So marriage wasn’t discussed. They didn’t talk about the future, but neither of them dated anyone else, either. She didn’t want to do or say anything that might change what they had. Marion knew that she often acted brisk and bossy, and that her tendency toward sarcasm made her seem tough and self-sufficient. She was afraid, though, despite her best efforts, that Jay Omega knew how much she loved him.
In the hospitality suite, Diefenbaker was just finishing the last of the yellow Reese’s Pieces. They had been removed from the candy dish, because Smarties did not come in that color. Dief thought it was an exercise in futility anyhow; surely Dungannon would notice that there weren’t any pink or purple candies in the dish, a dead giveaway that they weren’t Smarties, and even if he failed to notice, one bite ought to give the game away. No one could mistake a peanut butter filling for a chocolate one. In any case, said Miles Perry, the Great One barely glanced at the ersatz British candy once it was rushed into his presence. No doubt he had a dim recollection of demanding it.
The hospitality suite television was showing a videocassette of Forbidden Planet, but no one was there watching. Most of the convention guests would not arrive until early Friday evening, and those who had come already were busy checking in, looking up old friends, or visiting the exhibits and game rooms. Toward the wee hours of the morning, when there were no competing sessions, a few of the faithful would gather to watch Star Trek episodes, and the couches would be taken by crashers who hadn’t booked a hotel room. Diefenbaker occasionally allowed floor space in his room to an impoverished friend, but this time he’d decided to hold out for peace and quiet. He was going to be besieged by people as it was, what with so many Far Brandonians in attendance.
Since Diefenbaker lived in Ontario, most of his fellow gamers had to rely on correspondence and a severely limited phone budget for contact with him. Rubicon, his yearly foray into the U.S., was their only opportunity for a face-to-face meeting, and, to the limits of his civility and endurance, they were determined to make the most of it.
“Aha, I found you!” said Richard Faber, blocking the doorway. “That only leaves Chip Livingstone.”
“You make it sound like a scavenger hunt.” Diefenbaker smiled.
Faber began spreading photocopied maps over Diefenbaker’s table. “There’s an army on my southern border,” he announced.
“I know. I put it there.”
“I know, but—”
“You asked me to.”
Faber turned crimson. “That was before I found out that C.D. Novibazaar was acting as minister of state for Emily of Gondal. That changes everything!”
A teenage boy with the word “Nomad” scrawled on his forehead walked into the room just then. “Who’s C.D. Novibazaar?”
The only thing Richard Faber liked better than to argue was to lecture. With a missionary gleam in his eye, he rounded on the newcomer. “Cambrecis Desmoulins (de) Novibazaar was a Hungarian refugee who held various posts in nineteenth-century French government. Just before the Peace of Campo-Formio, when Napoleon’s arrival in Vienna seemed imminent …”
Having now received enough information to know that Novibazaar could not be read, smoked, or played on a PC, “Nomad” tuned out the rest of the explanation and returned to his original errand. “Miles Perry said you’d know what to do with these,” he said, handing a stack of papers to Diefenbaker.
Dief looked at the top sheet. “‘The Verdant Moon of Milos.’ Entries in the Rubicon Writing Contest?”
“Right. Cover sheets with the authors’ identities are stacked on the bottom. You gotta get ’em judged so we can announce it after the costume contest tonight.”
“I thought Appin Dungannon was judging these. Didn’t Miles ask him?”
“No. He was planning to bring up the subject when he showed Dungannon to his room, but after the Smarties and Yorkies tantrum, he lost his nerve.”
“Oh, more’s the pity,” said a disappointed Dief. “I don’t suppose it would have done any good to ask. Judging a writing contest is such hard work and, um, Dungannon does rather prefer the sexual possibilities of a costume contest. All right, I think I know someone who will judge the manuscripts. Where is Miles, anyway?”
“Orbiting the hotel, more or less, trying to be everywhere at once. He said something about meeting you for dinner. Didn’t say where.”
Diefenbaker looked at his watch. Just over five hours to get the manuscripts read and judged, Dungannon to entertain for dinner, and a hundred other minutiae to accomplish in between. He wondered if he ought to take a pill now, or wait for the headache to arrive.
“Richard, I really must go,” he said, scooping up the manuscripts. “Why don’t you talk to Bonnenberger?” He nodded toward an inert form on a straight chair near the window.
Joseph Bonnenberger, shirt buttoned up to his chin, four pens in his pocket, and 10W40 hair, sat squinting at a Rubicon brochure, apparently in preference to actually attending any of its events. Eventually his obsession with the Diplomacy game would force him from his lair into actual interaction with others of his species, but a breakthrough of this magnitude was still hours away.
Faber gave Dief a look of horror. “Talk to Bonnenberger?” he hissed. “The guy’s a remora!”
Most people knew better than to talk to Joseph Bonnenberger, because, he was indeed like the remora, a fish whose dorsal fin is a suction disk allowing it to attach itself more or less permanently to larger creatures. No one was willing to risk being civil to Bonnenberger, because it might result in their having to struggle through the rest of the weekend, dragging the bloated personality of the human remora in their wake. With Bonnenberger, it was best to limit oneself to pleasantries; anything more than that could be fatal.
“I’d rather drink Falstaff!”
Diefenbaker smiled pontifically. “Yes, Faber, but you deserve each other.”
Before Faber could think up a reply, he was gone.
Not much had changed in the lobby. Diefenbaker noticed that “Filksinging with Monk Malone” had been chalked in on the announcement board for 11 P.M. He decided to let Miles handle the hotel management on that score. His own primary concern was to unload the contest manuscripts before he had to read them himself. He was about to set off for the computer room when he spotted a dark-haired woman seated off in a corner behind a small mound of Bimbos of the Death Sun.
When he approached the table she seemed so pitifully glad to see him that he bought a copy just to spare her feelings. “I was really looking for Dr. Omega,” he said.
“He went in search of a Coke machine,” Marion told him. “If you want him to autograph your book, leave it here, and you can drop by for it later.”
Diefenbaker hesitated. Surely he couldn’t just dump the manuscripts without getting Omega to agree to do them, but a glance around the lobby had shown three people waving frantically for his attention. As quickly as he could, he explained the problem to Marion, who smiled encouragingly, and assured him that Jay Omega would love to judge the writing contest. More reassured than perhaps he should have been, Diefenbaker scurried away.
Miles Perry had been cornered in the hall by a Star Trek officer and a heavy-set young woman with a serenely pretty face.
“We need to talk to you about the wedding.” said the blue-shirted young man.
Miles blinked, trying to summon up a Rubicon program from his memory circuits. “Er—ah?”
The couple glanced at each other uneasily. “It’s all set, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“We are going to get married tomorrow night after the banquet in a Star Trek ceremony.”
Miles Perry looked at the young man’s dark hair, cut square across his forehead. “Spock and … ?”
“Saavik,” said the bride. “We’ll put our ears on later. Anyway, we wrote to ask about doing this, and we got a letter from Chip Livingstone saying it would be okay.” Her voice quavered. “It is, isn’t it?”
Miles Perry frowned. No one had both
ered to notify him about any of this. He wondered if Diefenbaker were playing godfather to this. This Chip Livingstone business was getting out-of-hand! Still, it would provide a bit of drama, and perhaps some local publicity for the convention—not a bad thing. He studied the careful copy of the Enterprise science officer’s uniform, and wondered if the bride would be similarly attired—in which case she might be mistaken for the planet Venus.
“Uh … Do you have a minister?”
“Yes. One of the campus chaplains has agreed to come over and perform the ceremony dressed as Captain Kirk.”
“Splendid!” Miles wondered if the local paper would send someone on short notice.
“And my bridesmaids will be dressed as Yeoman Rand and Nurse Chappell.”
“Best man?” asked Miles Perry, fascinated in spite of himself.
“Ensign Chekov,” said the groom. “We couldn’t find an Oriental, but my roommate is a Bullwinkle freak, and he does a great Russian accent. Boris Badenov.”
“Okay, let’s see if I can find you a room for that hour,” said Miles. “Is that all you need?”
They glanced at each other again. “Well,” said the bride softly. “There is just one thing missing.”
Miles Perry nodded. “I think I can help.”
FIVE
As Jay Omega opened the door to his room, a bound manuscript hit the wall near his head, and slid to the floor in front of him. “I didn’t realize hotel rooms made you so jumpy,” he remarked to Marion, who was sitting in the middle of his bed surrounded by papers. Most of the floor was covered with typed pages as well, he noticed.
“Idiot!” muttered Marion, consulting a clipboard. She scribbled furiously for several seconds before looking up to see Jay Omega, still in the doorway, poised for flight. “Oh, hello,” she said. “I’m becoming dangerously homicidal.”
“Yes, but your aim is bad.”
Marion grinned. “Come in. You’re safe. At least, unless you wrote one of these.”
“I hope not. What are they?”
“They’re the entries in a short-story competition they want you to judge. I thought I’d have a look at them. After all, I teach science fiction.” She glared at him defensively, as if she expected him to object.
He nodded at the papers strewn on the floor. “Interesting grading system. What do you think of them so far?”
“The ones that landed near the bathroom are Bad Tolkien imitations or transcripts of a D&D adventure; bad Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov are below the television; and these on the bed are the ones whose authors I want to hunt down personally and slap.” She extracted a laser-printed manuscript in Gothic lettering from a pile on the pillow. “Listen to this …
Starwind, with her flaming hair about her shoulders and a red harem costume of sheerest Polarian silk, looked as seductive as any of the Rigelian slave beauties Hawker had seen in Astro-Porn Magazine.
She tugged at her purple belt of passion. “My father, the president of the galaxy, said that I should make you welcome, Hawker-of-Earth.”
“Bad color sense,” said Jay Omega, trying not to grin.
“Shut up! You know exactly what’s wrong with this! It’s a throwback to the ‘Thirties teenage space-opera stuff. It’s a stroke book!”
“Would you mind reading it again?”
Marion ignored him. “Or how about this one? It’s called—are you ready for this?—‘Goron: Alien Mercenary’, and it’s set three thousand years in the future. Listen:
Goron was grim as he faced the President of United Earth. ‘This came in the mail yesterday,’ he told her, setting the envelope and check on her desk.
The blonde picked up the check and looked at the signature. ‘Warlord Yoon! I thought he was dead!’ She tore the check into tiny pieces. ‘I wouldn’t want the cleaning woman to find this.’”
Jay Omega blinked. “Three thousand years in the future?”
“That’s what the author says,” nodded Marion, tapping a line of typescript.
“And they still get mail? We don’t even do that on campus. I leave messages for people on the computer mainframe, and they just check their file once a day. Electronic mail. Instantaneous.”
“You don’t send messages to me like that.”
“No, just to other engineers, mostly. But eventually the English department will catch on, and I don’t think it will take three thousand years. Two thousand, tops.” He ducked another manuscript.
“Did you hear what he called the ‘President of United Earth’? The blonde! I’d like to use that kid’s vertebrae for wind chimes!”
“His technology is absurd, Marion. Checks? Direct deposit banking is becoming a way of life now. Three thousand years in the future there’s no telling what they’ll be using, but it won’t be paper checks.”
“Did you notice the bit about the cleaning woman?”
“Good point. Machines should be doing all the maintenance work by then. I don’t think he’s thought out his civilization very carefully.”
“I don’t think he’s ever met any women,” grumbled Marion. “Too bad your book got titled Bimbos of the Death Sun. It’s the perfect name for half these stories.”
“I think it’s too bad about the title, too,” said Jay Omega softly. “Do you think my book is chauvinistic?”
Marion sighed. “Of course not. We’ve been through that before. The title isn’t your fault.”
“It’s strange to be the author of something called Bimbos of the Death Sun, with pictures of female barbarians on the cover.” He shuddered. “If the campus chapter of Women in Engineering ever finds out …”
Marion touched his arm. “It’s a good book. For hard science fiction, that is. It’s scientifically sound; it isn’t pretentious; and I made damn sure it isn’t demeaning to women. That’s saying a lot for this genre. People who read it will know it isn’t trash, no matter what stupid title they give it or what the cover art looks like. Science fiction is notorious for that kind of thing, anyway.”
He nodded. “What are Appin Dungannon’s books like? Have you read them?”
“They’re thrust upon me. Sophomore computer science majors with bad skin and zero interpersonal skills are always wanting to do theme papers on Tratyn Runewind. They’re not fiction, they’re wet dreams. But don’t tell him I said so at dinner tonight.”
“Oh, lord! Dinner! Should I change?”
Marion smiled. “Not unless you brought shining armor.”
Appin Dungannon narrowed his piggy eyes as he contemplated the menu. The stuffed trout was expensive enough, but nauseatingly wholesome, and he was on the lecture circuit too much to ever order chicken voluntarily. What did that leave? Prime rib … the local specialty: peanut soup and Virginia ham … He didn’t want them, either.
His nearest table partner, that Diefenbaker person, leaned over the menu and said, “Don’t worry about time. The costume competition doesn’t start until nine.”
Appin Dungannon grunted. “The costume competition doesn’t start until I’m there. However, I am ready to order. I think I’ll have the trout. White goes with fish, you know. It’ll go with my vodka.” He held up his glass in a mock toast to them and giggled.
Diefenbaker and Miles Perry exchanged worried glances. The Eminent Pro had shown no signs of mellowing out as the evening wore on. His eyes glittered more as he talked, and he kept smiling in a none-too-reassuring way, but he still reminded them of a pinless hand grenade, and they couldn’t be sure how many seconds were left.
Across the table Jay Omega and Marion were smiling nervously, and acting as if they were at the birthday party of a hyperactive child. Conversation was forced.
Dungannon had dismissed his fellow author by saying, “Haven’t read your paperback. Doubt if I’d like it.”
Once the orders had been given to the hovering waiter, he turned his attention to Marion. “Aren’t you a little old for a femmefan?”
Marion’s eyes narrowed. “I teach science fiction at the university.”
Bimbos of the Death Sun Page 4