AbductiCon (6 page)

“Where’s Andie Mae?”

“She’s gone to talk to Grissom – the movie star – he called up about something – she should be…”

As if magicked up by this, Andie Mae herself stepped delicately through the door, over the cable, and sidled past Dave into the room.

“And here I am,” she said. “Nice to see you finally showed up. What the hell happened out there at the airport? That was a major mess. And now there’s a – what the hell is everyone looking at out there?”

“Dave said there’s a silver man…” Xander said.

“Yes, the one he…”

“Oh, don’t start that again,” Dave snapped. “Look, you’d better do something and fast before you get somebody wandering out of the hotel’s front door….”

Andie Mae frowned, tilting her head. “And I should prevent people from leaving the hotel,
why
? I mean, I don’t want anyone to leave the con, particularly, I’d like everyone to stick around, thank you very much, I worked pretty hard to make sticking around an irresistible option – but if anyone leaves, they’re not – ”

“You’d better come look,” one of the people at the window said, turning his head around marginally.

Tossing her hair with indignation, Andie Mae stalked across the room to the balcony door. “All right, then, move. Yeah, you. Shift. Let me see. What are you looking at…?”

Nobody answered her, and the room sank into an awkward silence while the con Chair peered outside into the night.

“I can see precisely nothing – have you all lost your collective mind?”

“Dave, perhaps now’s a good time to explain,” Xander said quietly.

Dave took a deep breath.

“Look,” he began, “I just got back here – I think I got the last parking spot in the place – I freely confess that I was cranky and tired and miserable and all I wanted to do was get in here and find something to eat and quite possibly to drink – and no, to whoever said that before, I heard you, I didn’t
make
it to the bar, thank you very much indeed – and I just stopped for a second just outside the front door, and there was this silver man…”

Andie Mae sighed. “Him again?”

“
Not the damned writer
,” Dave snarled. “A silver man. Literally. He looked almost human, almost, but then he took this thing that he was typing stuff into – looked like an iPad or some other mini tablet or something of the sort – and he put it back into his chest…”

“What, now?” Xander said.

“I am telling you, there is a robot – a silver man – ”

“What, the Terminator?” Andie Mae gasped, suddenly flushing a bright red. “Schwarzenegger’s here? Early?
In costume
? He isn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow! Why didn’t someone call me…?”

Dave closed his eyes for a moment. “Not the…”

“A Cylon?” someone asked, gamely offering an alternative to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unexpected manifestation.

“A Cyberman?” Libby said. “I think I saw one clomping around, earlier… Dave… the con’s theme
is
robots – there are bound to be – ”

“No, no and no,” Dave said. “It was more like… Data.”

“
Spiner
is here
too?
” Andie Mae squawked. “Is Al back? With both the guys? How did he get hold of them? Where is he?”

“Haven’t seen him,” Xander said, trying to keep his voice neutral. “Dave, what did you see? Really? There have to be as many smartphones and tablets here as there are people – this is a tech–savvy crowd – so you saw somebody typing into a tablet, and you…”

Dave skewered him with a withering glare. “All right. Just shut up. All of you. Just shut up and
listen
. I came up out of the parking lot, and I stopped right there under the portico over the front drive, just outside the front door, and there was a silver man – shut
up
about the writer dude! – standing there by the door, typing something into what looked like a tablet right until he stopped typing and kind of put it up against his chest and it just… just… sank in there, blended in, whatever, I know, it sounds insane. I am not drunk. Anyway. Then I felt light – lighter than I should have been, anyway, for just a moment – and then I looked out and I realized what I was seeing – I was seeing us
lifting off
.”

“Lifting off,” Andie Mae repeated, frowning. “What, exactly…?”

“I know what I saw!” Dave snapped. “And I wasn’t wrong, either. I looked at the silver guy and I said something like ‘Put us back!’ and you know, he didn’t say, you’re a moron, or go home you’re drunk, or anything of the sort. He said… he said…”

There was a pause, a longer than expected one, and Xander finally stirred. “What did he say, then?”

“He said, ‘I can’t do that, Dave’.” There was a ripple of laughter, somewhere in the back of the room, and Dave’s head swung around in that direction.

“I think you’ve been watching too many…”

“I know, okay? I know. I am well aware that this whole thing sounds nutso. But look outside again. And then he said – he said – ‘ I can explain.’ He actually…”

“He actually talks? This robot?”

“Of course he talks,” Dave snapped.

“Well, did he?” Andie Mae said, trying for the practical.

“Did he what?”

“Explain,” she said, patiently enough.

“I didn’t stick around to listen!” Dave said. “I just ran off into the hotel – I thought I’d better find you – somebody – make sure that everyone knew that something strange was… What are you doing?”

One of the volunteers by the sliding door had unlatched the door handle and was poised to push the slider open, and Dave had instinctively flung out an arm to stop him. The volunteer froze, his hand on the latch.

“I just thought… if we stepped out – I mean, the balcony is still here – and we could see what exactly – ”

Another of the volunteers reached over and slapped the optimist’s hand down.

“And what if there literally is
nothing
out there? Thought about that, genius?”

“It worked fine on Doctor Who!” said the first volunteer defensively. “Didn’t someone snatch up a hospital and slap it down on the moon – and they could still open up the windows and go out on balconies and stuff? There was a force field or something…”

“That’s science
fiction,
you moron!”

“And this is….?”

“Okay, enough!” Andie Mae yelped, silencing everyone. “So where is he, now, your guy, Dave? I mean, if he said he could explain, why isn’t he here right now?”

“I have no frakking idea. You think I looked to see if he was following me?”

“Come to think of it I think I saw him,” Andie Mae said, tapping her chin with her forefinger thoughtfully. “Sounds like someone who vaguely matched the ‘silver man’ description, assuming we aren’t talking about Vince. He was out there in the foyer, before…”

“Wait,” Libby said. “Wait. Just… wait. There was someone up here, earlier – in the Green Room – but it was chaos, I was trying to find itineraries for the pros, and it was a zoo, but I think I saw someone who looked rather a lot like… but… unh… maybe I’m just making things up, now, because I thought it was a girl…”

“You sure about that one?”

“No, actually, like I just said – I think I remember seeing someone but it might have been a girl and dammit we have a robot–themed convention swirling all around us and for all I know there may be an army of them crawling around the place, it might be a new fad, or they might have heard about Brent Spiner coming and they wanted to be Data, or they…”

“Wait, are you saying there’s more than one of them?” Xander said. “Er… just how
many
…

“Well, do I open the door or not?” the volunteer at the sliding door said practically. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

“We all
die
,” Xander said, crossing his eyes and then sticking his tongue out in an overblown grimace while wrapping both hands around his own neck. “Seriously, people. Seriously. Occam’s Razor. Are we looking for zebras in a horse herd? Face it, this is a room of science fiction geeks. We might all be just reading our favorite comic book scenario into all this. And Dave… dammit… you can’t know…”

The volunteer at the sliding door scowled at Xander. “I’m a science PhD in real life!” he barked. “I live my life by empirical evidence!”

“When you aren’t partying with Space Babes and Chewbacca at a con bar,” Xander muttered.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing! I’m a science geek myself, remember? But I still don’t know…”

The PhD volunteer responded by slipping the catch on the sliding door and theatrically yanking on the door handle.

“Well, then. Only one way to find out!”

It seemed like time slid into slow motion as the door began to move, and everyone in the room, in a shared delusion of it maybe being a helpful thing to try, literally held their breath. Nobody was quite clear on what precisely they were expecting to happen next – there may have been images that flashed through various minds of explosive decompression resembling the Hollywood CGI idea of what one looked like when an airlock opened to the vacuum of outer space, but if there were, nobody shared them or even owned up to them. And then the PhD candidate, finding himself still alive after the first breathless instant, released his own pent–up breath and took a cautious sniff through the open door.

“Smells fine to me,” he said at length, after a small hesitation. “Okay, then. In the interests of science, here goes. Call me the sacrificial monkey, if you like. If I go splat, tell Monica I love her.”

Before anybody could stop him he stepped sideways, and out onto the balcony.

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened for so long that Andie Mae finally called out, sounding very much like a little girl she hadn’t been for many years, “Are you okay…?”

“I… uh…” The response from outside was soft, and slow in coming, but it was definitely there, and Andie Mae clutched at her temples with both hands in a gesture that was eloquent of the release of the fear she’d been holding in. “I think you’d better come out here,” the voice from the balcony said faintly.

There was a concerted movement towards the balcony by every warm body in the room, but Andie Mae raised an arm in an imperial gesture.

“The terrace won’t hold everybody,” she said peremptorily.

Dave stepped forward anyway. “Is it what I thought I felt… what I saw…?”

“Dave, come on,” Andie Mae said, reaching out for his arm and pulling him forward. “Xander. You, too. The rest of you, wait.”

Dave and Andie Mae stepped outside onto the terrace at the same moment, crowding one another through the door; Xander followed a step behind. And then they stood there, the four of them, clutching the railing of the balcony or one another, whichever closer, with a white–knuckled grip, and staring open–mouthed at the view that lay before them.

The hotel appeared to be marooned on a piece of ground that looked like it had been torn from the earth as a great chunk of rock – it stretched out a little way beyond the edge of the building, but not by much. Most of the parking lot had completely disappeared – instead, a long way below them, there were twinkling lights of what might have been the city whose zip code they had recently been a part of, and then, beyond that, a spill of shadow that was the ocean with a shimmer of moonlight glittering upon it. And they – the four people watching this, the balcony they were standing on, the building the balcony was part of, the narrowest piece of skirting land around the foundations of that building – they were all floating above it all. Somewhere up in the sky. Hanging there, defying common sense, science, and gravity.

“Houston,” Xander said quietly, “I think we have a problem.”

Ξ

“Right,” said Andie Mae after a beat. “Right, then.”

She turned smartly and marched back into the room, starting to fire orders as she went.

“Libby, don’t I remember you saying that a nice young manager type came trotting up here to give us the hotel’s regards? Remember his name? Never mind. Just find whoever is in charge. I would think at this point it
would
be a very good thing if they shut the doors – at least for tonight – and didn’t let people wander out there and fall off the edge.”

“On my way,” Libby said.

“I’d think that would be unlikely, given that we have air,” Xander said, following her in. “Obviously something is keeping the air in. That same something might serve to stop people doing a Wile E Coyote and walking off the cliff. Holy freaking cow, that may be an honest–to–God real force field out there. Like, for real. I might walk out there myself, just to see if I can…”

“Xander.
Please
.”

Xander lost his goofy grin and blinked back into serious mode. “Right. Sure. Sorry. Anything I can do?”

“Dave, where the hell did you leave this silver freak that you think did this?”

“No clue, just left him behind when I ran into the hotel to look for you. He may have…”

“Well, if you’re telling the truth and he said he is going to explain, I suggest it’s time he did that. Go back to where you lost him and see if you can run him to ground. Xander, call in Sim and Security – tell them to keep an eye out for… for…”

“Data?” Xander suggested helpfully.

“For someone who might be acting a little strange. Tell him what happened. He should probably talk to the hotel security people, too, make sure everyone is on the same page and knows how to man the doors, if necessary.”

“On it,” Xander said. “Wow, it’s for real, isn’t it? You even nailed the place…”

“What are you talking about?” Andie Mae snapped.

“You know,” Xander said, backing up and falling into a verbal flounder. He seriously didn’t want his words to come across as critical, but somehow what tumbled out of his mouth didn’t quite come out the way he had intended it. “The California Resort. You know. Hotel California. And now we have people manning the exits, as it were. You can check out any time you like…”

“But you can’t leave, yes, I get it,” Andie Mae said. “God.
God
. Where the hell is Al? And did I just become an accessory to the kidnapping of the ex–governor of California? I’m pretty sure that’s a felony…”

“Schwarzenegger isn’t even supposed to be here until tomorrow, like you said – I don’t think you’ve got that to worry about,” Xander said, over his shoulder.