“Anyone seen Al?” Libby called out into the chaos of the Green Room.
“Not since this morning,” Xander said, chewing on a messy sandwich thrown together from the cold meats and cheese platter that had been provided for the Green Room volunteers’ sustenance.
“I think we should…” Libby began, but then several earpieces squawked simultaneously, with people wincing and reaching up a hand to adjust the volume in their ears, and Xander looked up in consternation.
“Holy crap,” he said, tossing the remnants of his sandwich aside and tearing off a piece of paper towel from a nearby roll to wipe traces of mayo off his hands. “Somebody better get down there. I heard that our writer GoH kind of dropped in unannounced while Dave was waiting for him at the airport — and now we seem to have a situation again — Rory Grissom just walked in the door and got mobbed… that wasn’t supposed to happen. Where’s Andie Mae? Crap. Never mind, I’ll go rescue him.”
“Send him up here, we can hide him until they get him into his room safely,” Libby said.
“Too late to stash him, they know he’s here. Aw, dammit. I’ve a got heap of work still to do, and now I have to go babysit a drama queen.”
He vanished into the corridor, and two more pros turned up to fill the space he had vacated, asking for their envelopes. One was found easily, the other appeared to be missing altogether, throwing Libby into a state of near panic until the pro in question thought to mention that, since his new book was coming up under a new pseudonym, that might be the name the registration envelope might be under. In a quite different part of the alphabet.
“Take it easy,” Libby whispered to herself, looking up for a moment and seeing a Green Room thronged with visiting pro and ConCom members and convention volunteers, a swirling melee of smiling people full of energy and enthusiasm, waiting with a delighted anticipation for the real festivities to begin on the morrow but in the meantime running into friends they hadn’t seen for months, or maybe a whole year since the last con, chattering, exchanging news, asking after other friends who had not yet made an appearance.
It’s just the usual chaos, and it’ll only get more chaotic as the evening wears on…
“Libby, was it Alice who was in charge of the writers’ workshop this year?” somebody shouted into her ear, to be heard above the general noise level.
“No, she handed over to Lou Martin — I don’t think she could make the con this year,” Libby shouted in response.
“Seen Lou? Need to sort out something!”
“Don’t think she’s here yet!”
“Oh! Okay. I’d better email her. Hope she checks her email before she gets here tomorrow. One of her pros…”
But someone else was pawing at the envelopes, and Libby turned back to try and keep some control over the process. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed something that was sufficiently out of kilter with the rest of the scene for her to actually take notice. Amongst the heaving happy throng crowding the Green Room there was one person standing alone, with as much space between herself and everybody else as that was possible to achieve under the circumstances, a woman standing very still with both hands loosely by her side. She was dressed in something that may or may not have been a costume (not outlandish enough to be tagged as one immediately; just not commonplace enough to be immediately dismissed as not being one). There was something… strange… about her — the stillness, the ever — so — slightly off shade of her silvery skin, something about her eyes — but there was no time for further inspection. Someone else slipped in between Libby and the woman, and when Libby could look that way again she was gone. Libby could not even be certain any more what had attracted her attention, but the strange woman’s afterimage remained in the back of Libby’s head like a ghost, distracting her from something that she knew she had been about to do before she was distracted by something else before that.
She saw Xander slip back into the suite, and burrowed her way across to him to where he had gone back to the computers set up in the back room.
“Your movie star sorted?”
“I thought he’d be upset, but he was a pig in clover, surrounded by pink — haired chicks with fairy wings who were clamoring for his autograph and some really weird dude painted kind of silver or something who just stood there and watched — creepy, really, I don’t know if I ought to go give Sim and Security a shout about him.”
“What, you think we have a stalker or something on hand?” Libby yelped.
“He’s a mother — lovin’ movie star, doesn’t it come with the territory?” Xander said. “But maybe he was just a dude who was trying to pretend to be an android and fit in with the theme of the show, I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.”
Libby’s mind went fleetingly to the woman she had seen standing so very still in the melee of the Green Room, and come to think of it she too looked like she was playing an android character… but then, robots were this year’s theme, after all, and everyone was just tired and jumpy. That was all.
“There are a number of droids out there,” Libby said slowly. “And I distinctly remember seeing a baby blue Dalek near the Hospitality Suite area earlier.”
“Actually, to be honest, I’m more astonished that there was at least one dude dressed in a replica of the uniform Rory Grissom graced on the good ship Invictus,” Xander said, dismissing the matter. “I don’t know how the groupies even found him that fast, they must have been waiting at the front door for as long as it took for him to manifest. He seemed to be enjoying it all rather too much — I almost had to drag him bodily away from there before he spent all his con capital on one spectacular meet and greet — we have plans for him at Opening Ceremonies, after all, and that’s in just a few hours. Where’s the Steel Magnolia when we need her?”
The Steel Magnolia, which was what Andie Mae was known as behind her back half in affection and half in abject terror, was chewing on her perfect lower lip while cradling her cellphone between her shoulder and her ear in a quiet spot she had found just inside a newly — cleared hotel bedroom due to be used as a programming room the next day. But Al Coe’s phone kept on going to voicemail, and she had left three messages already — she had started out by being snarky, but by the third message she had graduated to Please call me, where ARE you, I am getting worried. This fourth call was not giving her any more joy, and she finally thumbed off the phone with a frustrated grimace and without leaving another message. A passing thought about starting to call the local hospitals meandered across the surface of her mind, but then she mentally shook herself and firmly admonished her more paranoid self to stop being ridiculous — and to possibly start thinking of something adequate to say when Al did turn up with those posters, which were turning into quite the production.
Turning sharp right as she exited the sanctuary of the not — yet — panel — room, she nearly collided with a figure standing close to the wall, very still, his skin a silvery — white, with two pale eyes set dully into an almost expressionless face.
“Sorry,” she said automatically, ducking around the guy.
He did not respond, by word or gesture, and Andie Mae briefly felt as though she should be offended and flounce off in a huff — but she had other things on her mind, and she methodically subtracted the silver man from her thoughts as she hurried forward and plunged into the busier corridors where the con was beginning to swing into a higher gear.