“We’re going to die,” she said, her voice oddly inflectionless, reminding him of the way the lower androids spoke – just the words, no underlying feeling or emotion or the kind of irrational complexity that drove a flesh–and–blood human being. Just a mindless conviction. She was a zombie, emotionally flatlined, and Xander’s fingers trembled where they rested on her arm.
“No,” he said, keeping his voice soft and calm and reassuring. “No, we’re not. It’s all going to be fine.”
“We’re going to die,” she repeated. That seemed to be all she had – everything else had been scoured away, by the Moon’s relentless closeness, its overwhelming physical presence, the sheer
weight
of the flat white light spilling into the hallway all around her.
Xander lifted her to her feet, as gently as he could, putting both hands on her shoulders and hauling her upright – and she responded bonelessly, obediently, flopping like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“I’d better take you to the doc,” Xander muttered. “Maybe he has a spare happy pill… come on, then. This way.”
She walked, kind of, where he led – but only because he had his arm around her waist and was literally supporting her in the upright position – if he had removed the supporting arm she would have just collapsed on the floor where he dropped her, staring into nothing, repeating her conviction of everyone’s collective and presumably imminent demise.
Halfway to the elevators, he came on his second wake–up call – another con–goer, also very calm, who seemed to be wandering down the corridor and stopping anyone wearing any shade of red, poking them in the chest with his forefinger.
“Red shirt,” he would say. “Red shirt. Red shirt. Red shirt. You’re disposable. You’re dead. You won’t make it home from this mission. Shoot to kill. Red shirt. Red shirt. Red shirt.”
He turned to look at Xander and the girl whom he was practically carrying, and focused on the top she was wearing… which happened to be a dusty pink shade, not exactly red, but it seemed to be close enough for the doomsayer. He poked at the girl’s shoulder.
“Red shirt,” he said. “You’re going to…”
“Okay, now,” Xander interrupted sharply. The last thing his zombie–girl needed right now was for someone to actually confirm that she was going to die. “I think you’d better come along, too.”
“Red shirts. Someone’s got to tell them,” the guy said earnestly.
“These people already know. Come with me, I know a whole entire floor that you need to go and warn about this.”
“Okay,” said the doomsayer equably, and fell into step beside Xander, still tossing the occasional “Red shirt!” at any convenient reveler who happened to be passing by but seemingly quite happy to expand his hunting grounds.
Xander piled both of his charges into the nearest elevator and pushed the button for Dr. Cohen’s isolation wing floor, gratefully watching the doors close on the party in the corridor beyond. When they opened again, at the doctor’s floor, Xander looked up at the looming figure of a security guard – not one of the con’s own, a hotel employee – who barred his way with a barked, “Sorry, this floor is out of bounds.”
“It’s okay,” Xander said. “I’m Xander Washington, ConCom. You can check my badge and you can double check with Simon of con security if you need to. I have clearance to be here. And these two… need the doc. Who also knows me.”
The guard peered into the elevator car, but it didn’t appear to be holding any lurking revelers who might have wanted to move the party upstairs, and the girl on Xander’s rapidly tiring arm did look wilted enough to possibly need medical attention. He cleared his throat and stepped away.
“Okay, then.”
“Good work,” Xander said to the guard as he shepherded the red–shirt doomsayer in front of him while maneuvering the girl off the elevator. “Don’t let anyone else come crawling up here.”
The corridor was blessedly quiet, after the roar downstairs, and empty. Just as he realized somewhat helplessly that he had no idea where precisely to look for the doctor, the very person he needed emerged from one of the rooms, closing the door quietly behind him.
He looked up, saw Xander, and paused. “What brings you up here?”
“Well, right now, these two,” Xander said. “I wanted to check in with you anyway, but then I found two people who might benefit from a time–out.”
“We’re all going to die,” the girl said, looking up briefly to meet the doctor’s eyes, and then allowing her head to droop down until her lanky hair hid her face. Her weight was suddenly almost too much for Xander to support, and he actually staggered for a moment, but it was enough for the doctor to step up on her other side and take up the slack.
“Bring them through,” he said. “Come with me.”
They walked a little way down the corridor to where one of the rooms had its door propped open. Inside, Xander glimpsed the looming shape of a replicator against one wall. One of the two queen beds in the room was hastily pulled together into a semblance of order – obviously the doctor’s own bed – and the other was messily strewn with vaguely medical paraphernalia. The doctor cleared a space on the edge of the bed by sweeping everything further up against the pillows and helped Xander sit the girl down in the vacated spot; Xander turned and pivoted the other patient until he could push him down into the chair that was pulled away from the desk on which an open laptop rested.
“Give me a moment,” the doctor murmured, turning to grab a small flashlight and briefly shine it into the girl’s eye. “Well, she’s not catatonic,” he said.
“She just seems… a little brainwashed,” Xander said lamely.
“Surprising there aren’t more,” Dr. Cohen said. “I’ve got a mild sedative I can give her, and there’s a bed for her. She’ll be fine. I’ve an assistant – a nurse who was on her way to a conference somewhere south of here, I ran into her and coopted her – she’s with another patient at the moment, she’ll be here presently, and she’ll take care of this poor girl. What’s wrong with him?”
“Hard to say,” Xander murmured. “Just seemed a little… too focused… on stuff. And he had potential to start a riot down there.”
“Maybe he’ll benefit from a nap too,” the doctor said, “and when they both wake up again I can make a better assessment as to whether they can be released back into the general population. I gather from the name tags that these are both from your group, from the con, and not strays from the, uh, real world? Ah, there you are, Janine. Would you take over with the girl, please? She can share with Alison Janowicz for the moment, there’s a spare bed in that room. Just give her something to help her sleep, for now.”
“Come on, love, let’s go.” Janine, a short, stocky middle–aged woman with her hair pulled back into a severe graying bun, slipped an arm around the shoulders of the unresponsive girl who followed where she was guided and led, meekly, without an ounce of willpower or agency of her own.
“Let’s see about you,” the doctor said, turning to the other new patient.
“You aren’t wearing a red shirt. You’ll be fine,” the guy said helpfully.
“Thanks. Good to know. Wait here, please.” He walked over to the replicator, and requested an injectable sedative, barking out form and dosage in a manner that made Xander suddenly want to laugh out loud. He had a feeling the doctor himself would be starting to feel withdrawal symptoms if he were suddenly parted from this machine that gave him everything he wanted at the moment he needed it – no arguments, no questions, and no paperwork. The replicator delivered the required medication, and the doctor returned with the syringe in his right hand. “This won’t hurt,” he said soothingly to the patient. “Well, it might, a little. But it’ll help. There. We’ll see if you can’t just sleep it off, for now.”
“How’s the rest of them doing?” Xander asked.
“Mostly doing okay,” the doctor said, helping his sedated patient to his feet and supporting him as he staggered toward the door. “Let me settle this one down and I’ll be back. Just wait here, if you would.”
He headed down the empty corridor and Xander, who had followed him to the door and peered after him, saw him push open the door to another room about ten or so rooms away and edge his patient inside. It took him a solid five or so minutes before he re–emerged. Xander stepped out of the doctor’s own room and met him in the corridor.
“How many you got now?” Xander asked.
“Twenty five, thirty, something like that,” Dr. Cohen said. “They’re mostly sleeping right now. I’m keeping it that way, until we’re past the danger of them waking up and flinging their curtains open and finding themselves face to face with that thing that’s hanging out there.”
“Any problems?”
“I think I have a ghost hotel maid up here,” the doctor said, with a weary smile.
“Seriously?”
“Well, she is a corporeal enough ghost. There’s a cleaning cart that kind of hovers in the corridors, and it is occasionally accompanied by a dumpy little woman – she looks Mayan, if anything – who looks like she’s been crying but who tiptoes behind the cart when she thinks nobody is looking and knocks on any door without a Do Not Disturb sign on it with a hopeful little chirp of ‘Housekeeping?’ I once got close enough to see that she was wearing a name badge but all I could see was that her first name is Maria – and every time someone tries to approach her she runs off and disappears. I haven’t been able to nail her down, but I know she’s up here somewhere – and I’m kind of getting a little worried as to what she’s eaten or how much she’s had to drink in the past twenty four hours. But she’s like a cross between the Flying Dutchman and La Llorona…”
“I’ll tell security to grab her if they see her,” Xander said. “Anything else?”
“I have a woman two doors down who won’t get off her knees – she’s wearing out her rosary, and has told me four times that she is going to go straight to a convent and become a good nun as soon as she can get to such a place. I don’t know if this sudden vocation is just a psychological aberration or not but God knows I can’t deal with any such thing in depth here, with what I’ve got. I’m just holding everything down as best I can. If and when we all turn up back where we came from I suspect that there might be enough material here for an entire symposium.”
“You’ll let me know if you need anything?” Xander said lamely, after a pause, aware that it was beyond his power to offer any real assistance.
“Sure,” the doctor said. And then added, himself very aware of the situation and its problems, “Except, what can you do, but wait, just like the rest of us?”
“If I can help, I will,” Xander said. “I do kind of… feel responsible for them all.”
“Wrong place, wrong time,” Dr. Cohen said in a resigned tone. “Not much you can do about that at all except wait it out. But I’ll keep you guys posted.”
“Thanks, Doc. For all that you’re doing.”
“My job,” the doctor said, shrugging. “Someone’s got to do step up. Happened to be me.”
Ξ
Having accomplished what he could, Xander took the elevator back down and threaded his way through the increasingly raucous revelers on the bottom floor of the party wing. He was starting to itch for his own view of the Moon… and there was another party already in full swing to which he had, after all, been invited, and which was now calling his name. He rode the elevator down to the ground floor and began to cross the lobby towards Tower 2 and its penthouse bar with the lunar perspectives he craved.
Halfway there, he glimpsed Sam Dutton and his young protégé, Marius, heading in the same direction.
“Hey, guys,” he said, catching up and tapping Sam on the shoulder. “Going up to the party?”
“The Callahan’s shindig? Heard about it. I think Andie Mae forgot to send my invitation, though.”
“Aw, come on. Tonight’s special. You can pick up the feud tomorrow. Come on, you don’t need an invitation. You’re with me.
I
am inviting you.”
Sam indicated Marius with a toss of his head. “He’s, um, not legal,” he said. “But…”
Xander tapped his nose with one finger, squinting at them. “In space,” he intoned, “no–one can see you drink… So long as you stick to club soda or virgin Shirley Temples, or even just promise me that you will, I won’t say anything if you don’t and I think all normal rules are suspended tonight anyway. What do you say, kid? Fantastic views, up there!”
“Well,
I
won’t tell your mom if you don’t,” murmured Sam. “Up to you, Marius.”
Marius didn’t hesitate. “Sure.”
“It’ll be fine,” Xander said. “They’ve probably got rules against serving
their kind
up there, too, but I’m pretty certain we’ll see at least Boss in Callahan’s before the night is over. So, like I said. Tonight, we make our own rules. C’mon.”
One of Simon’s guys was hovering in the penthouse elevator lobby as the doors opened and Xander and his companions stepped out of the elevator. Many of them had worked security for years, and they knew very well who Sam Dutton was. The duty guard flexed his hand in a gesture that spoke eloquently of his ambivalence.
“Er, Mr. Dutton… Sam…”
“They’re with me, Elliot,” Xander said. “It’s fine.”
“Er, Andie Mae is…”
“We’ll sort that out,” Xander said, with considerably more confidence than he actually felt. But he seemed to be committed to doing dangerous things tonight, and this was just one more – and so he soldiered on. “Don’t worry. Look, you
want
to call Simon…?”
“I guess not,” Elliot said, still looking uneasy. “Um, if you need anything…”
“I won’t start a brawl, Elliot,” Sam said, sounding amused. “At least not unless she hits me first. But I think we can probably all be civil for a couple of hours.”
Callahan’s was full but not crowded as they walked into the bar. The lights had been dimmed, but the place was awash with the light from a Moon so close and so huge in the sky beyond the wall of Callahan’s picture windows.
“It’s a cash bar tonight,” Xander said, so irrationally moved by that sight that he felt inexplicably generous towards all the world, “but the first round’s on me. What’ll you guys have?”
“Aren’t you supposed to have free booze?” Sam said, carefully avoiding a direct reference to the replicators which the androids had provided. “You know, courtesy of our… hosts?”