyes with me for a moment, and I saw something in there-- some admixture of cruelty and worry that I didn't know what to makeof. He looked away immediately. I'd known that Debra would have spies inthe crowd, of course, but with elf-boy watching, I resolved to make thisthe best show I knew how.

  It's subtle, this business of making the show better from within. Lilhad already slid aside the paneled wall that led to stretch-room numbertwo, the most recently serviced one. Once the crowd had moved inside, Itried to lead their eyes by adjusting my body language to poses ofsubtle attention directed at the new spotlights. When the newlyremastered soundtrack came from behind the sconce-bearing gargoyles atthe corners of the octagonal room, I leaned my body slightly in thedirection of the moving stereo-image. And an instant before the lightssnapped out, I ostentatiously cast my eyes up into the scrim ceiling,noting that others had taken my cue, so they were watching when theUV-lit corpse dropped from the pitch-dark ceiling, jerking against thenoose at its neck.

  The crowd filed into the second queue area, where they boarded the DoomBuggies. There was a low buzz of marveling conversation as we made ourway onto the moving sidewalk. I boarded my Doom Buggy and an instantlater, someone slid in beside me. It was the elf.

  He made a point of not making eye contact with me, but I sensed hissidelong glances at me as we rode through past the floating chandelierand into the corridor where the portraits' eyes watched us. Two yearsbefore, I'd accelerated this sequence and added some random swivel tothe Doom Buggies, shaving 25 seconds off the total, taking the hourlythroughput cap from 2365 to 2600. It was the proof-of-concept that ledto all the other seconds I'd shaved away since. The violent pitching ofthe Buggy brought me and the elf into inadvertent contact with oneanother, and when I brushed his hand as I reached for the safety bar, Ifelt that it was cold and sweaty.

  He was nervous! _He_ was nervous. What did _he_ have to be nervousabout? I was the one who'd been murdered -- maybe he
was nervous becausehe was supposed to finish the job. I cast my own sidelong looks at him,trying to see suspicious bulges in his tight clothes, but the DoomBuggy's pebbled black plastic interior was too dim. Dan was in the Buggybehind us, with one of the Mansion's regular castmembers. I rang hiscochlea and subvocalized: "Get ready to jump out on my signal." Anyoneleaving their Buggy would interrupt an infrared beam and stop the ridesystem. I knew I could rely on Dan to trust me without a lot ofexplaining, which meant that I could keep a close watch on Debra'scrony.

  We went past the hallway of mirrors and into the hallway of doors, wheremonstrous hands peeked out around the sills, straining against thehinges, recorded