“A little like replicators,” Xander said faintly. “Just pony up what’s needed…”
Andie Mae appeared to have been taking large gulps from her bizarre drink without anyone noticing, because her glass was suddenly half empty and she was thoughtfully twirling the cocktail umbrella between thumb and forefinger of her left hand. If a living human male had been the subject of the speculative, heavy–lidded, smoky gaze she now bent on Boss, that male would probably have frozen on the spot like a rabbit who dared to lock eyes with a hawk. But Boss returned the gaze without flinching.
“So what you’re saying is, you’re fully functional…?”
“Indeed,” Boss agreed. “In every necessary way.”
“Okay, then. Why not find out? Moonlight becomes you, it turns out…” Andie Mae glanced around, and held out her half–finished drink to Sam, who took it reflexively. “Tower 1, Room 701,” Andie Mae said to Boss. “Be there in five minutes. We can… discuss matters further.” She glanced around at the riveted group who was watching proceedings with close attention, and actually winked at Xander as she turned to leave. “Oh, and I aim to misbehave….”
And then she was gone.
“Excuse me,” Boss said politely, after a moment, and turned to follow.
Sam glared at the drink he held in his hand, and put it down on an occasional table as though it had bitten him.
“What
was
in that?” he said. “Is she
serious
? Did someone put something in that drink?”
“It’s tonight,” said, of all people, Marius, and it was so unexpected coming from him that Sam actually turned to stare. “I mean, tonight… is a once in a lifetime…. I’m not saying I would… I’m just saying… it’s tonight. They could have served nothing but water at that bar and everyone would still be tipsy with tonight.”
“We’ll make a writer of the boy yet,” Sam muttered. “Xander – seriously, though – is there something…?”
But Xander had a strange small half smile on his face. “It’s partly tonight. It’s partly the whole thing. It’s the weight of it, the expectations – and all the things she herself arranged that never happened and then this all happened instead – and Al never did turn up – ”
“But should we have…” Liam began.
Xander shook his head. “She’s a big girl,” he said. “Somehow it only seems fitting, in the end, that the Steel Magnolia goes off into the moonlight with a Silver Metal Lover. But I still feel… as though I should follow and find out… if everything…excuse me. I’ll find Simon and have a chat.”
He parked his weird cocktail beside Andie Mae’s on the table and then he too was gone.
“Well,” Sam said, draining the rest of his Scotch, “who else wants an Irish coffee? I’m told this place keeps a special Bushmills bottle in the back, and I think tonight is the night to crack that open. Call it an Earthrise Good Morning Wake Up Call Coffee. If we’re to believe the management, we’re soon going to be homeward bound. And I’ve never felt more eager to raise a glass of something to good old Earth.”
SUNDAY
Sunday morning came down on everyone like a steel door slamming.
The euphoria of visiting the Moon, the endorphins stirred into life by being one of the chosen few humans to receive the sudden and inexplicable gift of looking upon the far side of the Earth’s faithful satellite, had all subsided; the parties had gamely gone on all night, but even the most gung–ho of the party goers wilted in the face of the fact that it was now over, over and done with, and the Moon was inexorably behind them and shrinking every moment. The sight of the approaching blue globe of the mother planet had served as a galvanizer for a little while, when it was first sighted in the blackness of space, glowing and solitary in the night – but it was still far away, too far away to anticipate arrival, and besides nobody really wanted to think about the logistics of that arrival too closely.
Or perhaps at all. There were simply too many unknowns. All the questions thathad been deferred while they basked in the reflected glory of the Moon’s white light had not gone away, they had just donned a mask of gaiety and partied with the rest of them during the night, but now, as those who had finally fallen into exhausted slumber were starting to wake and wonder, the masks were off and the questions stood stark… and just as unanswerable.
Liam, Andie Mae’s erstwhile right–hand man, made his way down to the Con Ops Room just after 9:30 AM, The few worker bees who were present, looking wan and spent, barely managed more than a nod of acknowledgment.
Simon, the con security chief, had looked up at Liam’s entrance, but did not get up from his chair in front of a monitor showing some of the hallways covered by the con’s strategically deployed cameras.
“You look like hell,” Liam said by way of greeting, taking in the huge dark rings under Simon’s eyes. “Did you go on a bender?”
“Thanks,” Simon said dryly. “No party for the wicked, alas. I was here most of the night, or doing duty in the hospital wing up in Tower 3, or prowling the halls in search of potential problems. I had a few hours’ catnap on Friday night but I haven’t slept since then. I’d like to see
you
look any better under the circumstances.”
“Did you get to see it? Any of it?”
Simon’s face broke into a tired grin. “Oh, hell, yeah. Made sure of that. You?”
“Libby took me up to the party at Callahan’s,” Liam said. “I had the best seat in the house.”
“
Libby
asked
you
…?” Simon began, belatedly putting Liam back into the world order and remembering that he wasn’t a part of the inner circle any longer. “And Andie Mae didn’t…? And where
is
Libby this morning, anyway? Haven’t seen her… For that matter, where is anybody…?”
“Libby’s still asleep,” Liam said. “She was a little too out of it last night to actually remember what her room number was, so I took her back to mine.” He caught Simon’s look and glared at him. “Nothing
happened
. The woman was in her cups and there are rules about that. She got the bed, I made do with the armchair, which was very uncomfortable, and then the floor for a little while. She was still sleeping when I left. I figured I might concoct a hangover cure because she’s sure as hell going to need one when she finally comes back to the world of the living…”
Simon gestured towards the replicator monolith in the corner of the room. “Ask that thing. So far it’s provided strong black coffee of a considerably better vintage than the hotel offerings. That might do, for starters.”
Liam eyed the machine curiously. “The Star Trek McGuffin, is it? Interesting… But hey, speaking of Andie Mae… did Xander find you last night?”
Simon hesitated. “He, uh, yeah,” he muttered. “He told me… uh… Apparently she hit it off with the android–in–chief…”
“What did you do?”
“Me? Nothing – what was I supposed to do? I prowled around in the corridor outside her room for a bit – but I couldn’t exactly bust down the door and demand that she be unhanded… or whatever was going on in there… I couldn’t exactly hear – ”
“You were
eavesdropping
in the
corridor
?” Liam demanded incredulously.
“At the door, actually,” Simon confessed, looking vaguely ashamed of himself. “Look, I just wanted to make sure that she was okay…”
“And you did that how? By eavesdropping?”
“All I heard,” Simon said defensively, “was the Rebel Yell.”
“The what, now?”
“
YEE–HAW
!” Simon said, demonstrating, and Liam jumped, almost knocking over a teetering pile of paper on a nearby table.
“Ow,” said Xander, who had just walked in, wincing and putting his hands up over his ears. “Please don’t. I’m going to find whoever made those vicious cocktails up in Callahan’s last night and shoot them. Slowly. Ow.”
“You can’t shoot someone slowly,” Liam said.
“Stop trying to make sense,” Xander said in a pitiful voice. “I don’t understand. I am not even remotely capable of rational logic this morning. Is everyone okay?”
“Here,” Liam said, handing Xander a steaming cup of strong black coffee which he had just retrieved from the replicator. “You look like your need is urgent. And I’ll have another one of these, thank you,” he said conversationally, turning back to the replicator.
“What do you mean, is everyone okay?” Simon said, frowning.
“Well, I’m not. Exactly.” Xander took a sip of his coffee, shooting a grateful glance at Liam. “I kind of feel like that disco–ball Moon last night dropped off its chain and landed on my head. Ow. So what’s the status this morning, then?”
“Of what status do you speak?” Simon said, turning back to glance at the still mostly empty corridors surveilled by the cameras. A few brave souls had risen and wandered the halls in search of breakfast, in the hotel restaurant where staff had bravely reported for duty that morning at the appointed time, but the hotel as a whole still had the air of Sleeping Beauty’s castle just before the Prince came upon the sleeping princess.
“They were too busy being excited or weirded out last night to care, but this morning… they’re going to want their entertainment,” Xander said. “They’re going to want something to take their minds off things.”
“You’re still thinking about
programming
?” Liam said incredulously. “After everything that’s happened? How much luck did you have with actual scheduled programming yesterday?”
“Well, the
panelists
mostly turned up,” Xander said. “And yeah, we had some audiences. Not everyone could go stare at the freaking Moon every waking hour. And besides, this morning we’re supposed to have the star turn – the Guest of Honor panel – and that’s supposed to be starting…kind of… in
an hour
!” The last was more of a yelp than an actual coherent utterance as Xander took his first real look at a clock and realized just how late it was. “I’d better go see if anyone relevant is up and about! Where’s Andie Mae?”
“She’s, uh, I think she may still be indisposed,” Simon said, raising an eyebrow.
Xander’s face changed as the memory flooded back. “You mean I didn’t just dream that?”
“If you did, then you told me a tall tale last night,” Simon said. “But I have reason to believe that things did indeed transpire…”
“Oh, can it, Simon,” Xander said. “Simple words, please. No more than three syllables and that only if you have to. Where’s Dave…?”
“No idea,” Simon said, shrugging.
“Great,” Xander muttered, gulping the last of his coffee, and taking refuge in his beloved Babylon 5 again. “Our hotel and guest liaison deserts his post without a word, and the con Chair picks the most breathtakingly inconvenient moment to explore new career options.”
“She’s hardly going to do a Delenn and sprout butterfly wings,” Simon muttered as he turned away.
“
Neither did Delenn
,” Xander snapped, smacking his empty cup down on the nearest counter. “Dammit. I’d better go look for Dave. If Andie Mae does show within the next hour or so, send her down to the ballroom. I’ll go find my panelists, if they’re still alive and able to string together a sentence in public. It might be Sunday but we’ve still got a con to run. This was damned good coffee, by the way. I’ll have another to go, thanks, black, no sugar.”
“Whose idea was it to schedule a GoH panel on a Sunday morning anyway?” Simon grumbled. “Even at a normal con, Sunday is the Saturday night morning after…”
“Exactly,” Xander flung back as he was exiting the room. “She thought… we both thought… it might just be the thing to wake the convention
up
on the Sunday rather than letting it wend its weary way into oblivion like it usually does until the most jumping thing on a Sunday is the Dead Dog Party.”
“Good luck,” Simon said, yawned mightily, and turned back to the monitor.
Xander, cursing to himself at the inability to use his currently non–functioning cellphone to contact the people he needed instead of having to bodily chase them down, took the charmingly empty and available elevator (for which, on Saturday, there was usually a crowded and lengthy wait) up to the seventh floor of Tower 1, where the GoH suites were. The first one on his path was Rory Grissom’s quarters, and even as he raised his hand to knock he realized that the door was not quite closed… and the room beyond was silent.
Instead of rapping sharply as he had intended, Xander tapped rather more gently and called out, “Hello? Rory? You in there? Everything OK?”
There was no response. Xander bit his lip, clenched and unclenched the hand not curled around his coffee cup, and pushed the door open, sticking his neck out like a wary turtle, and craned his head to peer into the room without being intrusive about it. The opening that led to the vanity area and then the bathroom beyond showed a counter covered in a messy pile of things like hair gel and a couple of half–squeezed travel–sized toothpaste tubes; the door of the bathroom itself was open, and the bathroom, although the light was on, appeared to be empty. Reluctantly, Xander pushed the hotel room open a little more and took a step inside.
“Hello?”
All the lights were on, but the suite was deserted. The sleeping quarters, a smaller room opening out of the large sitting room area, contained nothing more than a king–size bed which looked as though it had been slept in, or at the very least disturbed relatively recently, the bedclothes tangled up into a knot of twisted sheets and coverlets in the middle of the mattress – but there was no sign of anyone who might have perpetrated this. The sitting area was cluttered with dirty glasses, an empty wine bottle, a half–empty bottle of a different wine on the coffee table, and a mostly–empty bottle of tequila with just the barest dregs sloshing around the bottom of the bottle tucked away by the side of the sofa, which was itself a pyramid of tumbled cushions.
A small and intriguing pile of abandoned shoes languished in the middle of the room – a pile that included at least three separate pairs of women’s shoes (along with one disconcerting singleton the image of which stuck in Xander’s brain accompanied by a persistent and unanswered question as to what had transpired with its mate) which fairly obviously did not belong to Rory Grissom.
Precious minutes passed before Xander allowed all of these things to coalesce into a couple of grimly uncomfortable truths. Rory Grissom – scheduled for a GoH appearance that morning – was undeniably AWOL. Even if Xander could locate the man within the space of the next ten minutes or so, according to the evidence available in Rory’s room it would probably be asking the impossible to hope for him to be even remotely coherent enough to appear in public on a stage in the immediate future.