AbductiCon Read online

  “Andie Mae is on her way down,” she said. “The Chair.”

  “Thank you,” Vince said.

  “I, uh, she’ll have your badge,” the girl babbled. “I’m so sorry, Mr Silverman.”

  She might have been a generation too young to understand the basis for any of his books. Vince, never as conscious of his graying hair as he was in that moment, found himself torn between wishing that he had that innocence back, that anonymity of his younger days that made it almost certain that nobody at all could be expected to recognize him on sight, and a strange kind of annoyed resentment that all of the years he had put into this job, into his reputation, meant absolutely nothing at all and the younger generation of fans, the ones who had followed his own cohort, had no reason to know who he was.

  But he could see someone almost running down the foyer now, a delicate blonde girl who looked entirely too fragile to bear the load of a con Chair but whose badge, with its long tail of colorful ribbons attached to it, branded her such. She sailed right past Angel and the bags, and came to a skidding halt at his side, flushed and out of breath.

  “I sent Dave to get you at the airport!” she said, by way of greeting. “How did you get here? He just phoned upstairs that he was still waiting for…”

  “Oh dear, I am sorry if I managed to miss the connection,” Vince said. “We took a cab.”

  She turned briefly to follow the direction in which he nodded when he said ‘we’ and appeared to have only just become aware of Angel’s presence.

  “My wife,” Vince said helpfully. “Might we get checked in, and dump the bags? Angel saw a pool, earlier…”

  “Yes, of course. I’m Andie Mae, we emailed…”

  “Pleasure,” Vince said.

  “This way,” Andie Mae said, motioning for him to follow. “Your room’s ready. Would you just excuse me…”

  He nodded and started walking toward the hotel desk, stopping only to collect Angel and the bags on the way, and Andie Mae turned to the still flustered and round–eyed girl behind the desk.

  “Get Libby to phone Dave and tell him to get back here,” she snapped. “I don’t know how he managed it but he let our guest of honor sail straight past him and now I’ve a cab fare to reimburse on top of all else. And how could you possibly have embarrassed us like that by not knowing who he was?”

  “Yes, I mean, sorry, I mean, I’ll sort it out,” the girl babbled.

  “By the way, how many registrations so far?” Andie Mae said, changing direction with such speed and agility that the other girl could only open and close her mouth several times in response, like a guppy out of its fishbowl, and then offer, quietly and very lamely, that she wasn’t sure at all but she thought there had been more than fifty people who had registered on her own shift so far.

  “It’s okay, but hopefully it’ll pick up,” Andie Mae muttered. She glanced at the pile of pocket programs stacked on the table by the computers, and lifted one up, flipping through it with a quick, nervous motion. “Have these all been corrected? Call Xander, if he needs to fix the wrong time.” And then she turned, realized that her VIP was almost at the hotel desk, dropped the program back on its pile and strode off after the Silvermans in a flurry of swirling skirts, leaving her volunteer feeling as though she had just been wrung out like a wet dishcloth and by someone who knew how.

  The expressionless man by the door had not moved, and had watched the entire exchange with a sort of dispassionate curiosity.

  Ξ

  “It’s after four. What’s the foyer looking like?”

  “Healthier,” Libby said, walking into the room where Andie Mae was pacing. “I’ve just been down there. There’s a doubled–back queue from the reg desk all the way to the hotel desk. And I’m starting to see the regulars, out there. Chicken Man is back, I’ve seen him all over the place in that weird cluck–onesie of his, bless him for classing up the joint. How does he ever go to the bathroom in a hurry?”

  “TMI,” someone said from the back of the room, and a ripple of laughter spread out into the volunteers.

  “This year the Hair Color of Choice seems to be bright purple or neon green,” Libby said, continuing her report, “but I’ve seen a couple of oranges and a handful of bright pinks, and one or two lemon–yellow mohawks – I think there’s a posse of them out there. Is there a new manga or something? Anyway, as for the classics, there’s three Leias so far, one Original Edition and two Slave Girls, about par for the course, and one guy who thinks he might be Chewbacca but if you ask me I think Bigfoot’s Mom slipped up and let him off the leash and out on his own.”

  “There’s one girl who really is not wearing nearly enough to even be classed as a costume,” said Xander Washington, programming chair, who had himself been roaming the halls only a half hour previous. “If you were to put together everything she’s got on into a single piece of material, you wouldn’t have enough to make a barstool covering.”

  “Is that the same girl who tried to convince me that Saran Wrap was a costume, last year?” asked Simon Ballard, head of security, in his full Viking regalia, an anachronistic earbud glowing blue in his left ear. “She had the unmitigated gall to tell me, when every other logical thing to try had failed her, that it was a statement on existentialism.”

  “One of your postgraduate buddy bunnies, letting it all hang out?” Xander teased, grinning.

  “Honestly? That’s healthier than the zombie crowd,” Libby said, and then, as one or two of the others lifted their heads at the comment, added, “Sorry, but they freak me out. Why would any living thing dress up as something half rotten and think that is attractive?”

  “You’re more into wompires,” Xander said, lifting his arms up into a bad imitation of throwing out a cloak or maybe a set of batwings. “Just as dead, you know.”

  “But way more interesting,” Libby retorted. “Hi, can I help you?”

  “Carol Elliot,” said a woman who had just walked into the Green Room where the ConCom had congregated. “You have my badge up here?”

  “Somewhere,” Libby said. “Elliot… E… it’ll be in this box…” She rummaged through a pile of manila envelopes and pulled one out with a triumphant flourish. “There we are. Your itinerary’s inside, we printed them on the back of the name tents this year.”

  “Oh good, it’s always great to know where you’re supposed to be next,” Carol said, opening her envelope and riffling through it. “Um, and my husband’s badge…?”

  “Eep. They might have that downstairs, but you don’t want to go down into that zoo. Let me call them and double check, in the meantime you can get Mike over there to just print you a temp one and that’ll be fine until we sort it out.”

  “ ‘Kay. Thanks.”

  “Do you have mine there, while you’re at it?” Another pro, wearing a pith helmet crowned by a pair of truly spectacular steampunk goggles, pushed forward past Carol Elliot’s retreating back. “I’m Bob Williamson.”

  Libby reached for a different stack of envelopes. “Lemme see…”

  She had almost a dozen of them turn up in quick succession, pros who were at the convention to work – writers who were on panels, artists from the art show, one of the musicians who were to give a concert later that weekend – they needed their badges, they needed information, they needed supplies and minions for setup work that needed to be done, they often just needed coffee. Libby had her head down and was waist high in manila envelopes when she lifted her head and smiled at the next person standing in front of her.

  “Name?”

  “Oh, no, no, sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude if you’re busy,” the young man said apologetically. It was only then that she noticed the shiny brass badge on the lapel of a waistcoat that was entirely unlike anything that a con–goer would be seen in. She squinted at the badge, and he offered up a preemptive hand. “I’m Luke, Luke Barnes, I’m the Night Manager, just come on duty – actually, it’s my first time in the hot seat, tonight – just wandered by to see if you guys
were okay out here, if you had everything you needed…”

  “How sweet,” Libby said, and meant it literally. In general they were not much given to receiving visits from the managerial staff up in the Green Room and Con Ops. Maybe it was just that ‘first time in the hot seat’ thing. The boy – and he didn’t look much older than someone who could still legitimately be called a boy – was still so very new at this, earnest, and eager to please. “I think we’re fine, really.”

  “Good. I, uh, it’s my first time – and something this big – I don’t think this hotel has had this many people – I’m perfectly certain that we’re this close to breaking the fire codes…” He sounded a little nervous, and Libby gave him a wide and encouraging smile.

  “You’ll be fine. I know it all must look weird, but…”

  “Oh, no, I love sci fi,” Luke said. Xander, who had just come into the room, gave a theatrical eye roll at this, but Luke failed to notice.

  “Ever been to a con?” Libby asked.

  “Well, this one,” Luke said, grinning. “Let me know if you guys need anything.”

  “Will do,” Libby said. There was something that she might have asked for but she couldn’t remember it, right there and then, and Luke ducked his head at her, gave everyone else a cheery wave, and wriggled out of the increasingly crowded room.

  “Sci fi,” muttered Xander scornfully.

  “Everyone has to start somewhere, Rat,” Libby said, using the nickname that he was far better known by in that crowd – in its entirety, LabRat, often shortened to just Rat. “You were a con virgin once, too.”

  “Yabbut I was fifteen,” Xander said, crossing his eyes. “And look at me now… Hey, is there any more coffee in that pot…?”

  Coffee.

  Libby remembered that she’d overheard Andie Mae complaining about coffee, asking Al to bring some decent coffee when he came back with the posters which announced their star attraction. Andie Mae had scored the coup of getting two of the most famous androids of their genre – Data, from Star Trek, and the Terminator – to make a brief (but very expensive – this one item had eaten a lion’s share of their budget for that year) appearance at the con, with its theme of Robots and Androids. How Andie Mae had managed to even find a way to get in touch with someone like actor–turned–politician Arnold Schwarzenegger was beyond Libby’s comprehension – she herself wouldn’t have known where to start – but Andie Mae had been determined to make the first con she chaired something that would not be forgotten in a hurry. Somehow, through methods that might have involved a midnight summoning of demons, she had done it, and the two actors portraying the android characters, Brent Spiner and Arnold Schwarzenegger, were due to show up for a photo–op and a brief signing spot and fan meet–and–greet on Saturday afternoon, one of the crowning selling points of the con.

  The demon hypothesis might not have been so farfetched, because once the coup was secured everything else seemed to go haywire. Libby, as the designated media and communications member of the ConCom, had been handed the publicity baton – and she had done fairly well in publicizing the presence of the two actors in outside media. Inside the con itself, however, things were a different matter.

  That was why Al Coe was at the printers for the third time, for the final – and correct – version of the posters they had ordered for the con.

  He should have been back with those posters by now.

  The posters, and the coffee. To the best of Libby’s knowledge (and it would have been her business to know) the posters had not materialized. And neither had the good coffee; Andie Mae would have had a loud word to say on that if it had arrived, whether or not it had matched her own august criteria in the end.

  No coffee. No posters. No Al.

  And it was now getting on for Friday evening, and the queue of registrants had grown long, and a bunch of games had already started in the designated ballroom, with three tables surrounded by players throwing dice and blissfully divorced – for the duration – from anything resembling reality. The first scattered parties would be starting in a matter of hours. The con, to all intents and purposes, had begun – and Libby was woefully bereft in any material larger than an A4 sheet hastily printed on a local color printer, cobbled together by Libby herself to be inserted at the last moment into the glossy full color souvenir program books, letting those who had just been handed the booklets at the registration desk know that the famous androids would be coming.

  But even those only announced their presence. It was the big posters to be plastered all over the hotel which were to announce a final date and time.

  “Anyone seen Al?” Libby called out into the chaos of the Green Room.

  “Not since this morning,” Xander said, chewing on a messy sandwich thrown together from the cold meats and cheese platter that had been provided for the Green Room volunteers’ sustenance.

  “I think we should…” Libby began, but then several earpieces squawked simultaneously, with people wincing and reaching up a hand to adjust the volume in their ears, and Xander looked up in consternation.

  “Holy crap,” he said, tossing the remnants of his sandwich aside and tearing off a piece of paper towel from a nearby roll to wipe traces of mayo off his hands. “Somebody better get down there. I heard that our writer GoH kind of dropped in unannounced while Dave was waiting for him at the airport – and now we seem to have a situation again – Rory Grissom just walked in the door and got mobbed… that wasn’t supposed to happen. Where’s Andie Mae? Crap. Never mind, I’ll go rescue him.”

  “Send him up here, we can hide him until they get him into his room safely,” Libby said.

  “Too late to stash him, they know he’s here. Aw, dammit. I’ve a got heap of work still to do, and now I have to go babysit a drama queen.”

  He vanished into the corridor, and two more pros turned up to fill the space he had vacated, asking for their envelopes. One was found easily, the other appeared to be missing altogether, throwing Libby into a state of near panic until the pro in question thought to mention that, since his new book was coming up under a new pseudonym, that might be the name the registration envelope might be under. In a quite different part of the alphabet.

  “Take it easy,” Libby whispered to herself, looking up for a moment and seeing a Green Room thronged with visiting pro and ConCom members and convention volunteers, a swirling melee of smiling people full of energy and enthusiasm, waiting with a delighted anticipation for the real festivities to begin on the morrow but in the meantime running into friends they hadn’t seen for months, or maybe a whole year since the last con, chattering, exchanging news, asking after other friends who had not yet made an appearance.

  It’s just the usual chaos, and it’ll only get more chaotic as the evening wears on…

  “Libby, was it Alice who was in charge of the writers’ workshop this year?” somebody shouted into her ear, to be heard above the general noise level.

  “No, she handed over to Lou Martin – I don’t think she could make the con this year,” Libby shouted in response.

  “Seen Lou? Need to sort out something!”

  “Don’t think she’s here yet!”

  “Oh! Okay. I’d better email her. Hope she checks her email before she gets here tomorrow. One of her pros…”

  But someone else was pawing at the envelopes, and Libby turned back to try and keep some control over the process. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed something that was sufficiently out of kilter with the rest of the scene for her to actually take notice. Amongst the heaving happy throng crowding the Green Room there was one person standing alone, with as much space between herself and everybody else as that was possible to achieve under the circumstances, a woman standing very still with both hands loosely by her side. She was dressed in something that may or may not have been a costume (not outlandish enough to be tagged as one immediately; just not commonplace enough to be immediately dismissed as not being one). There was something… strange… about her �
�� the stillness, the ever–so–slightly off shade of her silvery skin, something about her eyes – but there was no time for further inspection. Someone else slipped in between Libby and the woman, and when Libby could look that way again she was gone. Libby could not even be certain any more what had attracted her attention, but the strange woman’s afterimage remained in the back of Libby’s head like a ghost, distracting her from something that she knew she had been about to do before she was distracted by something else before that.

  She saw Xander slip back into the suite, and burrowed her way across to him to where he had gone back to the computers set up in the back room.

  “Your movie star sorted?”

  “I thought he’d be upset, but he was a pig in clover, surrounded by pink–haired chicks with fairy wings who were clamoring for his autograph and some really weird dude painted kind of silver or something who just stood there and watched – creepy, really, I don’t know if I ought to go give Sim and Security a shout about him.”

  “What, you think we have a stalker or something on hand?” Libby yelped.

  “He’s a mother–lovin’ movie star, doesn’t it come with the territory?” Xander said. “But maybe he was just a dude who was trying to pretend to be an android and fit in with the theme of the show, I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.”

  Libby’s mind went fleetingly to the woman she had seen standing so very still in the melee of the Green Room, and come to think of it she too looked like she was playing an android character… but then, robots were this year’s theme, after all, and everyone was just tired and jumpy. That was all.

  “There are a number of droids out there,” Libby said slowly. “And I distinctly remember seeing a baby blue Dalek near the Hospitality Suite area earlier.”

  “Actually, to be honest, I’m more astonished that there was at least one dude dressed in a replica of the uniform Rory Grissom graced on the good ship Invictus,” Xander said, dismissing the matter. “I don’t know how the groupies even found him that fast, they must have been waiting at the front door for as long as it took for him to manifest. He seemed to be enjoying it all rather too much – I almost had to drag him bodily away from there before he spent all his con capital on one spectacular meet and greet – we have plans for him at Opening Ceremonies, after all, and that’s in just a few hours. Where’s the Steel Magnolia when we need her?”