Dave shot him a warning glance, but was himself hunting for the right thing to say – and after a moment, lamely, came up with,
“I, uh, I think they’re closing down at the end of the year…”
“Pity,” said the gamer.
“So then, how did you like the Moon flight?” Xander said, knowing he was tossing out bait but unable to stop himself from doing so.
“I don’t think I played that game,” the gamer said, furrowing his brow. Xander hadn’t followed the discussion of whether he had won or lost on that throw of the dice, but the combatants seemed to have sorted it out between themselves or at least arrived at a truce. “What game was that scenario in? We weren’t doing a straight SF thing – it was more of a…”
“The guys on the other table were talking about Alpha Centauri,” said one of the others helpfully.
“Maybe I’ll try that Moon game next year, then, ” the first gamer said, waving as he walked away. “See you the next go–round!”
“They missed it,” Xander muttered, staring after the departing clutch of gamers. “They missed the whole thing. The whole, entire thing. They missed it.”
“Speaking of those pizzas,” Dave said, turning to Xander, “what actually happened to the replicators?”
“If you’re talking about the food machines, both of the ones in the kitchens are just gone,” Luke said, rejoining the conversation. “Sometime last night, it would seem at the very least, I got the report this morning. Staff turned up and found a very ordinary kitchen once again – breakfast was made the old fashioned way, and supplies barely lasted. I should actually go and talk to our delivery people; we need to replenish our larders pretty smartly.”
“Aren’t you off duty yet?” Dave asked, teasingly but with genuine warmth. For somebody who was thrown into the deep end, Luke Barnes had not done too badly – and had certainly come out sane at the other end, instead of ending up on Dr. Cohen’s Asylum Floor right along with the other patients who had sought refuge in a fit of the vapors.
“I am supposed to hand over the reins in about an hour, when the new shift turns up. And then I plan to sleep for three days. And then really figure out just how much I can tell of what actually happened and still keep this job,” Luke said.
“You still want to keep the job? What about the next time…?”
Luke gave him a tired smile. “Well, now I know how to rescue people from a stuck elevator,” he said. “Flying to the Moon for the second time would just be a bonus.”
“You’re a good egg,” Xander said. “If you need backup for anything, with your bosses, give us a holler. We’ll be happy to give you a good report.”
“Thanks. Appreciate it. Maybe someday someone could sit down and try and convince me that any of this really happened… or if I just ate something bad on Friday morning and simply hallucinated this entire weekend…”
“I’ll drop in for a cup of coffee or something the next time you’re on duty,” Xander said. “We can reminisce.”
Luke looked both pleased and a little frightened at this prospect, but shook hands with both Dave and Xander and hurried back behind the reception counter and then out of sight into the office behind it. Dave sighed, and began to turn away.
“Well, I better see if the GoH people need anything at departure…”
“You found Rory, in the end?”
“In point of fact, no. Haven’t seen him, oh, since Saturday night, really – caught sight of him at one of the Moon parties, having the time of his life. He’s been pretty much AWOL since then – there’s been one reported sighting on Sunday but apparently he wasn’t in a socializing mood at that point and after that he seems to have remembered what room was his and how to lock the door to exclude the rest of the world because that suite’s been locked down tight. I sent Simon around a couple of times, on patrol, just in case, but not a stir in there.”
“Dead drunk, or just dead…?”
“Well, he was due to check out this morning, so if there’s no movement in the next half hour or so I may need to get housekeeping to open the door for me, just to make sure he is okay,” Dave said. “And Vince…”
Xander interrupted him by suddenly reaching out to grip his arm. “Is that Al…?”
Dave squinted at the disheveled figure pushing open the doors into the lobby with one arm while cradling the other in a blue nylon sling, and frowned.
“Looks like,” he said. “But dear God – that bruise on his face – the arm – he looks terrible! Like some small war chewed him up and spit him out. Did we land on him?”
Al Coe noticed Dave and Xander at about the same moment they became aware of him, and after a hesitation he let the door close behind him and stepped towards them.
The question that was asked, by Al in one direction and by Xander in the other, consisted of exactly the same words – but Al emphasized one word and Xander another, and Xander’s tone was one of appalled curiosity while Al’s was more a bewildered resignation.
“What happened to you?” Al asked.
“What happened to you?” Xander said in exactly the same moment.
“Where’s Andie Mae? Is she all right?” Al asked, allowing a wan smile to wash over his face at the greeting ritual.
“She’s… fine,” Xander said. That covered a lot of ground, and there were things that Andie Mae really should tell Al herself if she wanted him to know about them. “But you look like you’ve done a week in the trenches.”
“Someone creamed my car, on my way back to the hotel from the printer, with the posters,” Al said. “You know, for Spiner and Schwarzenegger. They turned up, you know.”
“Actually you look rather like the Terminator did work you over,” Xander said. “Wait, they came? To this… to where? What happened?”
“Are you okay? Really?” Dave asked.
“Well, there were moments,” Al said. “When I was perfectly certain I was going stark stir crazy. I came to this place three times this weekend, guys. This hotel just wasn’t here. And it insisted on trying to trick me into thinking that it never was here in the first place. But I have evidence,” he added darkly, patting his pocket with his good hand. “I have pictures. Right here. Something really strange was going on, or else I really was suffering from complete terminal concussion…”
“D’you need a cup of coffee?” Xander said. “You look like you could use one. Come on up to Con Ops and I’ll scrounge something up for you – and Andie Mae could be there by now, and if not they’ll know where to find her.”
“Sure,” Al said. “Okay.”
Xander lifted a hand in a parting gesture and then fell into step beside Al as they walked towards the stairwell of Tower 1.
“Sorry,” Dave heard Xander say as the two walked away from him, “but it’s got to be the stairs – there was an incident with the elevators in that wing – one of them tried to kill me…”
The lobby was getting increasingly crowded, people were bustling about with suitcases and coats and hats and bags, some just trying to make a clean getaway, others waving credit cards at receptionists behind the counter as they tried to settle their accounts before leaving. Three cabs idled outside, waiting for their fares. People stood in knots out under the portico, talking animatedly over piles of luggage or enthusiastically hugging their farewells. Several waved at Dave as they caught his eye, and he waved back, smiling a tired smile.
He almost missed one of his Guests of Honor in the milling mob of people in the lobby, but a tap on his shoulder made him turn inquiringly… to face a rather worse–for–wear Rory Grissom, dressed in mundane clothing and dragging a large, battered suitcase behind him. His eyes were red and boasted bags underneath them that could probably have doubled as storage pouches if Rory had needed extra luggage, and his color was high, but he seemed to have at least made the acquaintance of a comb that morning and he certainly did not look too unhappy about what Dave surmised must have been an absolutely cosmic hangover headache.
“Thank
s for the memories,” Rory said. “Do me a favor…?”
“You need a ride?”
“No, got that sorted. No, something else. I… seem to have mislaid one of my boots.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“One of my boots. That is to say, one of Captain Fleming’s boots. My Invictus costume. I’ve got one of the boots, but the other one seems to have gone walkabout – so if you’d keep an eye out – or tell the hotel to – it looks just like this one – ” He took a somewhat crumpled publicity shot out of his pocket and thrust it at Dave, tapping with his finger at one of his silver–booted legs in the photo. “I mean, that is to say, I couldn’t locate it in my room when I was throwing my stuff together, and I, um, er, it could be in several other different locations – so if it should be found, I would appreciate a heads–up…”
“I’ll let them know,” Dave said.
“Custom made,” Rory said. “Can’t just buy another off a catalogue. Well, I could, there’s a catalogue that does sell uniforms out of all the big shows – you could buy any togs you want to there – but this one was, kind of, unique, mine, you know? Not out of the catalogue. I had it specially made, the whole uniform. It’s a perfect replica. I really don’t want to lose…”
“Don’t worry. I think I can safely say that a silver boot will pretty much overwhelmingly stand out in the usual mess of a hotel’s lost and found box. I’ll make sure they know to look for it.”
“Thanks. Appreciate it. Helluva party. Thanks for having me.”
“Thanks for coming along,” Dave said.
Rory lifted one semi–nerveless hand and maneuvered his mammoth piece of luggage out of the door.
Dave took the few steps that separated him from the reception counter and leaned on the polished wood. A blonde girl behind the counter looked up as he did so, and smiled.
“Anything I can do for you?”
“I don’t suppose you know if anyone found a single silver boot from a superhero uniform lurking somewhere in the shadows?”
Ξ
In the Con Ops suite, the population had thinned out, and some of the computer stations had already been dismantled and packed away, while others were in the process of being logged off and wound down. Libby’s usual station was still up, but she was not present; at a glance, Xander could not see Andie Mae either, but he sat Al down in a clear spot on one of the sofas pushed into a corner and went to make coffee, the usual way, sparing a quick regretful thought for the replicator which had vanished from this room as well. It was hard to have one’s nose rubbed into the future and then having the door slammed into one’s face and being told one wasn’t ready for any of it yet. Xander felt he himself, at least, was plenty ready for a functioning replicator.
“Is it still as awful as Andie Mae said it was?”
“What was that?” Xander said, turning his head marginally from the coffee machine.
“The coffee. She told me to bring some good coffee, because the hotel stuff was terrible. I never did make it – I didn’t bring any with me even now – ”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Xander said carefully. “The coffee situation… was the least of our worries, in the end.” Something outside the room caught his attention even as the last of those words left his mouth, and his head swiveled to the door. “Excuse me a sec, I’ll be right back.”
He didn’t quite know what he had seen, or heard – but he had a feeling that Andie Mae was just outside. He was right, as it happened, but he didn’t quite expect to almost run her down as he stepped out into the corridor just as Andie Mae, who had paused to speak to someone, turned to go into the room .
“Hey, slow down, where’s the fire?” Andie Mae protested, fending him off, side–stepping him to get to the door of the suite. Xander flung out an arm to stop her.
“Wait – I wanted to give you a heads–up – Al’s back, he’s in there, and he looks somewhat battered. Not sure what happened. He said he was in an accident. He’s also talking about ‘evidence’ he’s got in his pocket, about this place going AWOL for the weekend, and I just thought – you’d better not blunder in there blind – given what happened – ”
“Given what happened?” Andie Mae asked sharply.
“Well, you kind of had a fling with Boss,” Xander said sheepishly. “Such as it was. And I thought…”
“Whose boss?”
That was Al’s voice, unexpected, from the doorway. Andie Mae looked blue daggers at Xander, who dropped his hand in resignation.
“I was just trying to help,” he said.
Andie Mae and Al stood staring at each other for a long moment, and then she sighed. “You’d better come to my room,” she said. “It isn’t what you think. Or what you’re spinning in your head right now. Long story, long and complicated, and it looks like you’ve got one to fling right back at me.”
“I’ve got coffee…” Xander began, but Andie Mae quelled him with another look.
“I have coffee in my room,” she said. “And please don’t send Simon to rescue me again, okay?”
“Rescue you?” Al echoed blankly.
“Just come on,” Andie Mae said. “Can you manage the stairs? What in God’s name did you do to your arm?”
When she was in this sort of mood, nobody argued with her. Xander stepped back into the suite without another word, and Al meekly followed where Andie Mae led.
On her way up the stairs, she was already having second thoughts about the venue she had chosen, given that the events of which she had to tell Al had actually transpired in the very same room in which they were about to be confessed to – and this would occur to Al himself eventually, with unpredictable consequences. Andie Mae led the way in silence, rehearsing her story in her head, coming to the conclusion that the best defense was possibly opening with a salvo that deflected attention. It was in the spirit of this, then, that she pointed Al to a seat as they walked into her room and turned to busy herself with the coffee machine on the counter.
“So, then,” she said, before he had a chance to do more than carefully collapse into an armchair, taking care not to jostle his arm. “I was actually on the point of phoning the hospitals and the police. What happened to you?”
“If you’d phoned Mercy General Hospital, they probably would have told you. On the way back to the hotel – I was coming straight from the printers, with just one detour on the way – some idiot with a black SUV rammed me at an intersection. Quite aside from this – ” he indicated the sling with a toss of his head – “… which was quite enough by and of itself, but on top of that, I seem to have temporarily lost my marbles somewhat, as well as my phone and those wretched posters, which were all apparently in the car when the wreck was towed. By the time I staggered over here… there was no hotel to be found.”
Andie Mae kept her eyes on the coffee pot. “How do you mean?”
“I mean it wasn’t here, dammit, Andie Mae,” Al said. “That many marbles, I hadn’t lost. I had the address. The cab dropped me where you should have been. But you were not there. How about your turn, now? How did you manage to spirit away an entire hotel?”
“Who said it was spirited away?” Andie Mae asked carefully.
“I may be a fool sometimes, but I’m still quite sane and sensible when it comes to the things I can judge using empirical evidence,” Al said. “I said it was spirited away and I meant exactly that. I helped you scout this place, remember? I know where the walls had been standing. And said walls were noticeably absent. And what’s more those walls seemed to have developed a vested interest in convincing me that they had never been there at all, really. The more I looked at the place where I should have been seeing the hotel, the less I could remember there having been a building there at all in the first place. It was as though there was something – I don’t know – a veil, and beyond that I could not look.”
“Not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Andie Mae murmured.
“What?”
“No, you’re right, I’m
sorry. The best I can come up with is something that someone came up with in the control room after we… afterwards. There was an SEP field in play, down there.”
“Down where?” Al said, confused.
Andie Mae sighed. “It’s hard to explain,” she said.
“Yes, tell me about it. It was really hard to explain when your two actors showed up…”
“They came?” Andie Mae yelped, her eyes widening and snapping to meet Al’s.
“Of course they came, all the arrangements had already been made,” Al said with a touch of impatience. “But they seemed as confused as I was. So I told them they were there for a charity photo shoot and actually they were very good sports about it – I have a photo of them shaking hands, standing there on the bluff, and then one with me with both of them – but that’s just the thing – those photos – where’s your computer?”
Andie Mae indicated the bed with a toss of her head. “The laptop’s under the bed. That’s where I usually stash it when I leave it in the room, remember?”
Al rooted around in his pocket with his good hand and came up with a USB stick, flourishing it in Andie Mae’s direction. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said. “Bring it over here.”
Andie Mae retrieved the laptop and set it up on the low table in front of Al, leaving it to boot up while she went to deal with the coffee, which had announced that it was done by a series of melodious chirps from the coffee machine. By the time she came back with two mugs and placed one within reach of Al’s uninjured arm, he had already plugged in his flash drive into the laptop and was tapping something out slowly and laboriously with his good hand. And then, after staring at the screen for a moment while waiting for his photos to come up, he finally turned the machine towards Andie Mae.
“There. Look.”
She stared at the photograph on the screen for so long that Al actually reached out and turned the laptop fractionally back toward himself to check that she was actually looking at the right thing. Andie Mae tore her eyes from the screen at that point and settled back onto her haunches where she had been kneeling on the floor beside the table.
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