AbductiCon (13 page)

This had gone far enough. Xander clapped his hands together.

“Are you
crazy
? Remember where we are, exactly? Do
you
know how we got here or have the remotest idea about how to get back? Do you think we’re floating up here in any manner that any physics theory we puny humans ever knew anything about could explain? Do you think that there is the slightest possibility that we can? And even if we could, do you really want to kill the only thing that knows how to drive this whole… hotel…”

That came out rather lamer than he wanted it to. But the kid beside Sam Dutton had watched just as much
Babylon 5
as Xander ever had, and now came up with the perfect paraphrase, flinging back a modified piece of dialogue once uttered by the inimitable Lennier of the Minbari.

“If you’re going to kill him, then do so. Otherwise, he probably has considerable work to do.”

“Libby, you still there?” Xander said very softly, under cover of someone else raising their voice to comment. “Tell Boss to get him out. Call him out of here. Now.”

Someone must have heard him, because Bob suddenly came to his feet, a motion that silenced the voices in the room as every eye came to rest on him, some in curiosity, some in consternation.

“Excuse me,” Bob said, still cold and polite. “I have to go now.”

He turned and began to take measured steps towards the audience, and then through it, as they opened up a passage for him like the Red Sea parting before Moses and allowed him to exit the room unimpeded.

“There,” Xander said, into the absolute stillness and quiet that had accompanied this departure. “Y’all can have the rest of the panel, now, and talk about him behind his back. But I don’t think he’s really a villain, do you?”

Charlie, the moderator, blinked a couple of times and then said, “Well, what does our panel think? Can someone who follows orders, a foot–soldier as it were, a grunt, actually be a real villain? Does there have to be actual agency before a villain is a true villain – make his own evil decisions…?”

Xander backed away quietly, through the aisle still left open by Bob’s passing. He caught Sam Dutton’s eye as he moved, and Sam gave him a small nod and then got to his feet and followed him out. His young friend, the kid who had braved the barricades, gathered up a precariously balanced pile of a laptop and two battered and much graffitoed notebooks from underneath his seat and brought up the rear.

“Xander.”

“Sam,” Xander said, a shade uneasily. He was Andie Mae’s man, but he had been involved with this convention for a number of years before Andie Mae had reached out to raise him to his present position. For all of those years bar this last one, it had been Sam Dutton who had been the reigning God King of the con, whose very name had been synonymous with it for almost as long as Xander had been
alive
. Xander’s loyalty was to Andie Mae, but he could not help the tiny twinge of guilt, and he could not seem to make himself look Sam in the eye. Quite.

“It’s okay,” Sam said, with a mixture of serenity and resignation. He understood this reaction perfectly. “Listen, I just wanted to say… if there’s anything I can do. You know.”

“It did occur to a few that you might have invited these things,” Xander said, with a commendable attempt at a sincere chuckle.

Sam snorted. “I think you might have rather enormous delusions about my grandeur. If I could pull off this kind of thing, I probably would have done when I was actually in a position to rake in the glory, as it were.”

“But this way you don’t get the
responsibility
,” Xander said. “And you still get to enjoy watching everyone squirm.”

“Son, trust me. Nothing to do with me. I haven’t even been formally introduced to the Creatures from Outer Space yet. Yes, I was at the Opening Ceremonies, yes, I read the newsletter, yes, I realize that we aren’t exactly in Kansas anymore, Toto – but I don’t know anything beyond what I could piece together myself from all of these sources.”

“You should come see the replicator,” Xander said.

“Oook?” Sam said politely, tilting his head a little. “What would those be…?”

“They…well, you watched
Star Trek
,” Xander said. “Those things. You ask, and it produces. Anything from tea to, I’m sure, fresh and lustily squirming
racht
for the Klingons amongst us.”

Xander didn’t really think he was breaching the agreed–upon need–to–know arrangement when it came to the replicators – this was Sam, and with only a tiny tweak in the space–time continuum he would have been the one in charge of this whole mess anyway. But he had forgotten, in the heat of the moment of the reveal, that the two of them were not alone.

The kid from the panel blinked, clutching his paraphernalia close to his chest. “You’re telling us. We have. Working. Replicators.”

“Marius,” Sam said absently, making the belated introduction. “Marius Tarkovski. His mother entrusted him to my care this weekend, God help her. Marius, meet Xander Washington. And Xander… what Marius said. Are you serious?”

“I asked one for Earl Gray,” Xander said, quite unable to hide the grin that crept onto his face. “And it produced exactly that. Then someone asked for a pizza and it produced one the like of which you’ve never…”

“
Xander
!” Libby came surging out of the stairwell that led into the corridor which the panel rooms were on. Xander flushed, guiltily, caught in the act of spilling the replicator beans – but Libby had other things on her mind. “Is everything… all right?”

“I think so,” Xander said. “The kid helped.”

Marius turned an alarming shade of beetroot. “I did? Really?”

“You took on the crisis, and you headed it off at the pass,” Xander said. “Kudos.”

“I trained him,” Sam said, with a quicksilver grin. “I meant what I said, all joking aside. If there’s anything I can do… and yes, I would love to see a replicator.”

“You told him about those?” Libby said, eyes flicking to Xander’s face.

“This time last year,
he
would have been the one dealing with them,” Xander said, a shade defensively. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Don’t worry, Libby, the secret is safe with me,” Sam said. And then added, directly to Xander, “Do you still have my cell number?”

“What, is your cell working? Mine has been pretty much a brick since we left Earth orbit.”

Sam gave a small helpless grin, and shrugged. “Instinct,” he murmured.

“Well, I suppose we’ll have to figure out other means of communication. Just think, we may go back to the basics. When was the last time you actually remember sending messages
on paper
? Just like they used to do in pre–history? In the meantime…have fun. Try not to fall off the edge of the world. And if you see anything you think we ought to know about…”

“I don’t think Andie Mae wants me anywhere near ops,” Sam said. “I’ll send a ringer.” He tapped Marius on the shoulder.

Xander nodded. “Secret handshake, kid. Remember it. Just ask for Xander.”

“Right,” Marius said.

“We’ll keep in touch,” Sam said. He and Marius nodded at the two committee members and walked off towards the elevators.

Libby rounded on Xander.

“What was all that about?”

“Tell you later,” he said. “Is everything okay upstairs – with Boss and the underdroids?”

“I told you this would be a bad idea,” Libby grumbled as the two of them fell into step along the corridor.

“No, you didn’t. Or more to the point – everybody might have. I thought it was worth a try – we needed to get a conversation – is that Rory over there? In full fig?”

Their media Guest of Honor, Rory Grissom a.k.a. Captain James Fleming of the starship
Invictus
, was lounging against the wall as they came out of the stairwell and rounded the corner into the main corridor. He was dressed in his tight–fitting
Invictus
uniform, which showed off a still remarkably fit physique given that at least a decade had passed since his star turn and the TV series in which he had made the uniform famous. Surrounding him was the usual bevy of fans simpering up at him, and Xander shook his head in astonishment

“I’m damned if I know how he does it,” Xander muttered. “Some of those girls were in kindergarten when he strutted around as Captain Fleming. How do they even know who he is?”

“Somebody in the Green Room called him Captain Charisma,” Libby said.

“No kidding,” Xander said. “Let get out of here before he… aw, damn, too late…”

Rory had noticed them, and raised a silver–clad arm in a gesture that was half greeting and half salute. And then he bent his head to his audience and said something to them before giving them a small bow and striding towards Libby and Xander.

“I see you’re enjoying the con,” Xander said to Rory, nodding toward the giggling girls who were still hanging together in a tight knot of whispering and eyelash–batting adoration.

“You might do me a solid,” Rory said, in a low conspiratorial voice.

“Sure, anything I can do…” Xander began, in full ConCom mode to the convention’s Guest of Honor.

Rory turned his head marginally and indicated his groupies with a subtle jerk of his chin in their direction.

“Some of them, they’re a tad nervous about things,” Rory said. “You know, about all this. Being on a rock flying through space headed for maybe the Moon and maybe – if we miss it – who knows where, and if we don’t miss it, well, then, you know… Anyway.”

“They tell us they’ll take us back,” Xander said. “Right now, it’s all I got. We have to trust them.”

“Mutiny would probably be easy,” Rory said. “There’s only four of them as best as I can tell, and the sheer numbers…”

“Easy? It would be naked savages with dart guns facing laser cannons,” Xander muttered. “But even if that were not the uncomfortable reality, it would be fairly pointless, wouldn’t it, because, well, take them out and what do we do next?... We just have to trust them. For the nonce. Not much real choice there.”

“Yes, but maybe… you could mention in passing… to that lot… that maybe, you know, I might have had something to do with them taking us home. Or just promising to take us home. You know, like that.”

“But they already promised that,” Libby said. “And people know…”

“Yes, well, maybe they don’t quite know yet. Or don’t believe it. Or something. Either way. You know. Dammit, I’m an actor, not a spaceship captain – but here we are in something that could have been torn from an episode of
Invictus
, and I did used to be the captain, and really, it would be nice if at least there was a
story
…”

“A story…?” Xander echoed, torn between being amused and merely mystified that a grown man who couldn’t shake the one moment in which he meant something to a significantly large number of people would be so willing – even eager – to leap with both feet into the pages of a self–created comic book narrative.

“You know. Just tell them I gave them the ultimatum. Or at least a talking to. Just
mention
it, even. In passing.” Rory was honest enough to follow that with a grimace, and then a wry little grin. “We
all
know it isn’t true. But still…”

“What, you mean now, wandering past them?”

“Well, yeah.”

“But they can see you pow–wowing with us right now,” Libby said. “Won’t they tumble onto the simple fact that you just, um, asked us…?”

Rory lowered his voice a conspiratorial notch, the ghost of that weird little smile from a moment ago still on his lips . “Or they might think we’re talking strategy, or something.”

Xander’s eyebrows crept towards the top of his forehead, and then back down again, and then he simply smiled and shook his head.

“Sure,” he said. “If it’ll make a difference. I mean, come on, it’s just one more unlikely thing that they would have to believe, now, isn’t it?”

Libby gave him a quick glance filled with consternation – he was basically taking what authority Andie Mae had, as con Chair, and handing it over to a has–been ex–movie–star with a big ego, just for the asking, and it was a honking big lie on top of it – but Xander seemed to have ‘reckless’ turned up to eleven. He had already started walking, tossing his head at Rory and Libby to follow. Just as they approached the girls, Xander simply started talking, beginning a sentence randomly in the middle.

“… and I’m sure you’ll realize it is best kept under wraps for now but they did agree to a slingshot and then back….”

They were past, and behind them there was a susurrus of whispers and indrawn breaths and soft admiring laughter.

Xander cocked an eyebrow at Rory. “Enough?”

“I can work with it,” Rory said, grinning a little more broadly. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

Xander turned to glare after their movie star as he peeled off and looped back to the girls, and then he and Libby walked on, Xander shaking his head in amused disbelief.

“
Seriously
,” he said. “You’d think that someone like that didn’t have to concoct a cockamamie shaggy dog story to get some admiring girl being more than willing to make his con memorable, you know. Even the basic parameters of the flirtation factors have gone out the window with this con. Seems the stakes get higher when the stakes, you know, get higher. Now you have to be a hero. And if you can’t go in shooting like you do at the movies, you’re supposed to be able to make demands of the enemy – however diplomatically, but still – on behalf of the homeworld…”

“So long as you don’t give away the homeworld,” Libby said, with a quick grin of her own.

Xander lifted his arms, and laced his hands around the back of his shaved head, stretching into the cradle until his knuckles cracked.

“Speaking of homeworld,” he said conversationally, “has anyone checked recently on how fast the Moon’s gaining on this particular little piece of it that we’re no longer stuck on?”

Ξ

Back on the homeworld in question, Al Coe woke up woozy and disoriented in a familiar bed – but with every bone in his body aching in a way that was definitely not the usual status quo. Some ached more and some less – and arguably he had woken himself up by trying to roll over onto an arm that was still in a sling, possibly bone–cracked if not fully broken, certainly suffering from the post–traumatic agony of a dislocated shoulder now returned to its original position but still angry at the insult it had suffered the previous night.