Fear and Trembling

by Robert Bloch

  “Perfectly,” said Rick. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep your secret. But are you sure you know how to behave like a real fan?”

  “Of course I do,” I told him. “Give me a beer.”

  “He’s a fan, all right,” Steve said.

  If there were any further doubts on the matter, I dispelled them completely as we drove through the night to Connecticut. During our trip I drank a whole can of beer and threw up three times.

  On Friday afternoon we arrived at the Convention hotel. Rick called it the Stradivarius, because it was a vile inn.

  The lobby was a madhouse, filled with long-haired young women and even longer-haired young men, plus an assortment of older men with beards. A number of children, unable to grow long enough hair or long enough beards, were carrying around hairy objects called Tribbles. The place looked like a barber’s nightmare.

  “Is it always like this in a hotel?” I whispered.

  “Only during a convention,” Steve said. “Hair today, gone tomorrow.”

  We approached the registration desk and Rick asked the elderly clerk if his room was ready. There was a constant ringing of telephones and Rick had to shout his question above the din.

  “Do you have a reservation?” the clerk said.

  “Plenty of them, after seeing what’s going on here,” Rick told him. “Don’t those phones drive you crazy?”

  The clerk shook his head. “Luckily, I’m almost stone-deaf.”

  “Some hotel,” Sherry sniffed. “I suppose the house detective is blind.”

  “Not until around three o’clock,” said the clerk. “The bar doesn’t open before noon.” He scrabbled through a sheaf of papers on the desk. “Ah, here you are. Rick Sneary, right?”

  “Wrong. I know how to spell. The name is O’Shea. Rick O’Shea.”

  “That’s the trajectory of a bullet bouncing off of something,” the clerk said. “Why’d your mother pick that name for you?”

  “Well, it was a shotgun wedding. But the justice of the peace was cross-eyed and he married her to the wrong man.” Rick frowned. “Never mind my personal history—what about our room?”

  The clerk nodded. “Maybe I’d better explain the layout of the hotel first. It’s divided into two wings. All of the even-numbered rooms are in the west wing, and all of the odd-numbered rooms are in the right wing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Simple. Let’s say you’re in Room 2953, and your best friend is in Room 2954. If you want to visit him, all you have to do is take the elevator down to the first floor of the right wing and walk through the lobby to the elevator on the left wing.”

  “And that will take me up to 2954?”

  “Not exactly,” said the clerk. “You see, this hotel only has twenty-eight floors.”

  “Typical convention hotel,” Steve muttered. “They always come up with a place laid out like this.” He turned to the clerk. “But it does have elevators.”

  “Of course,” sniffed the clerk. “Six cars for each wing. Just remember, though—those on the left only run up and those on the right only run down. But on both sides just one elevator is presently in operation, and even the one that runs up is pretty run-down. Of course, you can always use the escalators, but I suggest the stairs.”

  “Why?”

  “The escalators aren’t running.”

  Rick shrugged. “Never mind that—just give me our room-number.”

  “Certainly, sir. It’s 1623½.”

  “1623½? In which wing is that?”

  “Neither.”

  “Neither?”

  The clerk looked embarrassed. “I forgot to mention, the rooms ending in ½ are on the floors of the old annex, in the building around the corner.”

  “How can there be such a thing as an old annex?” Rick said.

  “Well, you see the management was smart. They anticipated there’d be overcrowding in years to come, so they put up the annex before they built the hotel. Actually, it was there all the time; used to be the county jail, but it was condemned.”

  “What about the inmates?”

  “They were condemned, too.”

  “Oh, super!” Sherry tossed her blond curls. “Never mind all that—we won’t be staying in our room anyway. Just tell us where the convention is being held.”

  “Let me see, now.” The clerk glanced at a list before him. “The International Hog-Calling Association is on the fourth floor—lots of open windows up there, and they like to practise. The Chicken-Plucker’s Union is on three, and the chickens are on the mezzanine—by the way, the mezzanine is downstairs in this hotel, because somebody mixed up the blue-prints—”

  “We want the World Science Fiction Convention,” Rick said.

  The clerk looked at his list again and frowned. “It’s not listed. You’ll just have to look around.”

  “Look around?” Steve shook his head. “This isn’t a hotel—it’s a twenty-eight-storey jigsaw puzzle! Don’t you have a map or something?”

  “Of course we have a map,” said the clerk.

  “Can we have one?”

  “I don’t keep maps at the desk,” the clerk told him. “They’re in the storage room.”

  “And where is that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ve never been able to find it.”

  “Knock it off,” Sherry murmured. “We’ll locate the Convention ourselves. Just wander around until we run into it.”

  And we did, though it wasn’t easy. Somewhere we found a stairway leading up to a second level.

  “Try this floor,” Sherry said. “We’ll just ask the first fan we meet.”

  Unfortunately, the corridors seemed deserted. We wandered through a labyrinth of halls without finding another soul. Finally I spotted a room with a sign on the door.

  “Hey, look!” I said. “See what it says? Where No Man Has Gone Before. That must be the Star Trek Suite!”

  “Let me find out,” Steve muttered.

  He went inside fast, and came out faster.

  “What’s the matter?” Rick asked.

  “That wasn’t the Star Trek Suite—it was the women’s washroom!”

  “You can’t win ’em all,” Sherry sighed. “But come on. Keep your ears open for the sounds of fannish voices.”

  As we rounded a corridor we heard a dreadful shriek.

  “What did I tell you?” Sherry said. “Somebody’s singing filk-songs! Hey, I wonder if Marion Zimmer Bradley knows about this?”

  But the noise was not produced by filk-songs, nor was Ms. Bradley in evidence. At the end of the hall was a large open area filled with figures milling before a series of long tables. Behind the tables were seated a group of the most miserable-looking people I’ve ever encountered—weary, haggard, harried and harassed, with red-rimmed eyes and trembling hands.

  “See, what did I tell you?” Sherry exulted. “It’s the Convention Committee!”

  “And the screaming—?”

  “Fans, waiting to be registered. There’s always some kind of hassle, you know. Fandom is a way of strife. Now just get in line and we’ll get our badges.”

  Which we did, in less than two hours. My badge read Pete Degler—Steve registered for me, and invented the last name on the spot. “Makes you sound like a Big Name Fan,” he said. “They’ll think you’re Claude Degler’s brother.”

  They led me toward the stairway at one side. “Up we go, now,” Rick said. “Committee tells me everything’s on the third floor. Just think—in a moment you’ll see your first real Worldcon.” He frowned. “What’s the matter?”

  “I am thinking,” I murmured. “Do you realize what this moment means to me? Ever since I discovered science fiction, I’ve dreamed of the time when I’d actually come to a convention. And now, all at once, I’m frightened. They say there are thousands of attendees up there—fans, authors, artists, editors, publishers—”

  “Nothing to be scared about,” Rick said. “Fans are just a bunch of hairy people like the ones you s
aw in the lobby. The authors are just the same, only hairier. You won’t see any artists—they’re all in the Art Show, sneaking around and drawing mustaches on each other’s paintings. As for the editors, they’re just here to be chewed-out on the panel sessions.”

  “But where are all the publishers?”

  “Oh, they don’t dare to come to these affairs. If they did, they’d be lynched.”

  Sherry took my arm. “Come along, now, and don’t be frightened. You’re going to have a ball.”

  And that’s exactly what I did, all the rest of the day. Sherry and Rick and Steve took me around and showed me everything.

  How can I possibly describe the thrill of attending one’s first convention? Just imagine the excitement of seeing thousands and thousands of real live science fiction fans gathered together in one place, all of them giving each other their autographs!

  And the pros gave autographs, too. Out in the hall stood Isaac Asimov, big as life, signing copies of the Bible.

  “He just arrived by car a few minutes ago,” Steve said.

  “You mean he drove here?”

  “Asimov never takes a plane,” Rick told me. “He believes that if God meant for people to fly, He’d have given them plane-tickets.”

  Going into the meeting-hall, we passed Lester del Rey, Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson and Bob Silverberg. And there was Philip Jose Farmer, surrounded by a circle of fans who were asking him about his latest work. “I’m doing a sequel to my Riverworld series,” he said. “It’s called Up the Creek.”

  Inside the meeting-hall, more thrills awaited me. Ray Bradbury was up on the platform, reading a long poem about a whale. When he finished, Robert Bloch followed him and read a two-line verse about a sardine.

  At dinner, in the coffee-shop, Sherry pointed out other notables. “See that group over there?” she murmured. “That’s Roy Lavender, Ted White, Fuzzy Pink Niven and Charlie Brown.”

  “What a color-combination!” I said. My eyes were even more dazzled when they were joined by Redd Boggs.

  Back in the hall for the evening program, I heard Harlan Ellison reading a short story to the crowd. It was greeted with wild applause, so for an encore, Harlan read one of his novels.

  Later in the evening we just wandered around looking at celebrities. I saw David Gerrold selling Tribbles, Ben Bova and Fred Pohl selling each other stories. There was Ms. Andre Norton and Ursula K. LeGuin and a woman named Parenthesis who, they told me, writes under the name of Leigh Brackett. And in one of the corridors a group of fans listened to an argument about the proper length of a story, carried on by Frank Belknap Long and Elliot Shorter.

  I must say my newfound friends were good to me. Any request I made was carried out immediately; whatever I asked for, I got.

  Sometimes, of course, it didn’t work out. Just before they decided to turn in for the night, Sherry came up to me with two people—a petite redhead and a blond, balding man.

  “Here they are,” she said, proudly. “Bjo and John.”

  I acknowledged the introductions, then stared at them, baffled. “Where are my Tribbles?” I whispered.

  “Sorry,” Sherry said. “I thought you asked for Trimbles.”

  But I forgave her. It had been a long day, and we were all tired. “We’d better get some rest,” I said.

  As we made our way up to our room, famous figures danced around me in a daze. There was William Rotsler telling Frank Kelly Freas how to draw, a group of fans explaining to Marty Greenberg how to edit an anthology, and a Ted Sturgeon fan holding forth on the most famous Sturgeon’s Law—“Ninety percent of everything is crud.”

  “Only ninety percent?” I murmured drowsily, as my friends made up a bed for me on the sofa.

  Usually I can fall asleep immediately, but tonight was different. Maybe it was the strain of activating a human body—I wasn’t accustomed to the limitations of just two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears and a single itty-bitty little mouth. Or perhaps it was just the excitement.

  But as I reflected on the matter, I realized there was more to it than that. I was beginning to feel just a wee bit neglected. Here were all these fans, kissing Silverberg’s hand, asking Larry Niven for a lock of his beard, listening in awe as Roger Zelazny spelled his last name for them. And none of them paid the slightest attention to me. Me, the only genuine extra-terrestrial in the world!

  It was my own fault, of course—I was the one who’d insisted that my identity couldn’t be revealed. I hadn’t reckoned with one mind-boggling fact: fandom is the carrier of a contagious disease. And I had been exposed to it here, all day.

  I was suffering from the most dangerous of all human desires—the craving for egoboo.

  What to do? As I’d told Sherry and Rick and Steve, I couldn’t reveal my true name or place of origin—I’d made a solemn promise to my sponsors as a delegate of the Extra-Terrestrial Fan Fund. No matter what happened, under no circumstances could I speak for myself.

  But the thought of spending two more days here, surrounded by flattery, adulation and George Clayton Johnson, was too much to bear. There had to be some way of attaining recognition without violating my promise.

  Then it came to me.

  Actions speak louder than words.

  Tomorrow, even though I couldn’t tell them who I was, I’d show what I could do. And by the time this Worldcon was over, I’d be a Big Name Fan, right up there with Chuck Crayne, Bruce Pelz and Mike Glicksohn.

  I drowsed off to sleep with a happy smile on my face, lulled by the sound of screams from the corridor outside.

  This time they were singing filk-songs . . .

  Saturday morning I was up bright and early. My companions were still sleeping—Rick and Steve in bed, and Sherry slumbering in the place they’d so gallantly provided for her in the bathtub.

  I tiptoed into the corridor without disturbing them and made my way downstairs. Strangely enough, the third floor was almost entirely deserted. The Art Show hadn’t opened yet, the main meeting area was empty, and the only signs of life came from a smaller suite at the far end of the hall. As I stood near the doorway, listening to the feeble murmur of groaning voices, a tall man with a short mustache approached me.

  “What’s going on in there?” I asked.

  “Sefwa meeting,” he said.

  “Sef-who?”

  “No—Sefwa. Science Fiction Writers of America. That’s the group the professionals belong to.”

  I peered through the doorway at the small group huddled before a table which was set up at the end of the room. I recognized a few of the pale, drawn faces—Jerry Pournelle, David Brin, James Gunn, Harry Harrison—as they mumbled to one another in hoarse whispers.

  “What are they discussing?” I murmured.

  “What do you suppose a science fiction writer would be discussing at this hour of the morning? Hangover remedies, of course.”

  I stared at my informant, and for the first time noticed the sheaf of magazines he clutched to his bosom, each bearing the gaudily-colored cover-painting of a horror-film star.

  “Why, you must be Forry Ackerman!” I said.

  He nodded, smiling.

  I could only respond to the conditioned reflexes of my body. Beer had made me throw up; now, in the presence of this living legend, I had to gulp. Forrest J (no period) Ackerman is, of course, the best-known name in all the universe. From Aldebaran to Zoophilia his fame has spread; every sentient entity in the cosmos is aware of his fabulous fannish presence. And here I was, face to face with Mr. Science Fiction himself!

  Suddenly all my resolutions vanished. Gone was my resolve to keep my real identity a secret, gone was the determination to maintain a false façade. If there was one person who deserved to know the truth, one person who was equipped to fully appreciate an actual confrontation with an extra-terrestrial, one person who would be thrilled beyond measure by such a meeting—Forry Ackerman was that man. He alone would appreciate the historic significance of this meeting, and he deserved to know. I must
tell him, now.

  “Mr. Ackerman,” I said. “Your interest in famous monsters is a matter of record. But have you ever met one in the flesh?”

  “Certainly.” Ackerman smiled. “Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Donald A. Wollheim—”

  “I mean a real monster.” I gulped again. “What would you say if you had an opportunity to meet a genuine creature from another world?”

  Forry’s eyes danced a frug of anticipation. “You aren’t putting me on?” he said.

  “Suppose I could arrange it?” I asked. “What would you do?”

  “I’d interview him for my magazine, for one thing,” Forry said. “And get his autograph, and take him to see my collection, and—”

  His mounting excitement was interrupted by the voice of a small fan who rushed up to us, panting and breathless. “Oh, Mr. Ackerman,” he gasped. “I’ve been looking for you! I’ve just come from the Film Room, and—”

  He stood on tiptoe, whispering something in Forry’s ear. Ackerman smiled, nodded, and started to turn away.

  “Where are you going?” I murmured.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, I’m afraid,” said Forry. “This young man informs me that they’re starting to screen a movie, and I can’t miss it.”

  “But what about meeting the monster—the interview—?”

  “Sorry.” Forry shook his head. “That will have to wait. They’re showing Metropolis. I’ve only seen it four hundred and eighty-seven times, and I’ve got to catch it again.”

  “Please, Mr. Ackerman!” I tugged at his arm. “Stop and think! I’m not kidding you—a real live monster—”

  Gently, Forry disengaged himself. “You just don’t seem to understand us movie fans,” he said.

  I watched him, open-mouthed, as he moved off. My hopes vanished with him. Now I’d never see his expression as I told him the truth about myself. There’d be no write-up in his magazine, and no egoboo for me.

  Egoboo.

  The word still burned in my brain. There had to be some other way of attaining recognition. Surely, in a science fiction convention of this size there were all sorts of chances to establish my importance.

  I started off down the hall. It was almost noon now and the corridor was gradually filled with fannish figures. From various side-rooms came the sound of voices. Meetings were in progress.