“Eh, like it matters if you’re Pavarotti. Everyone gets a go. It’s got to be a moon — song, this set, though. We’ve been having a few repeats — “Blue Moon” and “Moon River” have been popular, and this is probably the fifth time someone has picked this particular one, not entirely surprising when you look out the window — somebody stretched it a bit with that old chestnut “Catch a Falling Star” but he sang it in full persona with a totally Frankenfurter pink feather boa, it was a riot — can you think of anything we’ve missed?”
“I’ll think about it,” Xander said. “I’ll look in on my way back from the rounds.”
“We’ll be here!”
Xander could catch a glimpse of the moon as he passed by rooms, over the heads of the partygoers, now large and bone — white and with definite geographical features beginning to separate out. They had been right, upstairs in the Green Room, when they had talked about photographs, because there were cameras and camera phones everywhere.
“Hey, look! It’s little green men!” someone hollered from one of the rooms, and a deafening squeal went up as people fell toward the windows.
“Where?”
“Where are you looking?”
“Shove off, my turn!”
“Hey, give a girl a chance!”
“Say cheese! Hey, is the moon really made of it?”
“Over there! Look!”
“Are we going to see the flag?”
“Oh, can’t we just, I don’t know, beam up some moon dust?”
“Squash up! If you want to have some of the moon in the shot and not just your grinning mugs, you have to squash up! You, tall guy, over to the left…”
They all sounded as though they were high, which was perfectly understandable — everyone was riding the edge, that was what happened when the impossible became a reality that couldn’t be avoided. But just as Xander reached a point where he could begin to convince himself that these were con people — geeky enough to have absolutely accepted the impossible, invited it in, and were throwing the party of a lifetime for it — that they were doing all right, and that he could safely leave them to their revels — he was graphically reminded not to take anything for granted. Not ever; and especially not right at that moment.
It was two unexpected and back — to — back encounters in the corridors that did it.
The first was a young woman whom he encountered curled up by one of the large windows, her face streaked with the dried tracks of tears shed in some previous paroxysm of weeping. She was no longer crying, though, and somehow the tragic silent stillness of her figure made Xander suddenly wary. He crouched beside her, laying a gentle hand on her arm.
“Hey, are you all right?” he asked softly.
She raised her eyes to him, and they were startlingly blank, terrifyingly blank, as though she had ridden the rollercoaster straight through the House of Horrors and left her soul inside.
“We’re going to die,” she said, her voice oddly inflectionless, reminding him of the way the lower androids spoke — just the words, no underlying feeling or emotion or the kind of irrational complexity that drove a flesh — and — blood human being. Just a mindless conviction. She was a zombie, emotionally flatlined, and Xander’s fingers trembled where they rested on her arm.
“No,” he said, keeping his voice soft and calm and reassuring. “No, we’re not. It’s all going to be fine.”
“We’re going to die,” she repeated. That seemed to be all she had — everything else had been scoured away, by the Moon’s relentless closeness, its overwhelming physical presence, the sheer weight of the flat white light spilling into the hallway all around her.
Xander lifted her to her feet, as gently as he could, putting both hands on her shoulders and hauling her upright — and she responded bonelessly, obediently, flopping like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“I’d better take you to the doc,” Xander muttered. “Maybe he has a spare happy pill… come on, then. This way.”
She walked, kind of, where he led — but only because he had his arm around her waist and was literally supporting her in the upright position — if he had removed the supporting arm she would have just collapsed on the floor where he dropped her, staring into nothing, repeating her conviction of everyone’s collective and presumably imminent demise.
Halfway to the elevators, he came on his second wake — up call — another con — goer, also very calm, who seemed to be wandering down the corridor and stopping anyone wearing any shade of red, poking them in the chest with his forefinger.
“Red shirt,” he would say. “Red shirt. Red shirt. Red shirt. You’re disposable. You’re dead. You won’t make it home from this mission. Shoot to kill. Red shirt. Red shirt. Red shirt.”
He turned to look at Xander and the girl whom he was practically carrying, and focused on the top she was wearing… which happened to be a dusty pink shade, not exactly red, but it seemed to be close enough for the doomsayer. He poked at the girl’s shoulder.
“Red shirt,” he said. “You’re going to…”
“Okay, now,” Xander interrupted sharply. The last thing his zombie — girl needed right now was for someone to actually confirm that she was going to die. “I think you’d better come along, too.”
“Red shirts. Someone’s got to tell them,” the guy said earnestly.
“These people already know. Come with me, I know a whole entire floor that you need to go and warn about this.”
“Okay,” said the doomsayer equably, and fell into step beside Xander, still tossing the occasional “Red shirt!” at any convenient reveler who happened to be passing by but seemingly quite happy to expand his hunting grounds.
Xander piled both of his charges into the nearest elevator and pushed the button for Dr. Cohen’s isolation wing floor, gratefully watching the doors close on the party in the corridor beyond. When they opened again, at the doctor’s floor, Xander looked up at the looming figure of a security guard — not one of the con’s own, a hotel employee — who barred his way with a barked, “Sorry, this floor is out of bounds.”
“It’s okay,” Xander said. “I’m Xander Washington, ConCom. You can check my badge and you can double check with Simon of con security if you need to. I have clearance to be here. And these two… need the doc. Who also knows me.”
The guard peered into the elevator car, but it didn’t appear to be holding any lurking revelers who might have wanted to move the party upstairs, and the girl on Xander’s rapidly tiring arm did look wilted enough to possibly need medical attention. He cleared his throat and stepped away.
“Okay, then.”
“Good work,” Xander said to the guard as he shepherded the red — shirt doomsayer in front of him while maneuvering the girl off the elevator. “Don’t let anyone else come crawling up here.”
The corridor was blessedly quiet, after the roar downstairs, and empty. Just as he realized somewhat helplessly that he had no idea where precisely to look for the doctor, the very person he needed emerged from one of the rooms, closing the door quietly behind him.
He looked up, saw Xander, and paused. “What brings you up here?”
“Well, right now, these two,” Xander said. “I wanted to check in with you anyway, but then I found two people who might benefit from a time — out.”
“We’re all going to die,” the girl said, looking up briefly to meet the doctor’s eyes, and then allowing her head to droop down until her lanky hair hid her face. Her weight was suddenly almost too much for Xander to support, and he actually staggered for a moment, but it was enough for the doctor to step up on her other side and take up the slack.
“Bring them through,” he said. “Come with me.”