AbductiCon Read online

  “You want someone to keep an eye on me?” Al said, quite lucidly. “Well, all my friends are there right now. At the convention. Where I was supposed to be – with the posters. What time is it?”

  The doctor consulted his watch. “Almost seven thirty.”

  “Call me a cab,” Al said. “I’ll go there and I’ll…”

  “To a convention?” The doctor looked skeptically at the arm cradled in a sling and a collection of small cuts and darkening bruises elsewhere on the patient’s body. “I really think you’re in no shape to – ”

  “Just do it,” Al said. “And please find me my stuff.”

  The doctor’s brows drew together at that distinctly less–than–deferential tone, and then he shrugged. “As you wish. You’re leaving on your own recognizance, though, and against medical advice and I’ll put that on the record. I’ll send someone to help you dress – your clothes are over there on the table, in the bag, some of them are a little messed up but I guess we can’t help that. I’ll send a small bottle of Vicodin home with you, and it would really be good if you could look in on a doctor at some point during the next 48 hours or so. Just to make sure.”

  “Fine,” Al muttered.

  All of him hurt, as though he had been worked over by a professional boxer. His chest felt vaguely caved in, and he seemed to be having difficulty with the simple act of inhaling a lungful of air –but nothing major seemed to be broken, other than the damaged arm, and he could cope with the rest of it. Because movement was limited with one arm in a sling and because every small movement made him wince it took some little while before he could, with assistance, struggle halfway into a set of clothes which were not happy with the sling situation; another forty minutes or more passed before he walked, staggering a little, to a waiting cab and gave directions to the California Resort.

  It was now past eight o’clock, and full dark, and it was later still by the time the cab pulled up and woke its passenger, dozing fitfully in the back seat. Al blinked several times and sat up, wincing as he jarred the strapped arm.

  “We here?”

  “Yes, sir, we’re at 2235 Bluff Road,” the cab driver said. “That’ll be $22.50.”

  Al awkwardly pulled out a wallet with his good hand and ferreted out a twenty and a ten, passing them over to the cabbie over the back of the driver’s seat. “Keep the change,”

  “Thank you,” the cabbie said. “I’ll just get the door for ya…”

  It took something of an inelegant scramble, minding his injured arm and shoulder, for Al to extricate himself out of the back seat of the cab – and while he was still sorting himself out, at the curbside, the cabbie gave him a half–wave and pulled away. But it took a few more moments for Al to realize a few uncomfortable truths about his situation.

  He should have been deposited at the front door of a hotel. He had not been. He had in fact been delivered to what seemed to be the side of a dark and otherwise empty road.

  The place where the California Resort should have been – where it in fact had been less than twelve hours before this moment – was just a lacuna in the night.

  The hotel – the entire hotel – had simply… disappeared.

  Ξ

  Dave Lorne, the ConCom member who had been sent to chase his tail at the airport meeting the elusive Guest of Honor, finally pulled into the parking lot of the hotel at almost a quarter to eight on Friday night. The parking lot was packed. He circled for a few hopeless minutes, squinting to see if anyone would be stupid enough to vacate their spot, but most people were already ensconced for the night and were there to stay. Dave was hot and tired and frustrated and irritable and hungry. His day had not gone well. He had managed to miss both lunch and dinner, grabbing something unhealthy and sugary every time his stomach reminded him of how empty it was – and now he wanted something substantial to eat (he knew that if he didn’t he’d wake up at four in the morning and attack a packet of salty crisps from the vending machine). He also badly wanted a drink, preferably something strong, and in the company of somebody sympathetic to whom he could unload about the sort of day that he’d had. The prospects of that seemed dim as he inched forward in his clapped–out old Nissan – but then a car only a few spaces ahead of him suddenly came to miraculous life, its white reversing lights blinking on, and then, after an eternity of waiting to see if this was in fact happening, Dave was rewarded by the sight of the car beginning to ease out of its parking spot. He slammed on his indicator, just in case anyone else who may have been around got any ideas, and very nearly pulled into the parking space before its prior occupant had fully vacated it.

  He savored his victory, clutching the steering wheel and closing his eyes after he’d turned the engine off. After a moment, though, his earlier desires reasserted themselves and he roused himself, reached out to the passenger seat to gather up a bulging folder of paperwork, and slipped out of his car, locking it with his remote and then crossing the lot to where the mother–of–pearl roof arched over the covered driveway at the front entrance of the California Resort.

  It felt like coming to an oasis after an age in the desert, although Dave was all too aware that there was a convention waiting to be run and there were all sorts of other duties waiting to ambush him as soon as he stepped inside. Perhaps it was this thought that which made him pause just outside the glass doors, turning to look out over the curve of the driveway and a sweeping view of the ocean beyond – now just a glitter of stars in the darkening sky, and a slash of moonlight glimmering on water in the distance. A last look at something that still felt like a kind of freedom, a sense that there was still time to… escape…

  He became aware that he was not alone, that someone very still and very silent was standing just a pace or two outside the doors, holding what looked like a computer tablet in one hand and moving the fingers of the other on the touchscreen with a speed that made Dave’s eyes water. At first he thought that he was just that tired and grumpy, that his own thoughts had slowed down sufficiently for everyone else’s thoughts and movements to appear superluminal in comparison. But then, slowly, it dawned on him that something very strange was going on around him. The view – with the distant islands now no more than a black–on–black oblivion – had begun to turn slightly vertiginous, and made his head swim; he felt, just for a moment, oddly weightless, as if his feet had literally left the ground and left him hovering an inch above the sidewalk before settling back down solidly on his heels; the horizon began to have a distinctly weird tinge to it, as though it was moving in ways a horizon had no business to be moving, and then stopped offering itself up as a straight line and started to curve downwards, a small but significant slope on the edges, turning into something that niggled at the back of Dave’s mind, something that he had seen before…

  …that he had seen before in the movies…

  The darkening land and ocean were a long way away and receding. Dropping away. Dropping down. As if he were taking off, vertically.

  The horizon was not one he was used to seeing while standing on the same planet to which it belonged. He was seeing it from above. He was seeing a world not from within its point of view but observing it from the outside.

  His ears popped suddenly.

  A motion drew his eye and his head swiveled to where the other man was standing – just in time to see something that made his eyes water even more. In the moment that he finally registered the strangeness of his companion – something that he might have been forgiven for skimming over as he approached, since the convention was known for extreme costuming – he tallied up the things that had triggered his weirdness sensor. That stillness, of course, and the speed of the fingerwork, and the odd silvery sheen on the person’s very smooth skin… and now, as Dave watched, the way that the creature standing there calmly lifted what had looked like a tablet computer and pressed it against its abdomen, where it was instantly absorbed without a trace, leaving no bulge in the form–fitting garment. Dave let out his breath in a little h
iss, and the man… the creature… turned to look at him – out of eyes that seemed backlit, with a dark circle which looked like an artificially designed pupil within sclera that glowed silver–white.

  The man held Dave’s gaze, inclining that impossibly perfect head just a fraction, hands now empty and hanging by his side.

  Dave looked past him again, and realized that in the world outside the portico things had changed radically. There was no longer any doubt that although he himself had not moved the ground underneath him definitely had done so, and he could see the difference as – improbably – a little island of planet Earth parted company with its world and lifted into the starlit sky.

  “You,” Dave said, snapping his gaze back to his silent companion. “You’re doing something… you’re doing this. What are you doing? What’s going on…?”

  “It is necessary,” said the silver man, and the voice sounded theatrically trained, as though he had practiced elocution. As though every syllable was carefully enunciated, precisely selected. “I will explain.”

  “Put us back!” Dave blurted, not knowing how he knew that he wanted to be put back or where this ‘back’, exactly, was – knowing only that he was somewhere he was not supposed to be, that something utterly insane was going on. Knowing with the certainty of the true science fiction geek that he prided himself as being that gravity and atmosphere should not feel as normal as they did if what he thought was taking place was actually taking place. Knowing only that the ground underneath his feet, however solid it might look or feel, was no longer terra firma as he knew it, and feeling himself reel with that knowledge. “Put us back this instant!”

  The silver man regarded him with that curiously cocked head, then straightened it back to a more natural angle and said, softly and with something that sounded like regret although there didn’t seem to be anything about him that indicated he could feel such an emotion,

  “I can’t do that, Dave.”

  Ξ

  “…this episode was BADLY WRITTEN!”

  Never was a line from a movie more apt to a state of mind; Dave actually froze for a moment while still at full stretch, racing across the hotel lobby toward the stairs leading up to the tower housing the Con Ops Room. It was all he could do not to tangle his own feet into a speed bump and collapse in an undignified heap right there and then – as it was, he managed to cast one look sideways at the flat screen TV in a niche off the lobby, where “Galaxy Quest” was currently running for a small audience of some dozen viewers. It was, however, an epic look, composed of equal parts of outrage, urgency, confusion, panic and outright fury. If anyone had encountered it, they would have been reduced to stone by a gaze more potent than Medusa’s. But those watching the movie had their backs to him, and nobody else happened to be in firing range, and Dave gathered himself and raced on. He didn’t know quite what he expected Andie Mae to do about the situation, but somehow it was imperative that she know about it, and know about it now, and hear about it from him rather than from some incoherently babbling con–goer who had tried to go for a walk to clear their head from the last round of drinks in the bar and ended up walking off the edge of the world.

  It mattered so much. It mattered so much to her. It was her first con as Chair. There were things that con Chairs were expected to handle, and she was fully capable of handling most all of those things – but it was blisteringly unfair that on her maiden voyage, as it were, she would be expected to handle this.

  Whatever, Dave allowed himself to pause and append to his chaotic thoughts, “this” actually turned out to be.

  He had left the silver man at the front door of the hotel and raced inside with a fully formed idea of what he wanted and needed to tell Andie Mae. He seemed, however, to be shedding the words as he ran. The closer he got to the con nerve center where he expected to find her, the more incoherent his thoughts became and the less certain he was that he had actually seen what he had seen. It was all he could do not to turn and run back to the door and peer outside. Just to confirm. Just to make sure. Just to ensure that he did not sound like a raving lunatic when he burst into the room where the rest of the (currently oblivious) ConCom members waited to hear his news.

  He made it to the control room, still in such a tearing rush that he tangled his feet into some extension cord wire running across the threshold and practically fell through the doorway. Several people looked up with varying degrees of consternation.

  “Hey,” Libby said, “welcome back to con land. I gather that your airport meet and greet mission…”

  “Silver man,” Dave gasped.

  “Yes, we know. You missed him at the airport. Didn’t anyone tell you he got here under his own steam?”

  “What?”

  “Silverman. Vince Silverman. Writer GoH. You were supposed to pick him at the…”

  “What’s he got to do with this?”

  “With what?”

  “There’s a silver man…”

  “Yes…?”

  Dave and the rest stared at one another for a long moment, and then at least three people said at once, “What are you talking about?”

  Xander pushed his chair back with deliberation, went over to the bar fridge near the sink area, opened it, took out a bottle of water, and crossed over to Dave, thrusting the water into his hand.

  “All right,” he said. “Take a deep breath, take a drink, calm down. Everything is under control. Vince Silverman is safely…”

  Dave took a vicious swig of the water and then wrenched it away from his mouth, wiping his lips with the back of his free hand. “I am not talking about Vince Silverman!”

  “Then start again,” Xander suggested.

  “I just – I was just out by the… I saw…” Dave’s eyes wandered over to where the curtains had been drawn across the sliding door to the room’s balcony. “Has anybody,” he asked, very carefully, “looked out of that window recently?”

  Xander met Libby’s eyes across the room. “No,” he said, just as carefully. “Why…?”

  “Just do it,” Dave said. “Do it now.”

  “Okay,” Xander said, taking a few slow careful steps backward toward the sliding door, not taking his eyes off Dave.

  “Stop humoring me,” Dave snapped. “Just do it already.”

  Xander, frowning, had now reached the door and reached out with one hand to pull the curtain open. It was another few seconds before he took his gaze off Dave and wrenched it towards the glass door.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  “Exactly,” said Dave.

  “Dave, I don’t see anything…”

  “That is the point! If you have to, go outside on the balcony and take a good look… no, wait, don’t open the door! I don’t even know if there’s air…”

  “I think he needs something stronger than water,” somebody muttered under their breath, but still loud enough to hear.

  “I think he’s had something stronger than water,” said one of the computer volunteers, crossing his arms.

  But by this stage Xander was starting to wake up to the fact that there was something not quite right with the view outside, and had taken a step closer, pushing his face against the glass, cupping his hands around his eyes to cut off the glare of the room lights reflected in it. And now he suddenly sucked in his breath sharply, and then let it out again on one long and somewhat unexpected syllable.

  “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck…”

  That got several of the people in the room leaping from their chairs and crowding around Xander at the door, peering outside.

  “What?”

  “What do you see?”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t see anything…”

  But Xander had turned away from the door, looking rather ashen, and focused back on Dave again.

  “I think you had better start again – what’s going on out there?”

  Dave, who had had a chance to look around the room and catch his breath, had noticed a rather importa
nt gap in the present personnel at last.

  “Where’s Andie Mae?”

  “She’s gone to talk to Grissom – the movie star – he called up about something – she should be…”

  As if magicked up by this, Andie Mae herself stepped delicately through the door, over the cable, and sidled past Dave into the room.

  “And here I am,” she said. “Nice to see you finally showed up. What the hell happened out there at the airport? That was a major mess. And now there’s a – what the hell is everyone looking at out there?”

  “Dave said there’s a silver man…” Xander said.

  “Yes, the one he…”

  “Oh, don’t start that again,” Dave snapped. “Look, you’d better do something and fast before you get somebody wandering out of the hotel’s front door….”

  Andie Mae frowned, tilting her head. “And I should prevent people from leaving the hotel, why? I mean, I don’t want anyone to leave the con, particularly, I’d like everyone to stick around, thank you very much, I worked pretty hard to make sticking around an irresistible option – but if anyone leaves, they’re not – ”

  “You’d better come look,” one of the people at the window said, turning his head around marginally.

  Tossing her hair with indignation, Andie Mae stalked across the room to the balcony door. “All right, then, move. Yeah, you. Shift. Let me see. What are you looking at…?”

  Nobody answered her, and the room sank into an awkward silence while the con Chair peered outside into the night.

  “I can see precisely nothing – have you all lost your collective mind?”

  “Dave, perhaps now’s a good time to explain,” Xander said quietly.

  Dave took a deep breath.

  “Look,” he began, “I just got back here – I think I got the last parking spot in the place – I freely confess that I was cranky and tired and miserable and all I wanted to do was get in here and find something to eat and quite possibly to drink – and no, to whoever said that before, I heard you, I didn’t make it to the bar, thank you very much indeed – and I just stopped for a second just outside the front door, and there was this silver man…”