"Cornish game hens, Lieutenant? How will that help hide the fugitives?"
"I don't know, ma'am. They might be stocking a hidden hideaway with food."
"Bull semen, Lieutenant? Earthworms?" Arteria leaned forward, hands placed flat upon the desk. "Dung?"
Billings turned red. "Maybe they're hiding on a ranch or a farm."
"Could be, actually. Anyway, you've convinced me. Something's up. Get reports on all unusual activity by known or suspected fans. Let's get 'em!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Lee Arteria thumbed idly through the file folders. They're up to something. But what? Fans were technophiles, so they were watched; but they were mostly flakes, so the effort was sporadic and incomplete. And they kept trying to recruit the cops, lecturing them, giving them reading material, driving them crazy.
More fanac would surface presently. Bull semen, earthworms, dung, game hens? Worse than the Stardust Motel Westercon Banquet! Bouncing potatoes, bouncing potatoes--A known fan in Portland bought rabbits. One buck and several females. How did that fit the pattern? Impregnating rabbits with bull semen? A secret gengineering project? But to what purpose? You'll come abouncing potatoes with me!
Angels down. Fans to the rescue. That, said the waitress, is roast beef and a salad, too! You'll come a-bouncing potatoes with one! But what would they want with Cornish game hens?
The St. Louis Society for Creative Anachronism were not exactly fans. But there was considerable overlap between SCA and fandom; and Oliver Brown had been King Roland II, which made him a Royal Duke, and the SCA people were deferential to their aristocracy. The place was used by fans; but it was an SCA fief.
The museum was a large, low-ceilinged space broken up by partitions and display cases into quasi-rooms ill-lit by kerosene lanterns and candles. Men practiced with padded weapons in cleared spaces. Women showed each other intricate ways of making cloth with their fingers. Men, women, children huddle around the light sources, reading tattered old books; talking and arguing with animated gestures; or, in a few cases, writing intently on smudged tablets of lined paper.
Two knights brought Gordon inside, one at each elbow, and helped him to a chair. He was pale with effort… no, Gordon was stronger than that now. Pale with shock. He'd walked under four corpses.
Alex said, "Still think the Well is worth saving, tovaritch?"
Gordon nodded. "Desperately so."
"Where's Sherrine?"
"Helping Pins with docking maneuvers. A squire has shown them where to hide the truck. Why, are you lonely, Alex?"
"We're to meet the King all together. Never mind, that must be them." There was activity at the door. Passwords were exchanged, while the silent giant Fafhrd took his defense position. Duke Hugh ushered them in: Sherrine, Bob Needleton, Harry Czescu and Jenny Trout. Gordon and Alex stood to join them. Duke Hugh whispered instructions before they were led to meet the King.
The procession was short. All eyes were on them. Alex enjoyed having Sherrine on his arm, though she was supporting him. The King was a large young man whose nose had once been smashed flat against his face. It was fun to watch him try to balance hero worship against his royal dignity. Still, he was the man who had beaten every other fighter in St. Louis; that was how you got to be King. The four bowed, with Sherrine and Bob supporting the Angels.
They were turned loose into a party that was just starting to turn raucous.
Harry and Jenny stayed behind, by invitation of the King. Some of the court settled in a circle. Some had lutes or tubes that turned out to be musical instruments. Alex listened for a bit. Songs of past and future--
"Wanted fan for plain sedition, like the singing of this tune.
If NASA hadn't failed us we'd have cities on the moon.
If it weren't for fucking NASA we'd at least have walked on Mars.
If I never can make orbit, then I'll never reach the stars."
Never can make orbit… Harry and Jenny were singing to Alex's soul. Alex wasn't in the mood for that much gloom. He moved away, toward laughter.
Jenny's voice followed him. "How's this, Majesty?"
"Wanted fan for mining coal and wanted fan for building nukes;
Wanted fan by William Proxmire and a maddened horde of kooks.
Washington, D.C., still wants me 'cause I tried to build a dam.
If they're tearing down the cities I'll help any way I can."
"Yeah, Jenny, I know you would…"
Gordon gravitated to one of the fans who was writing furiously on a legal pad. He stood a little aside so as not to distract the woman; but Alex could see that she was aware of the Angel's hovering presence.
Alex wandered among mannequins dressed in the style of mountain man, Plains Indian, cowboy. They stood ghostly sentinel amid prairie dioramas and reconstructed Conestogas. Sunbonnets and calico and flintlocks. A moldboard plow. A la riata coiled to loop over a steer's horns. Chaps and Stetson hat. Buckskin shirt and leggings done up with beads and quillwork. A birchbark canoe bearing a coureurde bois. The opened diary of a woman who had crossed the Plains in an 1840's wagon train. Alex tried to read what was written there, but the light was too dim.
All the ages interfaced. No wonder fans were comfortable here.
Gordon, he saw, was deep in conversation with an aspiring writer named Georgina. The stilyagin was sitting lotus beside her on the floor and was pointing to something on her pad. They had gathered a small audience--all femmefans, Alex noted--and she was nodding with a very serious look on her face to whatever Gordon was saying.
Alex found a chair and sagged into it, a bit too tired to be sociable.
Somebody brought him a pewter flagon of fairly powerful punch. A younger fan brought an elderly couple over and introduced them as Buz and Jenn. "Have you made much use of the shuttle tank?" Jenn asked. "The one that went up with the last shuttle?"
Alex nodded. Noblesse oblige. "We couldn't live without it. And the other one. I've heard the story, of how the pilots and a friend in Mission Control brought the first tank to orbit. It was supposed to splash, but the pilots pulled the circuit breakers for the separation charge igniters."
Buz nodded. "The astronauts and cosmonauts had already decided to try to build a civilization. They had to have the tanks for living space."
"You were in on that?" Alex asked.
"A little," Jenn said. "They couldn't do that but once, though. Then came--"
"The Last Shuttle," Buz said.
"Yeah. I was in it," Alex said.
"We know," Jenn said. "How are Ian and Alicia?"
"You knew them?"
"Yes."
"Dad was killed in a blowout nine years ago," Alex said. "Mother died last year. Heart."
"Oh. I'm sorry," Jenn said. She turned to her husband. "They had twenty years together. Up there."
"And we're still here," Buz said. He turned to Alex. "It was Ian and Alicia or us," he said. "When the astronauts decided to take the last shuttle up. The space program was winding down, and we thought it would be important to get more people into the habitats. Peace and Freedom. Cooperation between U.S. and Russia. Symbols of peace and progress. They already had a shuttle tank in orbit, and we wanted to send another, but mostly we wanted to send up families. Jenn and I were candidates. So were Ian and Alicia, and you, only you didn't know it. You were about six, as I recall, and your mother was small, so the two of you weighed less than I do."
Georgina and Gordon had come to listen, and others gathered around. "What happened to the last shuttle?" Georgina asked. "You still have it, don't you?"
"Sure. It can't reenter. It was damaged."