“That sounds good,” Vince said, and actually meant it. Truth was, he did recall a raucous dinner at a con long past, at which he had had an uncommonly good time, and this man had definitely been there for that. By Sunday it was entirely possible that he would be happy to have this dinner companion.
“About half past sixish? Outside the restaurant?” Sam said. “That should be okay as far as any programming is concerned…And I’ll probably have this young’un in tow — may I introduce Marius Tarkovski, winner of his high school writing competition for three years running and very much wanting to walk in your shoes some day.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Vince said. “I look forward to it. And nice to meet you, Marius. We’ll talk.”
“Enjoy the con,” Sam said
Marius, who had been rendered quite speechless by the entire encounter, finally found his voice as he watched Vince Silverman’s back vanish into the throng in the corridor.
“Do you actually know everyone?” he demanded of Sam as they stood there and allowed the crowds to flow around them like water around an obstacle in its path.
“Oh, it’s quite the little club,” Sam said. “Put in enough years and enough cons and sooner or later you at least recognize most people. I remember one time I was at a smaller regional con and then I more or less went straight from that to that year’s Worldcon, in LA that year, and the first person I saw in the football — field — sized lobby of that enormous hotel was a person to whom I had said goodbye less than a week ago at another hotel halfway across the country. Sometimes cons feel like they warp the space — time continuum…”
“A space — time anomaly.”
“Don’t say that, you know what always happens to the Enterprise after they go poking too closely at one,” Sam said. “But that’s a bar conversation. We should go and hang out there — sooner or later the whole convention comes drifting by and finds you.”
“So I’ve heard,” Marius said dryly. “You’ve said it many times, and yet may I remind you again that technically I would probably be arrested…”
Sam grimaced. “It’s your own fault, boy, you talk and act like you aren’t a juvenile,” he said. “In theory the next best thing would be the Green Room because everyone filters through there sooner or later and there are no issues with you being underage — but there the problem might be me. Andie Mae might well have posted ‘thou shalt not pass’ spells on the door, and fire — breathing dragons would be released in defense of the realm if I came within a hundred feet of the sacred door. But there’s bound to be an early party or two going on. Maybe some of them won’t even think it’s necessary to card you, young’un, and we can pick up all sorts of loose talk if we keep our ears open.”
“Sam, what are you doing here?” Marius asked, giving his friend and mentor a long, measured gaze. “One of the other guys in the teen writer’s competition, he’s been volunteering this year, he’s pretty tight with the new bunch. He says that Andie Mae said that you were going to try and throw a monkey wrench into…”
“Ah, no, son,” Sam said, clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “I’m interested in how this whole thing plays out this year, with a new management crew calling the shots — and I’ve heard that it’s pretty much a given that if I did something one way, Andie Mae has done her utmost to do it as differently as she can. I would not shoot this con of all cons in the foot. I spent too much time and energy and blood and sweat and tears building up the equity here to tear it down out of some petty spite. No, I’m not out to pull the rug out from under her. But I do want to know just exactly what kind of rug it is that we are standing on. Come on. Keep your ears open. This will give you six good novels’ worth of material, if you take copious notes.”
After that last abortive attempt at connecting with Al on the phone, Andie Mae had gone so far as to complain about his continued absence to several of her ConCom members, and had even indicated that she was thinking of sending out the cavalry to look for him — or at least phoning the local lock — ups and hospitals to find out if he had done something that had landed him in either. She had been dissuaded, for the moment, and then something else claimed her immediate attention and erased the mystery from the top of her to — do list, with just a mental footnote to take her time and an exquisite pleasure in a properly crafted and blistering take — down of a welcome when Al did turn up — but if she had, in fact, phoned the local ER she might have found out more than she realized.
It was there that a dazed Al Coe began to realize just how much time had passed, that he had not called in to provide a reason for his non — arrival at the hotel with the posters everyone was waiting for, that he could not do so anyway since his phone seemed to be missing (and, upon further reflection, he could not remember what had happened to said posters, either), and that he actually had an arm in a sling which indicated that Something Bad Had Happened of which he didn’t quite have a full and complete recollection.
“I need to…” he began urgently, when a young nurse wearing scrubs with a teddy bear pattern on them walked into the room where he sat on a gurney, but she waved him back down when he tried to get to his feet. Those feet were bare, he noticed, with a disconnected idea that his shoes (as well as his phone and the posters) were also missing from the scene. The nurse pushed him back down on the gurney, gently but firmly.
“The doctor will be in to see you,” she said. “You should be all right to go home, with a few pain killers — do you have anyone we can call?”
“No,” Al said stupidly, his mind curiously blank — and that was true enough, his home was currently quite empty of anyone to whom his condition and whereabouts might be of interest. The reason, of course, was that his flatmate was already at the con. So was Andie Mae. So was pretty much everybody he knew. It only occurred to him belatedly, after the nurse had left, that he could have called them at the con. That he should have called them at the con.
His head ached.
When the doctor did turn up, some thirty or so minutes later, Al told him as much; the doctor pulled back his lower eyelids and peered into his eyes with a small flashlight.
“You don’t have concussion,” he said, “but you’re pretty out of it, anyway…”
“I should go home,” Al said. “Where’s my clothes? Where’s my car keys?”
The doctor looked him oddly. “Your car’s pretty smashed,” he said, “they towed that. Besides, I wouldn’t be happy with you driving anywhere right now. I’d actually prefer it if you stayed…”
“I have to get home,” Al said. And then blinked. “Towed?”
“Yes. The other guy was pretty totaled too. You smashed together pretty good. You’re both lucky it all ended up with just a few non — life — threatening broken bones.”
“Wait — towed? Towed where? Were the posters still in there?”
“The posters?” the doctor said, looking at Al strangely, obviously reconsidering his options with this patient.
“I was on my way to… which company? How do I get hold of…?”
The doctor consulted a chart, and then looked up again. “Mr Coe,” he said, “wherever it was that you were going, you aren’t exactly in any shape to go there right now. I am quite serious about — ”