by Rick Cook
“My Lady, are you all right?” Bal-Simba asked.
The dragon shook his head feebly, as if trying to clear it. Then he heaved himself upright. For an instant Jerry was afraid he would fall, but the dragon steadied and seemed to draw inner strength.
“How do you feel?” Jerry asked.
“Let us get on with it,” Moira said grimly.
Jerry was relieved both at the dragon’s apparent recovery and at Moira’s response. He hadn’t been absolutely sure that Moira would be able to talk to them in this world.
“Where are we?” Bal-Simba asked, craning his neck to look at the three-story-stack of crates surrounding them.
“We’re in a storage area next to an exhibit hall, but I don’t recognize which one.”
He looked around trying to orient himself. It wasn’t easy. The view at ground level was completely blocked by the stacks of crates. Beyond the crates on one side was a solid brick wall, perhaps four stories high. Above that were two hotel towers perhaps twenty stories high each. Scanning the horizon over the tops of the crates he could see mountains in the distance and here and there tall buildings, obviously more hotels. The sky above was pale turquoise blue with just a few wisps of high clouds.
“I don’t recognize this at all,” Jerry said. “This isn’t the Convention Center. It must be one of the new hotels.”
“What do we do first?”
Jerry looked at Bal-Simba in his leopard-skin kilt, bone necklace and blue cloak. “First we get some clothes. No, first we get some money.”
It took them a while to find their way out of the wooden maze. Finally, with the help of some rather profane instructions from a startled forklift driver who nearly ran over them, they found a gate and stepped into a parking lot dominated by a fleet of semis, trailers and satellite dishes.
“Okay,” Jerry said, looking around, “this is the Paladin. That tells me where we are, more or less.”
Bal-Simba and Moira didn’t say anything. They were too busy staring.
There was reason to stare. Off in one direction a castle raised pinnacled towers to the pale blue sky. In another a giant lion of blue glass crouched, and off to the side stood a glittering black pyramid. A tropical rain forest rose under a glittering dome, a gigantic brightly striped pavilion stood in another direction. Off in the distance there were more spires and domes. That all these wonders were accompanied by nearly identical blocky high-rise towers sheathed in golden glass did nothing to dim the effect on Bal-Simba and Moira.
“Amazing,” Bal-Simba said at last. “Moira may have seen its like before, but it is new to me.”
“This is unlike what I saw before of this world,” Moira told him.
“This is Las Vegas,” Jerry explained. “It’s unlike just about anything.” He looked around, getting his bearings and then patted the brown suede purse that hung from his belt. “Come on, let’s go around to the front.”
They trudged across acres of asphalt crammed with automobiles, threaded their way between the towering hotel block and a multi-story parking garage and finally emerged at the front of the hotel.
As soon as they came around the corner their surroundings changed completely. Jerry led them up a walkway beside a winding drive, past groves of palm trees and stands of giant bamboo springing from an impossibly green lawn. They passed statues in classical poses, a compound holding several white tigers, crossed over a bridge above a pool housing a number of dolphins, passed an artificial geyser at a discreet distance and finally came to the bank of glass doors leading into the hotel proper.
“Moira, you’d better wait outside,” Jerry told the dragon. “I’m not sure what their rules are on animals and I don’t think we can pass you off as a seeing-eye dog.”
“Well enough, My Lord,” Moira said. ‘It sounds excessively noisy in any event.”
“I begin to understand why the search will be difficult,” Bal-Simba said as soon as they were through the door and out of Moira’s earshot. “This place is larger than I had imagined.”
“Oh, this is only one of the places we’ve got to look. There are maybe a couple of dozen more this big or bigger. One of the problems we’ve got is that the show is spreading out again. For a while they had all the exhibits concentrated in just two big exhibit halls and the Hilton next to the Convention Center,” Jerry said. “But those overflowed and they’ve had to start using the hotel exhibition space again.”
Bal-Simba started forward toward the line of clerks and away from the racket in the casino, but Jerry stopped him.
“No, this is just the registration area. What we want is probably the teller’s cage. That’s over this way.”
Bal-Simba frowned slightly but followed Jerry out into the maze of the casino.
Everywhere there were lights, colors and noise. It took Jerry a minute to realize the casino didn’t have many players.
“The casinos hate the show even if the hotels love it,” he told Bal-Simba as they maneuvered through the aisles and past the occasional slot player. “Most of the attendees don’t gamble—well, except for the startups and product rollouts on the show floor.”
Bal-Simba nodded as if the comment made perfect sense.
The cashier’s office was off at one side of the casino so it only took about ten minutes and three sets of directions from change girls and a guard before they found it.
The cage manager was well-groomed, well-mannered and impossible to surprise. The sight of a couple of characters in Halloween costumes with a bag of gold they wanted to change into money didn’t so much as turn a hair. He laid out the terms for them as if this happened every day. Looking around the casino, Jerry reflected that maybe it did.
“Ten thousand dollars maximum,” the manager told them. “Market less twenty-five percent.” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you right now you can do better in most of the pawn shops.”
“We need some walking-around money.”
The manager shrugged. He led them around the corner, past two armed guards and into a small room where a clerk was waiting for them with a tabletop full of machinery.
The clerk was not as well-groomed and considerably less mannered. He took the coins and ten by ten put them in a large piece of equipment in one corner.
“Neutron spectroscope,” the manager explained. “We get a lot of Asian customers with gold.”
It took time to test the coins and more time to count out the cash. In the process Jerry had to sign a statement saying who he was, that the gold was legal and that he had paid all the applicable taxes. He noticed that the manager didn’t ask them for identification.
###
“Now do we begin our search?” Bal-Simba asked as they threaded their way back through the casino.
“Now we go get our credentials,” Jerry said. “That will take a good chunk of this money.”
“Excuse me,” said a woman’s voice off to one side. Both men turned and took a blinding light full in the face.
“Thanks,” said a shadowy form perfunctorily as she lowered her camera and pushed by them.
Bal-Simba blinked as he tried to get his sight back. “What was that?”
“That was a reminder that we need some different clothes.” Jerry frowned. “But that’s going to take more time and . . .” Then his rapidly returning sight fell on an arcade of shops off beyond the registration area. “Come on. It’ll be expensive, but we need to save time more than we need to save money.”
The shopping arcade angled off from the registration area leading to one of the hotel towers. Beyond the frozen yogurt shop, the jeweler’s, the furrier’s and the “art gallery” selling brightly colored paintings whose kitsch was only exceeded by their prices, was the men’s store Jerry had known had to be there.
The place had an Italian name that Jerry thought was some kind of sausage, but he wasn’t picky. The interior was all white and old gold and decorated in a way that for some reason reminded Jerry of a tapestry woven of polyester. The salesman was tall, lean and dresse
d in an extreme version of Italian style. He was also showing a five-o’clock shadow.
“May I help you?” he said in tones that indicated he probably couldn’t, but he was going to go through the motions anyway.
“Uh, my friend and I need some clothes.”
The man looked them up and down. “I’d say.”
“They lost our luggage and all we have left are our costumes. We need something for street wear.”
“Hmm,” the man said. “Hmm,” he said again. “Hey, Meyer, can you come out here a minute?”
Meyer was a wizened old man with thick glasses set low on his nose. His trousers were dusty with chalk and he wore a tape measure draped around his neck like a shawl.
“They need some street clothes,” the younger man told him.
Meyer looked them over with an obviously professional eye. “Come on back into the fitting room and let’s see what we can do.”
“He keeps me around for color,” the old man confided as he led them into the back. “Pfafh! Like I’m a museum exhibit or something.”
Like its inhabitant the back room wasn’t nearly as fancy but looked a lot more businesslike. Meyer whipped the tape measure off his shoulders and began to lay it against Jerry’s body. “My nephew. He should have learned his trade at his father’s knee—God rest him—but instead he goes off and gets an MBA. An MBA! Better he should learn tailoring to run a haberdashery, no? But kids, you can’t tell them anything. So, you want suits or what?”
“Something less formal,” Jerry said.
“Hmm,” the old man said without stopping his measurements. “Pity. I could do some real good things for both of you in suits.” He sighed. “But these days, you don’t get a chance to show off what you know. Well, at least it’s not leisure suits anymore.”
Museum exhibit or no, Meyer knew his business. With hardly a pause he had both Jerry and Bal-Simba measured and the sample book laid out for them to pick the cloth.
“Here you go. Not a thread of polyester in the bunch. Just show me what you want and in two, three days we’ll have you turned out sharp.”
“We were hoping for something today. Something we can wear out of here.”
“You want miracles too?”
“We can’t go walking around like this.”
“I don’t see why not. You look like a bartender from the Excalibur. That’s a hotel,” he added at Jerry’s puzzled expression. Then he nodded toward Bal-Simba. “Him, he’s a problem.”
“It can be just about anything. We’re kinda desperate.”
He looked at Jerry. “In that case, you I can fit off the rack, almost. Your friend—” He shrugged. “That’s special.”
“How long will it take?”
“So you’re in a hurry too?”
“Look, if it’s a matter of money . . .” The old man waved him to silence. “It’s a matter of possible. A challenge like this I haven’t had in a long time, but even so . . .” Again the shrug. Then he brightened. “Wait a minute. I do have something a customer never picked up. I can even make you a price on it.”
A few minutes later Jerry stepped out of the dressing room the picture of Las Vegas casual. His polo shirt and slacks fit him beautifully. The clothing felt odd after the loose shirts, tunics and breeches he had worn for so long at the Wizards’ Keep. The shoes were stiff and pinched a little after the soft leather boots of the other world, but he could get used to it.
“Are you ready?” he called into the dressing room where Bal-Simba was changing.
“I believe so,” Bal-Simba said, somewhat hesitantly.
Bal-Simba emerged wearing a puffy-sleeved pink shirt open to the navel. A fancy vest fitted tightly over the shirt. Tight tan bell-bottoms stretched across his ample rear. He had left his bone necklace around his chest and a snap-brim hat with a leopard-skin band completed the outfit. Meyer fussed around him, pulling down the vest here and tugging the shirt into position there.
Jerry looked his friend up and down. “We don’t have to guess the guys profession, do we?”
The old man shrugged. “So who asks? Now come on up front and we’ll get you taken care of.”
Jerry gulped when he saw the bill, but he peeled off hundreds without comment. “The rest of the stuff, four o’clock tomorrow,” Meyer admonished. “I swear not a minute sooner.”
They found Moira outside by the dolphin pool, posing for pictures with a family of tourists while a couple of bemused security guards looked on.
“Don’t you need a leash for that thing?” one of the guards asked when Jerry came up to rejoin her.
“Audio-Animatronics,” Jerry explained.
“No kidding?” one of the guards said. “Lake the showgirls?” Jerry wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not so he just smiled.
###
There was a covered slideway from the lobby to the street, but Jerry led them down the ordinary sidewalk beneath it. He wasn’t sure how his friends would take to a moving walkway and he wasn’t at all sure Moira would be able to keep her tail out of the gears.
“How do we begin our search for this wizard?” Moira asked as the three made their way out to the street.
“First things first. We gotta get registered. We do that at the main Convention Center.”
“Where is that?”
“There.” Jerry pointed to one of the towers springing up out of the desert. “It’s further than it looks.”
“How will we get there?”
“Walk. I don’t think they would let a dragon on a shuttle bus. Besides, we don’t have credentials so they won’t let us in either.”
Bal-Simba nodded and the strangely assorted trio joined the knots of business-suited convention-goers drifting down the sidewalk toward the distant tower.
You would think that a twenty-foot dragon parading down the main street of a major American city would attract at least some attention. You would be wrong. Anyone who’s been in Las Vegas more than forty-eight hours has found stranger things than that on the breakfast buffet. The only interest came from the occasional gawker in a car stuck in traffic, and truth to tell they seemed more taken with Bal-Simba.
“What is all this for?” Moira asked as they walked along. “Wiz compared it to the Winter Fair once, but I never understood.”
“It’s a trade show for the computer industry,” Jerry said. “All these people are connected with computers somehow.”
“And they are here to buy and sell them?”
Jerry shrugged. “Well, they used to be. Then the distribution channels got better established and most of that business moved elsewhere. Then for a while everybody came to see the new products that were being announced. But the show got so big and there were so many announcements that most of the really big ones aren’t made here anymore. Then it was the place to meet people. But now it’s so big you have trouble doing that.” He fell silent.
“Then why do people come here?” Moira asked.
“I guess,” Jerry said slowly, “because it’s here.”
The air was cool and the desert sun merely warm rather than blazing. Even so, Moira was showing signs of stress before they reached their destination.
“I am sorry, My Lord, but this body cannot go much further,” Moira told them finally. “It is worn out and I, I am feeling unwell.”
The way she said it made Jerry wonder about what happened when a dragon barfed. He decided not to be in front of her if it happened.
“That’s okay. I told you it was further than it looked.” He glanced down the street. “Look, the Convention Center is right down there. Why don’t I go ahead and you two follow when she can? I’ll have to wait in line for a while anyway.”
###
Registration was in a big blue-and-white tent erected in the parking lot at the Convention Center. Jerry breasted his way through the thickening crowds around and inside the tent to get a place in line to register.
“How many?” the woman behind the counter asked.
“Two, no make t
hat three sets.”
“Fill out the forms over there and when you get done bring them back here.”
Secure in the knowledge that no one would pay any attention to what was on the forms until he was away from this world, Jerry indulged in an orgy of mendacity. By the time he was done he was president of his own company, Bal-Simba was “Wizard In Chief” and Moira bore the title of “Exhibit A.”
Since he had signed them all up for the seminars as well as the exhibit halls, the bill was in four figures. So much so that he was momentarily taken aback.
What the heck, Jerry thought, it’s only money.
By the time he emerged, the better part of an hour later, Bal-Simba and Moira were waiting for him.
“Here.” He handed Bal-Simba a paper bag of literature. “Most of this is junk but we can go through it later.”
Next he gave Bal-Simba his badge. “Don’t lose this. You have to have it showing all the time.”
The big wizard raised his eyebrows.
“It’s, uh, a talisman, to get you into the exhibit areas.”
Bal-Simba nodded and clipped it to his vest.
“Where shall I attach mine?” Moira asked.
“Just clip it to your . . . Ah, right. That is a problem.”
Then it occurred to Jerry there might be a bigger problem. Even with a badge it would be hard to get a dragon into the exhibit areas.
“Wait a minute,” Jerry said, “I’ve got an idea.”
Ignoring the thronging crowds, Jerry went over to a banner decorating the side of the building. He quickly cut the ropes and gathered the banner as it fell.
“Here,” he said to Bal-Simba, “help me drape this over her.” With Bal-Simba holding one side of the sign, he threw the other over her back and crawled under her stomach. He barely missed being decapitated when Moira involuntarily raised a massively clawed hind foot.
“Be careful, will you?”
“Well, it tickles,” Moira said.
With a little tugging and trimming he managed to get the cords tied under the dragon’s belly. That left the sign draped like a horse blanket over her sides. As a finishing touch he pinned Moira’s badge to the banner. In the process Jerry noticed they had gathered a knot of onlookers. ”A dragon?” he heard one of them say.