Good King Sauerkraut by Barbara Paul Page A

what must be going on right then disconcerted him so much that all he could do was stutter. “I, uh, I c-can’t, I-I have to, uh—”
    â€œHey, if it rattles you that much, maybe you’d better not go.”
    â€œI can’t stay here,” he blurted and turned to go—but found the tail of his jacket grasped firmly in Shawna’s hand.
    â€œMan, you don’t just walk away like that. Where’s your manners? Doncha have a card or a phone number or somethin’?”
    â€œOh. Yes, yes I do.” He fumbled a Keystone Robotics business card out of his billfold and Shawna released his jacket to take it. King was afraid he was going to break down right there in front of them. “I’m sorry, Shawna.” He turned and darted into the traffic.
    There was a screech of brakes followed by the sound of a cab driver’s colorful profanity. Safely on the other side of the street, King heard Shawna call: “Pittsburgh?”
    King stumbled on for a block and crossed Seventh Avenue. He stopped in front of a playbill mounted in a glass case; he stared at it without seeing what it said, needing a moment to get a grip on himself. What was happening right then? When nobody showed up at the meeting, Warren Osterman must have—wait a minute, what about Mimi Hargrove? She’d spent the night at the airport hotel, and King didn’t know whether she’d been planning to come back to the apartment first or go straight to the meeting at MechoTech. If she’d gone back to the apartment, that meant she was the one who’d found Dennis and Gregory … Oh, god, Mimi, I’m sorry! It was the first time he’d thought of what it would be like to walk in and find a headless body in the living room and an electrocuted one in the bathtub.
    But if Mimi had not gone back to the apartment first … then maybe no one knew about it yet. They’d know soon enough, though, when only Mimi showed up for the meeting. And the only one of the four staying at the apartment who was missing was King Sarcowicz. If they weren’t looking for him already, it was only a matter of time until they were.
    King became aware that the placard in the glass case he was staring at wasn’t a playbill at all, technically; it was a listing of concerts scheduled to take place. To his surprise he found he was standing in front of Carnegie Hall. Well, not exactly the front. He walked around the corner to Seventh Avenue where the stage entrance was located …
    â€¦ and experienced an overwhelming sense of loss. King had never been to a concert at Carnegie Hall. It was one of those things he’d always assumed he’d get around to doing one of these days, sometime soon in a pleasantly vague future that stretched on forever. But now he might never have the chance. That started him thinking of all the other things he’d never get to do. He’d never ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad. He’d never go looking for the Loch Ness monster.
    More importantly, he’d never get a chance to realize the dreams he’d had for years—dreams about things that were no longer possible only in the distant future but coming closer every day. Such as insectlike robots that could climb vertical surfaces, that could clean and do maintenance work on the outsides of buildings. He’d never get to build one of those spiderbots. And he’d never design the first fully automated airplane … oh, why stop there? He’d never work on the first intelligent starship. All those opportunities that used to lie ahead of him—gone.
    King gave himself a little shake; this was no time to indulge in a sentimental longing for things he’d never know. He went back to Fifty-seventh, which he was beginning to think of as “his” street. Close to Carnegie Hall was the Verve Naturelle Restaurant; more to break his peculiar mood than for any other reason he went in and ordered something