Bimbos of the Death Sun (19 page)

“No, this is just a regular disk,” said Jay Omega. “If you’ve got your Norton disk, it shouldn’t take us very long.”

Louis Warren thought that they might as well draw pentagrams on the floor and rattle chicken bones, while they were at it. None of it made much sense to him, and he was too tired to devote many brain cells to it, anyway.

Joel Schumann rooted around in a file box full of disks, pulled out the one he wanted, and shooed Louis away from the computer. “Won’t take long,” he remarked cheerfully.

Louis sank into the swivel chair and closed his eyes. “If you find anything, let me know.” His mind settled into a happy reverie involving Jackie Collins,
Vogue
, and a word processor with keys that said “Chop” and “Puree.” Every now and then he could hear remarks from the sorcerer’s apprentices across the room. Things like, “… file may be displaced by a later entry …” and “8 two-sector clusters …”

Several best sellers later, he heard the talking grow louder. “Okay, the right arrow takes you from sector one to sector two, and F8 finds the next pair
in sequence.”

“It’ll be choppy, but it’s coming.”

Someone shook his arm. “Wake up, Mr. Warren. We’ve got something on the screen for you to look at.”

The editor ambled back to the computer desk and peered at the gaggle of words in mid-screen, surrounded by various bits of technical hieroglyphics.

“Hmm. Sector two is garbled. Try another pair,” said Jay Omega.

Joel hit another key, and soon a new scrap of text materialized on the display monitor.

Joel Schumann sank back in his chair. “What is
this stuff? I’ve read the Tratyn Runewind books, and they’re definitely not like this!”

“Is this what you’re looking for?” asked Jay Omega.

Louis Warren nodded. “Yes, it’s fairly mild compared to some of the alternate last chapters I’ve seen.”

Jay shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“Appin Dungannon hated Tratyn Runewind?’ asked Joel.

“Bingo!” said Louis, “But he had to keep writing the novels, because they were so popular. So to vent his frustration he would write two last chapters to every one of his books.

“You should have seen some of the others,” grunted the editor. “Tratyn Runewind having a bout with dysentery during a battle, and getting stabbed by a twelve-year-old boy; Runewind being castrated by a Druid priestess who greatly resembled Mrs. Dungannon. I never knew what to expect. He’d send it in along with the manuscript, just before the last chapter, and I’d always take it out before I sent it to press. But that’s one piece of Dungannon trivia that nobody knew; people might get upset to know how much he hated the series.”

Joel Schumann nodded. “The fantasy people would freak if they read this, all right.”

Jay Omega gave a start. He looked at Joel and then back at the screen. “When do you suppose this was written?”

“Judging from the times on the existing directory entries, I’d say sometime Friday night. The real last chapter was written Saturday morning. Why?”

“Oh, nothing …” He stared at the green letters on the monitor, lost in thought. It seemed to make
sense. He wondered if that was an ominous sign that he had been around the fen too long.

He was still gazing at the monitor. He had an idea. “Let’s see how much more of this there is,” he said to Joel.

At one-thirty in the morning, Marion was sprawled across the bed in a pile of maps and
D&D
manuals, fast asleep. Jay Omega smiled down at her, thinking that she looked like a vulnerable little girl when she slept. She wouldn’t thank him for that observation! Despite the fact that she was a complete rabbit about math and at the mercy of almost any mechanical device, she liked to think that there were no intellectual differences between them. She seemed to think that his inability to quote Auden and the fact that Thomas Hardy put him to sleep evened the score. She didn’t seem to realize that the intelligence he admired in her had nothing to do with literature. He liked the fact that she really listened when he explained something technical, and that she kept asking questions until his explanations made sense to her; he admired her versatility—they had lunch almost every day and never ran out of things to talk about, without resorting to shop talk or campus gossip; and he was a little afraid of her perceptiveness: she knew things about him that he’d never dream of telling her.

He wondered if she would guess what he was up to now. He wasn’t quite sure himself, or at least he didn’t really want to discuss it. It was just the glimmering of an idea, and he felt it would be better kept to himself—just in case he was wrong. How hard could it be to run a dungeon? Maybe he could
manage without her. Jay Omega picked up the game scenario and studied it for a few minutes, but he decided that it was too important for him to bluff his way through it.

“Wake up,” he said, gently shaking the bed, “You have to teach me how to run a dungeon, and I have a few variations to put in.”

Marion groaned. “Sorry. Your fairy godmother is on down time. Unless you want to do an R-rated version of
Sleeping Beauty
, in which case you have a chance of waking me up.”

He shook the bed again. “Wake up, Mrs. Peel! The game’s afoot!”

M
iles Perry was reflecting on how correct Einstein had been about time being relative. This con, for example, had managed to last for about twenty years within the space of one weekend. He found himself actually looking forward to the real world, in which he could manage the grocery produce section with relatively little turmoil, without having to worry about hotel damage fees, elves who lost their room keys, and famous dead people.

He had spent a weary hour the night before with Lieutenant Ayhan, who had questioned the entire “Chip Livingstone Consortium” right after the banquet. They had all been fingerprinted, and all had assured him that they had no access to guns, but the lieutenant had pointed out that since his other suspects were computers and fictional characters,
they were his best bet.

When Ayhan had appeared in the hotel lobby early this morning, Miles had braced himself for another round, but the lieutenant was there, he said, responding to a phone call from Dr. Marion Farley. Miles Perry sat down and started to search the newspaper for a write-up on Dungannon.

“You through with the book section, yet?” asked Diefenbaker, sinking down in the chair beside him.

Miles Perry handed it over without a word.

“Thanks,” said Dief. “I think I’m setting a new world record for lack of sleep. And I thought grad school was bad!”

“Who cornered you this time? You didn’t go to the Chip Livingstone Memorial Service, did you?”

“No,” said Dief. “I’d have felt like a murderer. They didn’t invite me anyway. But I hear that Bernard Buchanan is trying to figure out which one of us praised his writing.”

“The one with the most sadistic sense of humor,” grunted Miles.

“I thought it was you!” said Dief.

“I thought it was you!” echoed Miles innocently. “So, where were you ’til all hours?”

“In a Far Brandonian council meeting. I can’t figure out why Richard Faber wasn’t there. He’s been moaning about armies on his southern border all weekend.”

“I think he has something else on his southern border at the moment,” said Miles.

Dief grinned. “I’ve been waiting for Lieutenant Ayhan to start looking for C.D. Novibazaar. People certainly talk enough about him.”

“Ah, yes, your player character in the game. Yes, that’s all Ayhan needs, another imaginary suspect.”
He folded the paper and stood up. “Good morning, Dr. Omega!”

Jay Omega managed a groan that resembled the syllables of “good morning.” He looked as if he had forgotten to shave. “I usually get more rest than this,” he mumbled.

Miles Perry looked anxious. “You’ll be ready for the
D&D
game at ten, won’t you?”

Jay Omega nodded. “Yes. That’s what I came to talk to you about. Is Lieutenant Ayhan here yet?”

“He’s around somewhere, asking questions. Why?”

“Just ask him to look me up, will you? I’ll be in the high-tech room.”

He wandered off in the direction of the dining room, and Miles Perry went back to his newspaper. When he had any energy to spare, he would wonder what that exchange had been about.

The prospect of a celebrity Dungeon Master had lured a cross-section of con participants to the high-tech room for the exhibition
D&D
adventure. The computers and tech equipment had been shoved to the back to make room for the circle of participants, and onlookers were crammed into available space. A few lucky ones had latched onto wooden chairs. Of the twelve chosen to demonstrate their skill for the audience, only one had dropped out after the substitution of Omega for Dungannon as DM. Miss Megan (Beef) Wellington had withdrawn from the game, deciding that an acquaintance with the author of (shudder)
Bimbos of the Death Sun
would do nothing to help her chances of publishing her fantasy novel, the 560-page
Chronicles of Karamecia
. Three others had
either overslept or left the con early, leaving eight remaining adventurers to play the game.

Most of the players had come in some sort of costume. Richard Faber had borrowed a cloak from his beloved Brenda in honor of the occasion. She had come to cheer him on from the spectators’ gallery. Diefenbaker, who was a born experimenter given very few chances outside Fandom, had borrowed a feathered elf cap from Saffron; and Clifford Morgan was in full Tratyn Runewind regalia, complete with cape and broadsword. Bill Fox had on a tunic and shortsword, and the jock from the costume competition was back in his Conan costume. Bernard Buchanan wore a T-shirt stretched to the bursting point, and a button that said: “KISS ME, I’M ELVISH.”

“Should I wear some kind of get-up?” Jay had asked Marion.

“The cap and gown you always wear to graduation comes to mind,” said Marion dryly. “No, seriously, I don’t think it’s necessary. The DM is basically God, and God wears anything He wants.—He looks particularly nice in jeans and a sweatshirt,” she added smiling.

A few minutes before ten, Marion, back in her Mrs. Peel jumpsuit, appeared carrying a stack of weapons charts and other data necessary for conducting the adventure. “God could use a computer for this,” grumbled the Dungeon Master.

“Don’t panic,” said Marion. “As long as you’re plausible no one will complain. If they do, turn them into a pillar of salt.”

Jay Omega glanced again at the scenario, and out at the rows of spectators, seated on the floor between computer displays. Lieutenant Ayhan
was not among them. He glanced at his watch: ten o’clock. Let the games begin.

“You realize,” he said to Clifford Morgan, “that you can’t play Tratyn Runewind. He’s an NPC. You’ll be assigned somebody else.”

Morgan nodded impatiently. His white hair was held in place by a leather thong tied around his head, and he wore a rope belt around his tunic of homespun wool. As he eased himself to the floor in front of the Dungeon Master, he took care not to sit on his blue velvet tunic, which had been brushed spotless, and was not the sort of garment one usually wore to loll about on a tile floor. While the other players looked like partiers anticipating a good time, Morgan managed a look of intense dedication, suggesting a soldier awaiting battle orders.

“Okay,” said Jay Omega. “Everybody, listen up!” He turned back to Marion. “I don’t have to say forsooth or anything, do I?”

“No!” whispered Marion. “But try not to talk like Bear Bryant, either.”

“Who is she?” asked one of the younger elves.

“I’m the Oracle of Delphi,” Marion replied. “He consults me on close calls.”

“But the DM is omnipotent,” said the elf.

“Don’t hassle an oracle, kid. You could end up as souvlaki.”

Lieutenant Ayhan appeared in the doorway. “Somebody here wanted to see me?”

Jay Omega motioned for him to come over. “I asked you to sit in on this, because I think something interesting may develop.”

Ayhan looked pained. “Even if it were my day off, I don’t think I could find the time for THIS.”