It Was Only on Stun!

by Declan Finn

  Hell, I walked away with an “I Survived Helm’s Deep” shirt, so I’m not complaining.

  He stepped outside, into the hallway, a moment before Mira Nikolic did. She wore a shimmering set of red and blue silk robes Sean had, at first, objected to; he changed his mind after he realized, if she wore anything ordinary, she would stand out like a backpack of lit fireworks.

  The shuttle to the convention was uneventful, aside from someone giving Mira a disdainful look and saying, “You don’t look a thing like Mira Nikolic!”

  The shuttle dropped them in front of the sports center, the base of C-Con operations, before they made their way down the street to the student center, where she had the main theater all to herself for three hours, one hour a day, each day over the weekend. The audience had already entrenched themselves in their seats for what was possibly the entire evening. After Mira was on, someone named Barney Nova was going to be inflicting sneak peeks of the coming summer’s worst movies—like Don Quixote, the musical comedy, starring Christopher Lee and Danny DeVito.

  After her introduction had been made, and her shining resume gone through, Mira was allowed to go onstage, and Ryan watched from behind the curtain on stage right.

  “Miss Nikolic,” came the first question, “don’t you think your missionary character on Heavens Above is too much an egotist? I mean, seriously, what could be more abominable than inflicting religion on someone else?”

  Mira locked onto him with a piercing gaze. “To answer your second question first, I recommend you look at Kosovo before you query anyone about that again. Second, in this country, I believe ‘multiculturalism’ is in fashion; do you object to being educated in the way someone else lives?”

  The interrogator sat down, his ears burning at having been Politically Corrected. “To tell you the truth,” she continued, “living in America, there is one thing I’ve noticed—you are not multicultural, but multi-ethnic. Publicly, you have a secular culture that embraces infanticide and euthanasia. I can only hope once all of those persons have murdered themselves and their offspring, those aspects of culture can end. The true culture seems to embrace newcomers from all lands, so they can all enjoy a monoculture of freedom and of hope, and you’re good enough to spread them. You generally do not go around shooting one another for your beliefs as a hobby. Personally, none of you would like to see a true multicultural society. In my homeland, now Serbia-Montenegro, we had such a society, and we required the aid of your Special Forces to keep fellow citizens from attacking one another. Next question?”

  Someone in the middle of the audience stood up, notebook in hand. “Excuse me, Ms. Nikolic, I have two questions, if I may? Is it true your husband has not had any luck finding a job since he came to America because he’s a drunk?”

  Mira froze, and began with an unconvincing “No.” She cleared her throat. “Given the current intake of drugs into Hollywood, if my husband drank to excess, that would hardly disqualify him from work. What is your other question?”

  “Why do you have such a high-security bodyguard with you, well known for leaving a body count wherever he goes?”

  Mira cocked her head as though slightly bemused, and most amused. “Given my previous encounters with the media, I would suspect you are a reporter.”

  The man smiled and identified himself as a member of a Long Island paper notorious for being more anti-Catholic than a nun married to a rabbi.

  “Next question?” she asked.

  The reporter frowned, having apparently not learned that half of Mira’s problem with the old country had been dealing with genocidal reporters

  “Last year, you went back to your home country for a production of Medea, but canceled on King Lear in the same country. Why one but not the other?”

  Sean blinked and pulled out his cell phone. “Mom, how’re you on that search in the Serbian psychos department?”

  “I manage to slip it in between researching terrorists who matter to, oh, the CIA, NCIS, the FBI, HomeSec, that sort of thing. Why?”

  “I have something that can narrow your search with a quick Google. Mira Nikolic went home last year; get the dates, and find out who was not active then, but became active after.”

  Elizabeth Tierny gave a sigh of relief. “Thank God! You can’t imagine how many Serbians with a grudge there are. And trust me, all of the militants would love to take a piece out of your girl—neutral parties always get shot first.”

  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be cannon fodder.”

  On stage, Mira said, “Two years ago, I was not ready to return. Please remember, my life had fallen. The authorities had confiscated my house; much of my family had been slaughtered, and all of the friends I believed in failed to believe in me. The idea of returning… I did not feel safe, nor welcome, two years ago, and Medea had the advantage of being isolated in the Brijuni islands.”

  She smiled, briefly, allowing the audience to relax, and realize she had made a slight joke. “Also, Medea’s mind shifts because of her desperation, pain and betrayal, much of which happens in war. Medea is not only a play about marital conflict; in the last scene, Jason and Medea are still fighting their private war over the bodies of their slain children, just like a real war. Suffering and casualties cannot teach people to transcend hatred—a message not truly learned by my homeland. Next?”

  “Between New York and LA, which do you prefer?”

  Mira gave a light, bell-tinkling laugh. “You have just asked me to compare realities. New York is a little island off the coast of Europe, while Los Angeles… It is a bigger cultural shock to move from New York to LA than Europe to New York. In interpersonal relations, LA is a ‘wild west,’ with SUVs. The culture is appropriately cruel; self-drive and individualism have given in to boundless greed, arrogance, vulgarity, and unscrupulousness. Ironically, I left home to preserve my moral integrity, and I arrived in Hollywood, which does not even know what morality is. There, people are prepared to do anything for anything.”

  “How was the transition?”

  Mira closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “My husband and I essentially succeeded in creating a new life. I don't consider myself to be a loser. I was able to salvage some aspects of my life. I kept what was important.

  “Leaving your country…is losing the reference points in your life. When that is lost, there is nothing but your personality. You need to reinvent yourself, and there is only one country in which you can do it—America. Coming here to start a new life is still possible. Here, reinventing oneself is the norm. Europe functions differently. You start your life doing that, one, thing. You live in your parents’ apartment and die there. Next?”

  Ryan’s eye fell on the next man a moment before he stood. He sat on the aisle, and there was a large, paper bag on the floor next to him. He was about Sean’s height, with matching coloring; the main differences between the two of them were facial construction, dress, and the fact that Sean was at least groomed.

  The interrogator, Dragan Vasnic, a visitor like so many others, bellowed out something in an Eastern European language that sounded like all languages between Germany and China, before pulling his hand out of the bag with an empty glass bottle, and he hurled it with all his might. The bottle somehow redirected course in midair, slamming against the stage.

  Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Elven Assassin was about to leap from his seat; he noticed the assailant reach back into the bag for another one, hoping to get as many shots in as possible before being subdued.

  The assailant's hand froze in mid-throw, held by an unmovable force. He looked to see what held him, and met a set of brilliant blue eyes.

  Dragan spat at Ryan’s face. Sean merely cocked his head to let the saliva fly by. He pulled Dragan out of his seat. He struggled desperately to swing the weapon at the bodyguard, to no effect; his arm was locked in front of him.

  The grip increased. “Behave.”

  Vasnic swung at him with his other hand, and Sean took it on the cheekbone. He pull
ed back for yet another swing, and Ryan increased the pressure around the fingers holding the bottleneck until Dragan grimaced in pain.

  “Last chance.”

  The attacker growled, the grip increased, and the sound of breaking glass could be heard through the suddenly quiet hall. The bottle fell to the ground, minus a neck, which was still in the assailant’s hand, in pieces. Ryan let go. “Done?”

  Vasnic waved his hand sharply, shaking glass from his palm, and swung. Ryan hit the button on his telescoping pike, extending the weapon to its full length, and used it to intercept the strike. He grabbed the attacker by the shoulder, swung him around. He grabbed both wrists, crossed them behind his back, slipped the pike in the crux of where they met, and twisted. He used that leverage to swing Dragan forward and push him face first into the stage.

  “Now, apologize to Ms. Nikolic.”

  “Pricken sie sich!”

  Ryan recognized the German and physically objected. “Not nice. Apologize, and explain why you tried to harm her.”

  Mira knelt down at the edge of the stage, and told Sean, “His words before the bottle were ‘Trek Triumphant.’ I do not think this is who we are looking for.”

  Ryan remembered the Turian guest from the other day, explaining in a plaintive, high-pitched voice that stabbing Mira with a prop knife “was just a joke,” that he had been told to do it by someone Sean's height with a “bloodless face, blue eyes, let me go!”

  He growled and pulled Vasnic off to the side before throwing him out the side entrance. “And don’t come back.”

  “Fuck youse!” he growled in a thick Brooklyn accent before running away.

  The nuts are coming out of the woodwork, Sean, and it’s all for you.

  Ryan walked in front of the stage, bent over, and picked up the little throwing knife he had used to knock the bottle out of midair before it could strike his client. He was fortunate enough to have decent aim, so he could throw and forget. He tucked it back into his badge before standing again. As he took his place back offstage, he wondered if the Klingon Wednesday and the bottle thrower today had anything to do with testing security.

  No, Sean, real assassins test security quietly, so they won’t be recognized later. Let’s get out of the mind of a screenwriter. Besides, of all the accents a Serb would pick to disguise his voice with, Brooklynese is not one of them; I’d sooner believe that a Brooklynite Trekker would choose to learn choice phrases in Serbian before that.

  ***

  On the other end of the hall, the Elven assassin smiled.

  This incident proved she was an Elven princess; she had come with her own dunedain—a Ranger.

  Chapter 5: The Great What Riot?

  The man who called himself Eric Kerikov wandered through the “zocalo,” the vendor’s room, with an amused eye. He first wandered between the comic book and art tables, and the celebrity autograph table, where he caught sight of Erin Green once more, as well as several people he’d never heard of before, in addition to…oh, Eielson.

  I’d shoot him for free if he were worth the bullet.

  He headed for the book vendor, glancing over the entire inventory, which consisted of more books than he had seen in the fiction section of some libraries. The goods were displayed on three tables—the smallest being twenty feet long—and a fourth was used for extra copies, although he couldn’t imagine some people buying this stuff. There were only so many books of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time novels before one merely gave up. (In his opinion, the rubber of The Wheel of Time never met the road and kept spinning around and around and never got anywhere…kind of like the great wheel of Buddhist reincarnation, which actually explained a lot about Steven Segall’s career.)

  There were more Terry Brooks novels than he could count his initial trilogy having branched beyond a dodecalogue. And, Eric wondered how long it would take for Isaac Asimov to stop publishing books, since he died in 1992.

  For someone who didn’t believe in an afterlife, his has been productive. Then again, if there is an afterlife, he’ll write the guide. If he publishes that one, I’ll have to run and hide.

  He floated past the movie posters, which he had no use for, and one of many T-shirt displays. He stopped, briefly, at a magazine rack, reading the Latin off a vendor’s shirt— Si hoc legere, scis nimium eruditionis habes: “If you can read this shirt, you are too educated.”

  Eric smiled and told him, “Don’t worry, I somehow suspect you’re not.”

  The vendor smiled, totally clueless.

  His next stop was a pewter store. His eyes lit up at he peered over the chess sets and the figurines, wondering who he knew that would appreciate a pewter Merlin statue two inches tall holding a crystal ball smaller than the nail on his little finger. He thought about it and decided to buy it later. He noted a pewter letter opener “peace bonded” to the table, and almost laughed as he slid it out of its restraints.

  This is security? He put the opener on his finger, and found it horribly overbalanced, deciding that if he ran security, this wouldn’t be an issue—it wasn’t a worthy weapon, and thus mostly harmless…isn’t that a Douglas Adams novel?

  He turned around, ignoring the next booth of toys and videotapes, and coming face-to-face with a booth of sharp objects. On the back wall was a set of samurai swords, varying in length from katana to short sword to dagger, and the table had securely tied down sets of throwing knives and stars. It was an impressive, high-quality medieval arsenal that would probably never be used for more than dust collection or the utensil cabinet of a very eccentric individual who had no idea what to do with his money.

  “See what I mean,” someone said. “C-Con is just an excuse to carry a sword.”

  “No, dimwit, that’s the Marines!” his companion retorted.

  Eric grinned and strolled through the throng to a place called “Battle Woman’s Armory,” that sold maces, axes, and swords, all of them with thin blades measured in millimeters that would shatter against a kitchen knife. However, what caught his attention in the U-shaped booth was something labeled a “war wizard’s staff”— a five foot black staff topped with a pewter cobra head with ruby eyes, claiming to have a sword hidden inside. He slid it out from its plastic cord and examined it, wondering if it wouldn’t attract too much attention on assignment.

  “Let me have a look at that when you’re done?” said someone with a brogue.

  Having a very bad feeling about what he’d see, Eric looked up at Dennis Boyle in front of him, and his sidekick behind. One wore a shirt saying, “Aren’t you a little short to be an imperial auditor?” and Boyle had a “Mad Scientists Union, Local 42.”

  Eric groaned. “Oh, for God’s sake, get out of here before you attract trouble.”

  ***

  Unfortunately, Trouble used her raincoat as a rope tied to the lowest rail on the catwalk so she could slide down onto the display table, and leap to the floor from there.

  Maureen McGrail landed between the two IRA men and the civilian and smiled. “Hello, lads. Want to have another go?”

  Boyle grimaced, looked at Eric, and yanked the staff from his grasp, twisting the cobra until the hidden sword came out. He growled, “Come and get me!”

  He looked at the sword, noting that the blade was barely a foot and a half. He paused a moment, twisted the top back on, and held it like a club. O’Riordan grabbed a morningstar from the wall and whirled it above his head as though it would work like a helicopter and let him fly.

  McGrail stood there amused as they went through their gyrations, until Boyle swung. She caught the staff on the fleshy part of her forearms, then grabbed it and slammed it into his face. He staggered back as O’Riordan swung; she caught the chain on the staff, letting the morningstar wrap around it, and pulled back, letting it fly behind her.

  The two lads hesitated before they ran up the center aisle of the zocalo room, heading directly for the exit. McGrail sighed and hurled the staff between O’Riordan’s legs, bringing him to the ground as he tripped
over it. She was only two yards away when the sound of machine-gun fire made her drop to a crouch behind a vendor’s table. O’Riordan scrambled to his feet and kept running.

  Halfway down the aisle, a vendor smacked Boyle in the head. “Three bucks!”

  Boyle grimaced and dropped the sound effects key chain back on the table.

  McGrail leapt up again and resumed the chase. O’Riordan grabbed a large crystal paperweight and hurled it at her. She plucked it from the air and set it down on a table before grabbing a knight’s helmet off a display rack and tossing it over the crowd, landing at Boyle’s feet as he fell over it. She fell on him, grabbing several necklaces off a jewelry table and fastening them around his wrists. She stood in time for O’Riordan to throw a black-sequined cloak from a Goth table over her head; instead of pressing his advantage, he pulled Boyle off the floor and loosened his bonds as they ran.

  Maureen, losing her patience, glanced around, spotting a leather-goods store. She dashed over, grabbing a bullwhip off the wall, and lashed out at O’Riordan, reeling him in like a piece of salmon.

  Boyle, who had made it to the book vendor, grabbed a stack of hardcovers and began lobbing them like grenades at the Interpol agent, breaking her hold on the whip. O’Riordan joined him, and they both started using the reading materials like weapons.

  However, McGrail dodged one after the other, getting closer to them with each sidestep. They gave up on that; Boyle grabbed one end of the table, Francis the other, lifted it, and by the time she was almost within kicking distance, upended the table and dropped the load of books on her.

  They let go and started a run toward the “up” staircase. O’Riordan was busy looking back, making sure she wasn’t up already, and unfortunately, ran into a very large Cardassian, who replied by pushing back at him, prompting Boyle to deck the Cardassian, a move resulting in his friend the Gorn smacking Boyle upside the head, which instigated a Captain Smirk impersonator to leap on the Godzilla-like “alien”. This act brought a passing elf to try and break the two up; however, he was mistaken for a Romulan by another Smirk fan, who jumped him, only to be batted off by Gandalf’s staff, and the wizard known as “The Gray” had an Orc come to the defense of the Smirk, and the wizard was defended by a Ranger of Lord of the Rings, assisted by a Ranger from G5, who would be helped by a Fremen, leading to the involvement of the Dune shock troops, soon joined by Imperial storm troopers and German storm troopers—after that, it was difficult to keep track of them all.