AbductiCon (27 page)

“You’re Luke Barnes?”

“Y–yes,” Luke said, unsure if it was entirely safe to admit this but resigned to the fact that his name tag confirmed his identity to whoever cared to establish it. “I’m Luke Barnes. How can I be of assistance?”

The man in the suit threw out one his massive hands, and Luke actually ducked away for an instant before he became aware that the hand in question was holding a business card that looked lost and tiny in the grip of those sausage–sized fingers.

“Thaddeus Smyrnoff, CEO of All Steel Incorporated and prisoner of this hotel for the past three days. I had a very important meeting with possible investors in my company on this past Saturday, the sole reason I had taken time off work to be in town, and I was prevented from being at this meeting by the staff of this hotel and other guests whose activities may have been a direct cause of my situation. You may consider this your first and only notification of my intent to sue this hotel and possibly the event it has been hosting this weekend for damages and loss of income. Good day to you, sir.”

“The event…?” Luke echoed, blindsided.

Thaddeus Smyrnoff reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled and badly folded copy of Libby’s Saturday newsletter – with ABDUCTICON plastered firmly across its title page.

“I have the evidence,” he said. “I will be passing the details on to my lawyer.”

He turned and stalked off, and Luke stared after his retreating back, open–mouthed, holding onto the business card by pure reflex.

“They’re going to fire me now,” he said, after a moment. “For sure.”

Xander snorted. “Please. For all his huff and bluster, I’d like to see him go into any sane lawyer and offer up a case.”

“Was he one of the doc’s headcases?” Dave asked warily. “He might well have a case of claiming he was given sedatives or something…”

“Dave, it all falls down the moment someone chirps that we went to the Moon,” Xander said. “No court in the land is going to take this seriously.”

“But I saw people taking pictures,” Luke said faintly. “I can’t see them all disappearing. And if there’s visual evidence…”

“Where there’s photos there’s Photoshop,” Xander said. “And if it’s video… you can CGI your way out of anything these days.”

“You make it
all
sound so fake,” Dave said unexpectedly, and a shade defensively.

Xander shrugged. “It’s worse than that, it’s
dead,
Jim. All you’d have to do is call The National Inquirer and give them an anonymous tip about how a whole hotel was, you know,
abducted by aliens
and taken on a joyride in the solar system over the course of a wild weekend. Which immediately makes a judge put it in the same folder with the case of the nun who swears she bore Elvis’s love child. And after that, no ‘real’ news organization is going to touch it – except to point and laugh – and if the media don’t treat it as ‘real’ news, the courts are hardly likely to take on something considered to be ridiculous. Judges take their dignity too seriously for that.”

“But we did go,” Dave said, suddenly reluctant to let go of the smallest incandescent iota of his out–of–planet experience.

Xander looked at him, eyes shining. “
And we all know that
,” he said. “But there is, I suspect, precious little that anyone who is not One Of Us is going to believe if they are told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about this weekend. That’s the joy of it, in a way. It’s ours, only ours, and nobody else believes. The truth is out there, it always has been, and we’ve seen the future, and man, I’m still high from all of it. And a little scared, to be sure – perhaps we know too much. But nothing will ever take this away from me. And it’ll never…”

A gaggle of young con–goers, average age about twenty one, trooped past the trio at the door, and halted beside them. One of the group, his hair a vivid shade of green, turned to Xander with an expression of such glowing delight that it was impossible not to smile back, and Xander did, giving him a broad grin. Nothing more needed to be said, it was all understood between them, and it seemed to come as a direct validation of what Xander himself had just been saying. But then one of the group stepped up and stuck out his hand for Luke to shake – and the manager did so, instinctively, without quite knowing why.

“Thanks, man, you were great,” the kid said enthusiastically. “It’s a pretty cool hotel, this, I don’t know how you pulled it all off – where are the droid dudes, anyway? – but you were really cool with it all. It’s been the best con, ever. Um, do you know how to get in touch with those guys? I mean, can we do this again next year? That would just be frigging
awesome
.”

“Probably not,” Xander said. “We had our shot. But I know. They came to me, too. Awesome doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“There’s always hope,” said one of the other kids. “We’ll be back next year anyway. Who knows who else might come along for the ride.”

“My roommate was supposed to come, but had to cancel at the last minute, family emergency,” a third one from the group crowed. “Man, is he going to be
steamed
he missed this one. Can’t wait to tell him all about it.”

Dave and Xander exchanged a quick glance, and then Dave shrugged, a defeated but delighted grin creeping across his features, and Xander merely gave the kid who had shaken Luke’s hand a high five.

“Live long, and prosper,” he said. “Whatever happens after, you’ll always have this weekend. Just remember, it’s a memory, not a dream.”

He got back an enthusiastic fist–pump in response and then they were gone – and Luke was drawn away for a moment by another arriving ambulance and, this time, the good doctor from the Asylum Floor steering a bleary–eyed but still ambulatory patient across the lobby toward the main doors. While they were discussing the matter, another group approached from the general direction of the gamers’ ballroom. Several of them were wearing what looked like clean t–shirts, but a couple of them had just pulled on crumpled hoodies over clothes they had not changed out of all weekend, tucked away in the gamers’ room and their own world.

“Hey, Dave,” one of them said, squinting at Dave and Xander from a couple of paces away and recognizing at least one face. “How’d the con do? Andie Mae happy?”

“It, uh….” Dave began, and Xander offered up a wide grin.

“How did the game go?”

“Oh, you know,” the gamer said. “Intense. Pretty good.”

“Hah,” said a mate from the back of the group smugly. “I
smeared
you in that fight. Rolled a sixteen in strength, fifteen in dexterity, you were so out of it, dude…”

It was obviously a sore point because they began to re–argue the encounter all over again, touching on which one of them must have cheated, and one of the others pointedly lifted an eyebrow in their direction and then turned back to Dave.

“The pizza was great this year,” he said. “You know. Really good. Did you change the pizza place? You should
so
keep these new guys on for next time. Seriously.”

“He remembers the
pizza
? From last year? Seriously?” Xander muttered to himself.

Dave shot him a warning glance, but was himself hunting for the right thing to say – and after a moment, lamely, came up with,

“I, uh, I think they’re closing down at the end of the year…”

“Pity,” said the gamer.

“So then, how did you like the Moon flight?” Xander said, knowing he was tossing out bait but unable to stop himself from doing so.

“I don’t think I played
that
game,” the gamer said, furrowing his brow. Xander hadn’t followed the discussion of whether he had won or lost on that throw of the dice, but the combatants seemed to have sorted it out between themselves or at least arrived at a truce. “What game was that scenario in? We weren’t doing a straight SF thing – it was more of a…”

“The guys on the other table were talking about Alpha Centauri,” said one of the others helpfully.

“Maybe I’ll try that Moon game next year, then, ” the first gamer said, waving as he walked away. “See you the next go–round!”

“They missed it,” Xander muttered, staring after the departing clutch of gamers. “They missed the whole thing. The whole, entire thing. They
missed
it.”

“Speaking of those pizzas,” Dave said, turning to Xander, “what actually happened to the replicators?”

“If you’re talking about the food machines, both of the ones in the kitchens are just
gone
,” Luke said, rejoining the conversation. “Sometime last night, it would seem at the very least, I got the report this morning. Staff turned up and found a very ordinary kitchen once again – breakfast was made the old fashioned way, and supplies barely lasted. I should actually go and talk to our delivery people; we need to replenish our larders pretty smartly.”

“Aren’t you off duty
yet
?” Dave asked, teasingly but with genuine warmth. For somebody who was thrown into the deep end, Luke Barnes had not done too badly – and had certainly come out sane at the other end, instead of ending up on Dr. Cohen’s Asylum Floor right along with the other patients who had sought refuge in a fit of the vapors.

“I am supposed to hand over the reins in about an hour, when the new shift turns up. And then I plan to sleep for three days. And then really figure out just how much I can tell of what actually happened and still keep this job,” Luke said.

“You still want to keep the job? What about the next time…?”

Luke gave him a tired smile. “Well, now I know how to rescue people from a stuck elevator,” he said. “Flying to the Moon for the second time would just be a bonus.”

“You’re a good egg,” Xander said. “If you need backup for anything, with your bosses, give us a holler. We’ll be happy to give you a good report.”

“Thanks. Appreciate it. Maybe someday someone could sit down and try and convince me that any of this really happened… or if I just ate something bad on Friday morning and simply hallucinated this entire weekend…”

“I’ll drop in for a cup of coffee or something the next time you’re on duty,” Xander said. “We can reminisce.”

Luke looked both pleased and a little frightened at this prospect, but shook hands with both Dave and Xander and hurried back behind the reception counter and then out of sight into the office behind it. Dave sighed, and began to turn away.

“Well, I better see if the GoH people need anything at departure…”

“You found Rory, in the end?”

“In point of fact, no. Haven’t seen him, oh, since Saturday night, really – caught sight of him at one of the Moon parties, having the time of his life. He’s been pretty much AWOL since then – there’s been one reported sighting on Sunday but apparently he wasn’t in a socializing mood at that point and after that he seems to have remembered what room was his and how to lock the door to exclude the rest of the world because that suite’s been locked down tight. I sent Simon around a couple of times, on patrol, just in case, but not a stir in there.”

“Dead drunk, or just dead…?”

“Well, he was due to check out this morning, so if there’s no movement in the next half hour or so I may need to get housekeeping to open the door for me, just to make sure he is okay,” Dave said. “And Vince…”

Xander interrupted him by suddenly reaching out to grip his arm. “Is that Al…?”

Dave squinted at the disheveled figure pushing open the doors into the lobby with one arm while cradling the other in a blue nylon sling, and frowned.

“Looks like,” he said. “But dear God – that bruise on his face – the arm – he looks terrible! Like some small war chewed him up and spit him out. Did we
land
on him?”

Al Coe noticed Dave and Xander at about the same moment they became aware of him, and after a hesitation he let the door close behind him and stepped towards them.

The question that was asked, by Al in one direction and by Xander in the other, consisted of exactly the same words – but Al emphasized one word and Xander another, and Xander’s tone was one of appalled curiosity while Al’s was more a bewildered resignation.

“What
happened
to you?” Al asked.

“What happened to
you
?” Xander said in exactly the same moment.

“Where’s Andie Mae? Is she all right?” Al asked, allowing a wan smile to wash over his face at the greeting ritual.

“She’s… fine,” Xander said. That covered a lot of ground, and there were things that Andie Mae really should tell Al herself if she wanted him to know about them. “But you look like you’ve done a week in the trenches.”

“Someone creamed my car, on my way back to the hotel from the printer, with the posters,” Al said. “You know, for Spiner and Schwarzenegger. They turned up, you know.”

“Actually you look rather like the Terminator did work you over,” Xander said. “Wait, they came? To this… to where? What happened?”

“Are you okay? Really?” Dave asked.

“Well, there were moments,” Al said. “When I was perfectly certain I was going stark stir crazy. I came to this place
three times
this weekend, guys. This hotel just wasn’t here. And it insisted on trying to trick me into thinking that it never was here in the first place. But I have evidence,” he added darkly, patting his pocket with his good hand. “I have pictures. Right here. Something really strange was going on, or else I really was suffering from complete terminal concussion…”

“D’you need a cup of coffee?” Xander said. “You look like you could use one. Come on up to Con Ops and I’ll scrounge something up for you – and Andie Mae could be there by now, and if not they’ll know where to find her.”

“Sure,” Al said. “Okay.”

Xander lifted a hand in a parting gesture and then fell into step beside Al as they walked towards the stairwell of Tower 1.

“Sorry,” Dave heard Xander say as the two walked away from him, “but it’s got to be the stairs – there was an incident with the elevators in that wing – one of them tried to kill me…”

The lobby was getting increasingly crowded, people were bustling about with suitcases and coats and hats and bags, some just trying to make a clean getaway, others waving credit cards at receptionists behind the counter as they tried to settle their accounts before leaving. Three cabs idled outside, waiting for their fares. People stood in knots out under the portico, talking animatedly over piles of luggage or enthusiastically hugging their farewells. Several waved at Dave as they caught his eye, and he waved back, smiling a tired smile.