Dungannon looked pleased. “Who’s required reading?”
“Clarke, Brunner, LeGuin—”
“Heinlein?”
“The early works. And in the fantasy course, we teach C.S. Lewis, Tolkien—”
“Tolkien! Ah, so you do mythology? What about British myths?”
“Yes, of course. There’s an excellent book based on Celtic lore. The students love it.”
Appin Dungannon smirked. “Which Runewind is it? The Singing Runes? The Flag of Dunvegan?”
Marion raised her eyebrows. “No. As a matter of fact, it’s The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley.”
Dungannon took a hefty swallow of vodka, and everyone else at the table began talking hurriedly about the next Star Trek movie/Carl Sagan’s novel/and the rumor that the PC would soon be obsolete. Marion went back to her salad with the air of one who has performed an unpleasant task only to discover that she enjoyed it.
Jay Omega, who had never managed to feel like an author anyway, felt no sense of kinship with his fellow writer. He could think of nothing to talk about, and the idea of provoking Dungannon’s ill-concealed wrath made him even less likely to talk than usual.
Miles Perry, who would liked to have discussed convention business with Diefenbaker, felt compelled as host to keep up a flow of bright chatter. He had launched into a long and pointless account of Far Brandonian weaponry, to which no one listened, but the drone of his voice was soothing, and relieved everyone else of the obligation to talk.
Diefenbaker turned to Marion. “Is Dr. Omega one of those terribly sane and steady engineers, or does he have writer’s quirks?”
Marion thought about it. “You mean like Balzac having to wear a monk’s habit and write by candlelight? Jay isn’t temperamental at all, but I don’t know about engineers being sane and steady. The first time I went to his house, I found a radio in the refrigerator.”
“There was a perfectly good reason for that,” said Jay Omega. “Sometimes there’s an intermittent problem in the radio, something that goes away when the unit heats up, and those problems are very difficult to detect. If you put the radio in the refrigerator, the problem will usually become permanent, and then you can fix it.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Diefenbaker conceded.
“Yes, but he also has lemons in there that are old enough to vote.”
Jay Omega smiled. “I eat out a lot.”
Appin Dungannon, apparently deciding that the attention had strayed from him long enough, announced to the table in general: “I think the roots of human behavior lie in the distant past, not on some silly planet out in deep space. In the heroic sagas like Beowulf, Elric of Melnibone, and of course, Tratyn Runewind, there are metaphoric implications …”
And all the women are cheeseburgers, thought Marion, spearing a piece of asparagus with her fork.
Dungannon’s harangue continued for several more minutes, while everyone concentrated on cleaning their plates, occasionally nodding fervently to maintain the illusion of interest. Finally Dungannon wound down, noticing that his dinner was almost untouched. Taking a last swig of his vodka martini, he leered across the table at his fellow author. “Well, that’s enough about me!” He declared. “Now let’s talk about you. Which one of my books did you like best?”
The Scottish folksinger propped one buskined foot on the bed and studied his reflection in the mirror. His dark suede trousers and laced linen shirt made quite a swashbuckling costume, quite in keeping with his repertoire of traditional Celtic tunes. People were always asking him why he didn’t wear a kilt. “Because I’m not Harry Bloody Lauder!” was his invariable reply. Nobody seemed to realize that the whole kilt business was thought up in the early nineteenth century, and that it was the Englishmen who’d been given Scottish peerages who wore them. Perhaps he ought to say a word or two about it in his patter between songs.
He was scribbling a reminder on the song list taped to the guitar neck when he heard the tapping on the door. Donnie McRory glanced at his watch. An hour before show time. No reporters had asked for an interview. He hadn’t ordered room service. Having run out of guesses, he flung open the door.
“Not the bloody Martians again!”
A blue-shirted Trekkie with pointed ears stood clutching the hand of a behemoth in a white tulle gown. Both were smiling up at him with an anxious cheerfulness. About twenty-three, he decided. Too old to be parading around in dress-up.
“Ooh, I love your costume!” said the girl. “Who are you supposed to be? Tratyn Runewind?”
Donnie McRory’s jaw tightened. “I am not a part of your perishing convention! Now, was there something you wanted?”
They nodded solemnly. “It will take a little explaining,” said the boy. “May we come in?”
Donnie McRory waved them toward the bed. He didn’t suppose they had brought back his Yorkies. “Well?”
“We’re getting married this weekend.”
“Oh. That’s magic, innit? Well, all the best. Here’s luck, and all that. Decided which planet you’ll live on yet?”
The bride frowned. “We were hoping you’d do us a big favor. It’s very important to us.”
Donnie McRory smiled expectantly, but he was thinking: Does he need help to carry you over the threshold, dear? I should think six blokes ought to do it, same as pallbearers.
The smile froze into place as they described their Star Trek wedding, with Chekov for best man and the minister dressed as Captain Kirk. “And the one thing we need to make the wedding absolutely perfect is—”
“Beam me up, Scotty!” cried McRory, suddenly remembering. “It’s that phony Scot on the program you’re wanting me to impersonate, isn’t it? The one with the vaudeville Glasgow accent?”
“He’s from Aberdeen,” said the groom.
“Aberdeen Proving Ground, maybe. He’s not a Scot!” McRory insisted.
“Yes, sir, but you are, and it would be so wonderful if you would just come and be him for the ceremony. It’s a short little ceremony, really …” They looked up at him pleadingly, like demented puppies.
He scowled at them. “When is it?”
“Tomorrow night! You mean, you will?”
I’ll dine out on this one, thought Donnie McRory. But it did beat reading the stupid American magazines or watching the telly. Tonight’s concert was the usual one-nighter and he was booked into this bleeding hotel for the entire weekend. “I don’t have to do anything else, but just be there?” he asked menacingly.
“Well… do you play the bagpipes?”
“Do you own a kilt?”
The social hour preceding the costume contest seemed to Jay Omega to be a cross between a worship service and a Senate investigation. As a relatively small fish in the literary pond, he had ample opportunity to observe Appin Dungannon in intellectual combat.
Dungannon, his ego weatherproofed with vodka, held court in front of a table of Dungannon paraphernalia: hardbacks, paperbacks, Runewind posters, action figures, and game spinoffs. The transactions involving these items were managed by a clerk, whose existence was beneath Dungannon’s notice.
The encounters did not often go as Jay Omega had expected. As a new author, he had pictured public appearances in which faithful readers, their faces shining with admiration, would approach the author shyly and murmur what a wonderful book he’d written. The actual author/reader dialogues fell far short of his fantasies.
“You Dungannon?” asked a tall red-haired youth in armor.
“Correct,” said Appin Dungannon, without bothering to look up from his autographing.
“Well, I just finished your last book and I don’t think you ought to have killed Beithir in the last battle. I mean, sure, he threw the Sword of Ossian into Black Annis’ Well, but he did save Tratyn Runewind from the Gabriel Hounds, and—”
Appin Dungannon skewered the fan with an arctic stare. “What’s the matter with you, pinhead? Don’t you have a life? If you enjoy meddling, join the Peace Corps!”
Another fan turned up with a stack of Dungannon novels. “Would you sign all these, please? Just a signature is okay.”
“There are a few people behind you. Doesn’t it bother you to be so selfish?”
The fan shrugged. “Not particularly. I figure this is my big chance to get your autograph.”
“You have three copies of the same book in here.”
“Right. Someday you’ll be dead, and I’ll be rich.”
The crowd moved back a little in order to dodge flying hardbacks, but the outburst was not forthcoming. With a grim smile, Dungannon signed each book in the stack. When he had finished, the speculator snatched his copies and hurried away.
Two signatures later, just as a scrawny youth in G.I. camouflage was criticizing Dungannon’s last book, a howl went up from the other side of the lobby.
“YOU LITTLE CREEP!” roared the guy with the stack of books. “You ruined my books!”
Dungannon leered at him. “You said signature only!” He yelled back.
“Look at this!” wailed the fan, holding out a book for the bystanders to see. “He signed ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’ on every goddamned one of them!”
“Who’s next?” purred Dungannon.
No one wanted to discuss plot mechanics with Jay Omega. No one seemed to have heard of the book. Several fen ambled up to the table and examined the cover, which always made the author profoundly uneasy. “Er—it isn’t really like that,” he murmured to a young woman in a harem costume with a worried frown.
She tossed him a coy look. “Dirty old man!”
Even worse were the people who approved of the book, based only on its cover. One pizza-faced youth gazed longingly at the amazon in the cover art, and whispered hoarsely, “I think I’m going to like this one. Is it really raunchy?”
Marion snickered.
“No,” said Jay Omega earnestly. “It’s really very scientific.”
“No explicit sex?”
“Not even close,” Marion assured him. “Jay’s idea of a stag movie is Bambi.”
The young man wandered away, and several more fen, like browsing cattle, edged up to the book table.
“Do you make a lot of money writing paperbacks?” asked a Dorsai.
“No,” said Jay Omega. “Hour for hour, the Seven-Eleven pays better.”
“Do you have an agent?”
“Uh. Yeah.” Her husband was from the same hometown as his college roommate; but only Marion had been trusted with that secret of how he got his big break in publishing.
“And what’s your agent’s name and phone number?”
Jay Omega was still wondering how Appin Dungannon would have fielded this question when Marion leaned over and said, “Never ask an author that, unless you want to be taken for a complete jerk!”
“Well, I have this great manuscript…”
Marion turned to Jay Omega. “What’s your consulting fee in engineering?”
“For companies? Two hundred and fifty dollars a day, but—”
“Fine.” She smiled up at the would-be author. “He’ll read your stuff for two hundred and fifty dollars. In advance. Next!”
Joel Schumann, on a break from the computer displays, pulled out his wallet. “Is this your book, Dr. Omega! Hey, great! Would you autograph it for me? Boy, I can’t wait to tell the guys in lab that—”
“No! You can’t do that!” gasped Jay Omega. “Look, Joel, what if I give you a book, autographed and everything. Will you not tell anybody I wrote it?”
He blinked. “Well, sure, I guess, Dr. Mega. If that’s what you want.”
“It is, Joel. It really is. Here, take the book. Now, is that ‘Schumann’ with two ‘Ns’?”
“Yes. Say, Dr. Mega, are you coming back to the computer room?”
“Tomorrow for sure,” he promised, avoiding Marion’s disapproving glare.
“You’re hopeless,” sighed Marion, when Joel was gone. “All you want to do is play with your high-tech toys. You ought to hire someone to be Jay Omega for you.”
“Someone like that?” asked Jay Omega, nodding toward his fellow author.
Marion looked at Appin Dungannon, who was posing for a Polaroid photograph with two barbarian maidens in leather battle garb. “Forget I mentioned it, Jay.”
SIX
The Rubicon Costume Contest, held in the hotel ballroom, was the social event of the evening. Since no audience participation was required, except lust, which was optional, even sociopaths like Bonnenberger chose to attend. Wargamers, Dungeon Masters, NASA freaks, comic book junkies, and other assorted fen, costumed and otherwise, sprawled in metal folding chairs facing the stage and waited for the pageantry to begin.
As official judge of the competition, Appin Dungannon was given a seat of honor in full view of the stage, and a small table with refreshments and a yellow legal pad, on which he might make notes about the various contestants. At the moment, however, he seemed more interested in the lint on his cowboy hat than he was in the proceedings at hand.
Miles Perry, who was master of ceremonies, clutched his note cards in a sweaty fist, and glanced toward the wings. “Are they ready yet?” he mouthed at Diefenbaker.
Dief shook his head vigorously, and made a little sign that meant “Stall them.”
Miles tapped the microphone. “Ah … hum. Can you hear me out there?” An electronic shriek accompanied his voice, sending two technicians scurrying for the sound system. “First of all, I’d like to thank … I’D LIKE TO THANK … Testing.”
“The costumes are really works of art,” whispered Marion to Jay Omega. “It’s rather sad, really.”
“Why? I think it would be nice to have such … talent,” he said almost enviously.
“I was thinking of how they use it, Jay. Imagine working for six months on a costume that you’ll only get to wear once or twice a year, instead of going into dress designing or some other profession related to that skill, where you could actually accomplish something.”
Jay Omega smiled. “Not everyone has a tenure-track mind, Marion.”
“I still think it’s a waste.” She looked up at the stage where the first contestant had made her entrance. “And that is particularly a waste.”
The costume was impressive: yards and yards of green velvet, carefully embroidered with gold thread and artificial pearls. A leather cummerbund with criss-crossed laces cinched the waist, and the white satin bodice stopped quite abruptly to expose two aggressively prominent breasts. The effect of this medieval artistry would have been pure enchantment, had the ensemble been ten sizes smaller, and had it not been battened on to a fierce-looking redhead who might have outweighed the average calf.
“This … ah … this is Brenda Lindenfeld of Annandale, portraying the Welsh goddess Arianrhod.” Miles Perry’s voice made little puffing sounds in the microphone as he leaned over his note cards.
The audience waited in polite silence—or perhaps weary indifference. No catcalls rang out from the darkness, and even Appin Dungannon remained solemnly bent over his legal pad, although the time he had spent evaluating the costume could be measured in milliseconds.
“I’m glad nobody laughed,” murmured Jay Omega.
“Oh, no, they wouldn’t,” Marion assured him. “These guys know what it’s like to be outcasts; they are very tolerant indeed. Except intellectually. Besides, look around you.”
Jay Omega glanced toward the rows behind them, wondering what he was supposed to notice.
“Yes? Looks like one of my engineering classes to me.”
“It would,” grinned Marion. “Mostly males. Women are at a premium in this hobby, and therefore even the plain ones are prized. That poor creature up there could pick up six guys by Sunday if she chose. I expect she’ll settle for one.”
Jay Omega peered at Brenda Lindenfeld, who was rotating slowly to show off her hooded cloak. “Any six guys?”
“No, silly. Any six losers. You know, the terminally shy guys who have no idea how to talk to a woman; the runty little
nerds that no one else wants; and the fat intellectuals who want to be loved for their minds. She can take her pick of those.”
“That’s nice. I guess.”
Marion shook her head. “I find it very frustrating. It seems to me that they all cluster together like sheep with their backs to the wind, when they would be a good deal better off coming to terms with the world.”
“They seem happy enough,” said Jay Omega, wishing somebody would laugh or applaud to prove his point.
“Sure, they’ve moved their egos into fictional bodies on the paperback rack so that they can ignore the rejection in real life. I teach science fiction, Jay! I know these people.”
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