It Was Only on Stun!

by Declan Finn

  David Peters laughed at Eielson’s expression, who wanted to either explode or throttle Sean; Eielson had never heard the stories that accompanied the name of Sean Ryan & Associates, all of which generally amounted to whispers in the dark, friendly advice of “If he’s on your side, feel sorry for who isn’t; if you’re not on his side, don’t let him know.”

  David Peters knew the stories, but wouldn’t tell Eielson, because he’d been on the panel the year before, and he had been the only one who sat back and heckled Eielson. What amused him even more was Eielson didn’t even know he was being made fun of, so David had sat back and enjoyed laughing at the self-possessed grouch. It was no secret Eielson had been a brilliant writer, and probably still was, but he had become so personally bitter it was impossible to like him.

  As far as Peters was concerned, Sean Aloysius Patricus Ryan was his own personal revenge for last year’s debacle.

  “Now you listen to me, you little shit,” Eielson began, “you’re so fucking—”

  “Watch your tongue around the ladies,” Ryan said with just enough volume to cut Eielson off, and enough malice to imply that bad things would happen if his advice were not taken to heart.

  “I don’t give a fuck who—”

  Ryan slapped him across the face, not hard enough to hurt him badly, not even enough to make him totter back, but enough to sting. He stepped forward, backhanded him, and leaned back against the wall without losing his calm to any degree.

  “You fucking shit, you can’t even come up with a fucking witty repartee, you insignificant—”

  He made a step forward, and Eielson leapt backwards. They shared a momentary glare, but with that reflex action, they knew the bodyguard had won.

  Ryan stepped forward once more, calmly, patiently, and bent a little so he could make eye contact with the author. “I know enough not to try verbal jabs, because you’ve been dealing with it all your life, and I know your type. I generally have no problems with atheists like you, but most at least have the milk of human kindness within them. You trade that milk for gall, and gave up humanity long ago, which is probably why you’re on wife number five. I can say you’re heartless, mean, savage, cruel, a petty little man, but you’ve heard it all; and I don’t waste my words. I simply make certain every syllable I utter is clear and understood, so no one will have an excuse when I kill them. Now, for once, take some friendly advice, you empty facsimile of a human being: for the next two hours you are at least going to pretend that you have some common courtesy.”

  Peters giggled a little manically, then said, “Last one’s the moderator!” as he dashed into the classroom.

  Ryan grabbed Eielson and pushed him into the classroom, not trusting him to moderate himself. He turned to the other two. “You want to flip for it?”

  Caitlin Brown shook her head, grinning from ear to ear. “No, I’ll be the moderator. Mira’s too polite.”

  He nodded. He leaned over to Mira. “Again, may this be your first and last convention with this bastard.” Ryan stood off to the side of the table, leaning on the door of the media guest entrance.

  Eielson started the meeting by introducing himself for the first five minutes. When he slowed down to a stop at five and a half minutes, and came to a stop in mid-sentence, the audience laughed at him, somewhat hysterically, releasing the tension they felt building after the first four minutes.

  “See!” Eielson snapped, “We live in such a society when anyone stops to think, it’s funny!”

  A member of the audience leapt to his feet. “No, you jackass, we’re laughing because you shoot from the mouth so much, it’s nice to see you shut up a moment!” The audience member reached into his jacket, pulling out a gun.

  Eielson snarled, “RPGs are in the next building, get the fuck out of my lecture!”

  Ryan cleared his throat. “That’s a real gun, moron.”

  At that, three other members of the audience stood, drawing down on the would be assailant, screaming, “Nassau PD, drop it!”

  As they cuffed him and lead him outside, one of them looked at the glances from the audience. “What? Science Fiction is the farthest we can get from the job.”

  It was later learned the gun-toting individual had once been an ardent admirer of Eielson’s, until the author had ridiculed him in public so badly he spent the next six months in an insane asylum.

  Ryan paused a moment. “So, who has questions? Yes, sir, you.”

  “What was the atmosphere on G5? Was there any problems like on Trek?”

  Caitlin Brown said, “Let me give you some Hollywood advice. If number one on the casting sheet is an”—she mouthed the word “ass”—“hole, they all are. But on our set, Bruce was just a big kid.” She, and everyone else in the audience, knew she referred to Tom Boxer, the main hero of G5, six-foot-three and a grin as big as his face.

  “Just for the record,” Mira’s elegant voice floated out above the audience, “my number was number five,” bringing a loud applause from the fans of G5, whose reactions were tuned to that number. Ryan knew her cast number was probably around two, since she was the heroine, but the audience needed the laugh.

  “And I was number six,” Brown replied.

  David Peters raised his hand high and shouted, “I am not a number, I am a free man!” making a reference to an obscure British drama in the 1960s, whose hero was called Number Six. To Sean’s surprise, the room broke up laughing.

  I thought my family was the only one who watched old TV.

  “Ms. Brown, what have you been doing since G5?”

  Caitlin smiled. “First, I left the show for one reason: the makeup. You know how it feels when you rip a band-aid off? The makeup was mostly on my face, so imagine doing that for five days a week for twenty-two weeks. Ladies, you know how much money we spend trying to keep ourselves looking beautiful, so you understand. Since G5, I’ve been working as an actress on other shows, and I’ve also been writing, using what I learned from The Mad Russian. I’m also an agent; in fact, I’m the agent for Andreas Sarantakos, who’s here today at the convention. I’ve also been dealing with my son, who also wants to take after me in more ways than one. I’m almost six-foot, and he was five-eleven at age eleven, and he was six-eight at nineteen; he wants to be an actor, I want him to go for Nike commercials—Baby, mama needs a new house!”

  “What are the panelists’ thoughts on science fiction nowadays?”

  David Peters began talking before Eielson could. “First of all, it gets beaten up a lot. You know the term ‘sci-fi’ was coined by a man named Ackerman in the sixties as a derogatory term, meant to parody high fidelity records, known as hi-fi. But it’s not pronounced Sciiiience Fiiiction, and most people… When non-SF fans think about ‘scifi,’ they think about Them, a movie about giant ants! Star Wars is not the same as a giant lobster movie—and don’t get me started on the newer Star Wars movies; when they introduced midichlorians, they turned the Jedi from philosopher knights into generic, genetic übermench! If you don’t believe we get no respect, after Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic book took a short story award, the awards people changed the rules so they could exclude comics. Now, as many of you know, I do novelizations of movies, and I’ll let you in on a little secret—the books do better when the film tanks, mainly because people want to know exactly what the heck went on in the movie—just look at 2001! Personally, I’d like to see novelizations of Hill Street Blues, Law & Order, Alias, or Boston Public.”

  Caitlin Brown, realizing Peters had gone into neutral, shouted, “Next question!”

  By the end of the two hours, Sean Ryan was just about hoping the hit men would make their move and be done with it. It’ll at least give me something I can shoot at, he thought, glancing at Eielson. And maybe they can take out some people in the crossfire.

  As the questions continued, he let his mind drift in two directions—the first lingering on the crowd in case of more surprise visitors with guns, and then wondering about an idea Mira had suggested. Would it be saf
e for her to wear her costume from G5? They had both considered having Goran deliver the robes in time for the Science Fiction Actor’s Studio, figuring, at that final event of the day, she would be at her highest visibility level, so might as well be as colorful as the crowd. Probably no harm in it. Why not do it now?

  As the panel ended, he told Mira he had made the arrangements.

  Brown looked at him oddly—and not because of his outfit. “Arrangements?”

  “I’m having her G5 costume brought in so she can show off at the next two events—the genre display panel and the actor’s studio after that.”

  Eielson wandered by, shooting Ryan a vile look as he muttered obscenities.

  Brown nodded. “Understood.” She looked at Mira Nikolic. “That always looked great on you.”

  “Thank you.”

  They watched Brown leave for her next panel, and Ryan glanced briefly as Eielson. “Always good to have friends.”

  ***

  Carla van Grot flowed down the hall in her flowing Harry Potter costume, long brown hair just hiding the hood of the red and blue robes. There were all sorts of fun stuff, and she needed to get to the Harry Potter booth in the genre display area. Carla had been there once—it was held in a great octagonal room where each SF show had a wall all to itself. She knew there would be a Harry Potter stand, maybe even a G5 thing…

  As she approached the corner, Carla was pushed from behind, straight into the wall ahead, face first. She slid to the ground, becoming less acquainted with consciousness. As her vision flickered, she heard muttering from behind her. She felt her wallet disappear immediately before she blacked out.

  When she came to, Spider-Man was kneeling at her side.

  “Are you all right, miss? What happened?”

  “I was mugged by a Muggle.”

  Had Sean’s face not been covered by a mask, everyone would have seen it was blank. “A what?”

  Inna tapped him on the shoulder. “A Muggle is a non-wizard in Harry Potter.”

  Sean looked up at her. “Oh…where did you come from?”

  Petraro nodded her head back the way she came. “From the genre room. I wanted to meet you there, but I see you were diverted.”

  “Yeah… you want to escort Mira, or debrief our fallen wizard here?”

  “I’ll keep her with me. I brought an escort of my own.”

  Ryan looked behind her at the greatly amused Matthew Kovach, and then again at Goran Nikolic, nodding. Well, since their combined weight is four times mine, I think she’ll be safe a minute.

  Kovach smiled and led the way, Inna and Mira behind him, with Goran carrying baby Marko in his arms behind them. “By the way, I like the red-blue robes,” Matthew noted as they walked into the room.

  The octagonal room had a large mural on each wall. The section for the Trek Conglomerate (if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all), had a painting of the Enterprise from the second series; G5 had a photo of the space station by the same name; Harry Potter had the drawing of a kid on a broomstick. Rod Serling had an entire wall, staring out at the audience as usual. He stood iron-rod straight in a black and white photo. Between the fingers of one of his clasped hands, he held a cigarette, mainly because the Leftist health-Nazis couldn’t airbrush it away in time.

  Finally, directly across from the G5 stand, there was the latest series from the Black Entertainment Network, their equivalent of Fluffy, the Demon Slayer, only set in a different world. Instead of redheaded Alyson O’Reilly as a “wiccan,” this heroine had a juju for a sidekick, constantly fighting anima spirits—not the ghosts of past Japanese cartoons (all of the bad guys were white, which brought great praise from the New York Times), which is why it was called Bwana and the Juju. At the stand, they had people-tall African masks, and a five-foot-long blowgun mounted on a stand generally used for telescopes.

  At the present time, Corbin Eielson was busy harassing the man behind the blowgun, grabbing it, bellowing that he wasn’t holding it properly; after all, didn’t he know Eielson had been married to an African Princess once?

  Kovach slid out a chair for Mira as she sat, and promptly did the same for Inna, but she declined, noting that she had spotted Caitlin at the other side of the room, near Bwana and the Juju, but kept out of range until Eielson disappeared. He looked around for his redhead, Moira, and spotted her by the Rod Serling section.

  “Might I ask who you are, exactly?”

  Kovach blinked and looked at Mira Nikolic. “I’m an author. We encountered each other briefly last night.”

  “Ah…and you are here because…?”

  “I was born…or, as my father’s nuns would say, God made me to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him in the next.” He grinned broadly at her slightly perplexed reaction. “I’m a sci-fi fan,” he answered correctly.

  “No, I mean at this table.”

  “I’m a G5 fan?”

  “In which case, you are on the wrong side.”

  “Ah,” he said blankly. He stepped around and smiled. “I’ll get your autograph, if I may, a little later.”

  She smiled beatifically. “That may be arranged. Has anyone ever told you that you are somewhat odd, even for an American?”

  Kovach grinned manically. “I’m Catholic, of course I’m nuts.”

  “As am I, but I am not exactly what you call insane.”

  Without missing a beat, he replied, “I read your going-away letter to your fellow citizens. Telling everyone to knock it off, that’s brave; insulting everyone on the way out of town with the ‘I’d like to thank everyone who threatened to kill me’ routine was worthy of Michael Collins, and he did some strange stuff.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I saw the movie.”

  Kovach waved it off. “It didn’t show him staying in the same hotel with the British team scouring Dublin for him. Trust me, you want demented, go for Irish Catholics.”

  “Ah… I have not read your books, may I ask what you write?”

  “Murder mysteries.”

  On the other side of the room, the man behind the blowgun chatted with Caitlin Brown and Inna Petraro, grateful for having someone to talk to aside from certain rude individuals who offended everyone everywhere they went. Eielson had only just left.

  The redhead strolled over, looking over the equipment, nodded as though taking notes, and drifted away, pleasantly observing everything and saying nothing.

  When Sean Ryan joined the others, Mira was gaily interacting with her fans, having a casual discussion with all of them like they were old friends, and some of them were. Others brought questions by proxy from fans she had only met on the Internet. The author, Matthew Kovach, caught his attention, and drifted over to him.

  “What happened?”

  Ryan shrugged. “She says she was pushed and her wallet was lifted. She was mugged, and I can’t prove if it was a robbery or something to do with Mira.”

  Matthew Kovach nodded. “Assume the worst case for a moment, yes? That would involve something, I dunno, subtle, which means your friends from last night are out.”

  Ryan agreed. “If they’re out on the grounds of subtlety, it also leaves out the spiked salads. You think we can leave that to the Serbs?”

  “I can’t see how. The logical reason would be—I don’t know—showing off that yes, we have access to your food, that sort of thing. But it doesn’t help much, at least not them. You’ve already leveled everyone that’s come your way, so why bother?”

  Ryan sighed. “So we have the Serbs who most likely want Mira dead on camera, whoever it is who crashed through the window, and a Third Party.”

  “Not necessarily; it could just mean we don’t know how the Serbs planned to use the salads. Antabuse can result in death, or make her and you weaker when they struck…it doesn’t provide a great advantage, but I’d take all the help I could get.”

  Across the room, the blowgun man pantomimed loading the gun, at Caitlin Brown’s request, milking it for laughs like a
n old Red Skelton routine. He raised the blowgun and, instead of inhaling like in the original comedy routine, he exhaled.

  The dart landed in the movie poster just a foot to the right of Mira Nikolic’s head.

  Kovach and Ryan looked at one another. “Third party.”

  ***

  Galadren, Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Elven assassin, glanced in briefly at the octagonal room. The Ranger was there, dressed in a garish costume, talking with an undercover elf—she had to be an elf, she was taller than most of the people in the room, and she had very attractive eyes. Maybe not exactly the right color, but it worked nevertheless. He looked at the setup and smiled. Very well executed, if he did say so himself, and he did. The only problem was that it hadn’t worked. Maybe if it had been fixed in one position aiming for Mira’s head, it would have hit her. It still wouldn’t have worked because she was an elf, and thus immortal to darts and poisons of all things. But it would have proved that to her at least.

  “Hey, motherfucker! What the hell you think you doing? You hiding from us?”

  The elf sighed. It had been the idiot he thrashed the other day.

  He turned and saw a group of six. He raised a blond eyebrow—Maybe I should dye the eyebrows next time. Did they think two more people would have an effect?

  He gave a moment’s thought to just killing all of them, then dismissed the idea. He would not disrespect the Ranger’s territory just because they were annoying.

  He sighed and ran for the nearest washroom. They followed, and he quickly slipped into a vent, through the ventilation shafts, and came out in another restroom on the ground floor, looking perfectly immaculate.

  He looked down at his silver clothing, flicked away one fleck of dirt, and walked out. Ah, the joys of being an elf.

  ***

  Detective McGauren shook her blonde head slowly, controlling her breathing carefully as she decided who to yell at first, Ryan or Kovach. She had spent her entire day canvassing for people who knew the victim from this morning. She didn’t need someone trying to make work for her, in a district that wasn’t hers, on a day off.

  I’m going to kill John if he ever asks me for a favor ever again. “Do you know how depressingly familiar this is?” she said to no one in particular. “What do you want me to do? Call in the CSU to look at a dart?”