“You saved my ass from a twelve-year-old supervillain. I owe you.”
“No,” he says. “I owe you. Twenty more minutes, to be exact.”
A scattering of ancient stars fleck the gathering darkness. Chip knows all their names, although he has never directly seen any of them before.
The Clockwork waiter comes clitter-clattering from behind the bar on his cricket legs. A brass hatch opens in the floor, panels sliding away in a manner that suggests an iris widening in the dark. A quivering membrane fills the opening, an oily rainbow slick of light flashing across its surface.
“Who’s ready to step into a dream and float back to earth?” cries the Clockwork waiter, gesturing with spindly arms. “Who’s big enough and thirteen years old enough to go first?”
Girls scream me me me me me me! Chip observes Iris wrinkling her nose in disgust.
“How about the birthday girl? Abigail Danforth, step on up!”
The kid in the Girl-Next-Door face grabs her father’s hand and hauls him to the edge of the hole. The girl hops up and down with excitement while Dad gazes uneasily over the rim of the open hatch.
“Step right onto the Drop Bubble surface. There is no reason for anxiety. The bubble will not pop, or we pledge to refund your money to your next of kin,” the Clockwork waiter says.
Dad tests the quivering, transparent membrane with the toe of a polished loafer, and it yields slightly underfoot. He pulls his leg back, upper lip damp with sweat. The daughter, impatient to go, leaps into the center of the open hole. Immediately the glossy, glassy, semiliquid floor under her begins to sink.
“Come on, Dad, come on!”
And probably because she has a Girl-Next-Door face on and no one likes to look nervous in front of the Girl-Next-Door, Dad steps onto the soap-bubble floor beside her.
The ground sags beneath them. They sink slowly and steadily downward. Dad’s eyes widen as the open hatch rises to his chest. He almost looks like he wants to grab the rim and pull himself back up. The girl hops up and down, trying to speed things along. The glassy soap bubble continues to expand, and Dad sinks out of sight. A moment later the Drop Bubble separates from the hatch and a trembling sheet of iridescent soapy stuff fills the opening once again.
“Who’s next?” the Clockwork asks, and they leap and wave their hands, and the waiter begins arranging them into a line. The girl wearing Tell-Me-Anything casts a haunted, angry look over at Iris and Chip. Iris turns to face the night once more.
The sky is lit with stars, but Iris appears to be regarding her own reflection.
“Do you think I’m pretty?” she asks. “Please be honest. I don’t want flattery. How do I measure up?”
“You’re not bad.”
One corner of her mouth twitches upward. “Give me the math, robot.”
“The distance between your pupils and your mouth conforms closely to the golden ratio, which means you’re a honey. Because of the way you cut your hair, few would ever notice that your left ear is a centimeter higher than ideal.”
“Mm. That does make me sound smokin’ hot. The firm that employed my dad already let me know they’d hire me the day I turn eighteen. I guess pretty girls are the most popular victims. They can earn five times what men earn. They can make a killing.”
Chip can see more than a thousand gradients of color, but when it comes to emotion, he is color-blind, and knows it. Her statement suggests she’s seeking praise, but other indicators imply dismay, irony, confusion, and self-hate. Absent a clear cue, he remains silent.
“Ms. Paget?” comes a modulated, electronic voice, and Iris turns. The Clockwork waiter stands behind them. “You’re the only one left. Would you like to float back to the world below?”
“Can I take my friend?” Iris asks.
The Clockwork and Chip glance at each other and share a few megabytes of data in a quantum burst.
“Yes,” the Clockwork waiter says. “The Drop Bubble can support up to seven hundred pounds without deformation. Your chance of dying accidentally remains one in one hundred and twelve thousand.”
“Good,” Iris tells him. “Because in my family no one dies without getting paid for it.”
10.
They fall slowly into darkness.
The bubble, almost twelve feet in diameter, detaches and begins to spin lazily down through the gloom. Iris and Chip are standing when the Drop Bubble lets go of the hatch, but not for long. Iris’s knees