Bimbos of the Death Sun Read online

After a few seconds of polite silence, Diefenbaker sighed. “Inherit the Stars. James P. Hogan. He’s an engineer, too.”

  “Oh. I don’t have much time for reading fiction, really. When I’m not doing my research, I’m usually in my garage taking a car apart.” Usually Marion’s car. He could never convince her that the Christian Science approach was not a viable one to auto mechanics: the car would not heal itself if left alone, you had to fix it.

  Diefenbaker had an inspiration. “I bet you’ll like the technical displays. We have a room of computer set-ups, air ionizers, and various other high-tech toys.”

  Omega grinned. “Lead the way.”

  “All right. Oh, by the way, Miles Perry, one of the con organizers, and I are supposed to have dinner with your fellow author. Would you like to join us?”

  “With Appin Dungannon? Sure, I guess so.” Even people who couldn’t read had heard of Appin Dungannon. His characters had been borrowed for a Saturday morning cartoon series called “Dungannon’s Dragons,” and cardboard displays in every drugstore and supermarket hawked the Runewind books. “I hope he won’t expect me to have read his stuff, though.”

  Diefenbaker smiled. “Don’t volunteer the information. He never talks about his work, anyhow.”

  The front doors of the hotel swung open, and a gaunt young man with matted black hair and burning eyes marched into the lobby. He was dressed in a floor-length navy-blue overcoat, with a guitar slung over one shoulder. Rasputin, thought Omega. A mixed crowd of turtlenecks and satin cloaks converged on the new arrival, chanting, “Monk Malone! Monk Malone!”

  Omega admired the modest but genial attitude the young man took toward his admirers. He made a graceful celebrity, signing his name with a flourish on a couple of Rubicon programs. “What does he write?” he asked Diefenbaker. “Or is he an actor?”

  Diefenbaker stopped in mid-wave. “Monk Malone? He’s a BNF. I thought everybody had heard—oh, no, I guess you wouldn’t. BNF stands for Big Name Fan. He goes to all the conventions, knows all the filksongs, contributes to a dozen fanzines. He’s a household word.”

  Omega was still puzzled. “But what does he do?”

  “You mean in mundane terms? When he isn’t at cons? I think he’s still a custodian at the hospital. He works every weekend that there isn’t a con, so they’re pretty good about letting him off to come to them.”

  Omega shook his head. A hospital custodian was posing for pictures with various costumed princesses. It still didn’t make sense. “But what’s he so famous for?”

  “He’s a fan,” said Diefenbaker gently. “And he’s very good at it.”

  The elevator doors opened just then, and Miles Perry shot out like the White Rabbit in Wonderland. He halted for breath in front of Diefenbaker and Omega, and pointed in the direction of the upper floors of the hotel. “Do you know what he wants?” he demanded.

  “Dungannon?” asked Diefenbaker.

  Perry nodded vigorously. “Who else?”

  “Well … what does he want?”

  “I don’t know!” wailed Perry. “Something called ‘Smarties’ and ‘Yorkies.’ Drugs, I expect.”

  “No, Miles. It’s British candy. Smarties are like M&Ms, and a Yorkie is a chocolate bar.” Being a Canadian gave Diefenbaker an occasional cultural advantage over his more insular American colleagues.

  Miles Perry slapped his forehead. “Great! Where am I supposed to get British candy on five minutes’ notice?”

  “Just tell Dungannon it can’t be done,” said Omega reasonably.

  They both looked at him as if he were tap-dancing on a mine field. Miles turned back to Diefenbaker. “But, seriously, Dief, what am I going to do?”

  Diefenbaker shrugged. “Mass appeal, I guess.” Cupping his hands to his mouth, he bellowed out across the lobby, “We need some British candy, folks! Anybody got any? All help will be appreciated.”

  A wave of shrugs passed through the clumps of people, but after a few moments of silence, a blonde girl in a green tunic and blue body-paint approached them. “British,” she said shyly to Diefenbaker. “Like … does that include Scotland?”

  Diefenbaker hastily changed a snicker into an encouraging smile. “Yes, Kathy. Indeed it does. Why?”

  She twisted her yellow sash and shifted from one foot to the other in an effort of concentration. “Well … like I met this guy today, you know, in the elevator, and he said he was from Scotland, but he wasn’t dressed up or anything. He was just in regular old jeans. I’d say he was a mundane. But he might like candy!”

  “I’ll find him if I have to mind-meld the desk clerk!” cried Miles, hurrying away.

  Diefenbaker thanked the blue lady with grave politeness and sent her on her way. “You see what I mean about Appin Dungannon?” he said to Jay Omega. “He probably doesn’t even want the candy. I expect he’s looking forward to the tantrum he’s going to pitch when he doesn’t get it.”

  Jay Omega smiled. “I was just thinking how nice it would be to be famous enough to be difficult.”

  The Scottish folksinger picked up another magazine. Suppose you didn’t want to fix gourmet meals in minutes, lose ten pounds in two weeks, or redecorate your kitchen? What did you bloody read in the States? Magazines that were sold in brown paper wrappers, he supposed, but those were a bit of a bore as well. He thought of turning the television back on, but there’d be nothing at that hour except the soaps. When he had first arrived in the U.S. for his folksinging tour of the East Coast, he’d planned on being quite a dedicated tourist, dutifully spending his days on bus tours and consulting guide books. After a while, though, all the cities became as indistinguishable as the hotel rooms, and he stopped going out at all. He had thought of doing some sightseeing in Washington, D.C., since he was so close. But he was thirty miles away from D.C., with no car, dependent on a ride to the gig, stuck in another of those bloody hotels; the view out of his window looked like every other place he’d been: gas stations, fast food joints, and an endless stream of four-lane traffic. He still sent postcards off to Margaret in Glasgow, of places he hadn’t bothered to go and see, but he spent his afternoons reading magazines or watching telly, until it was time to get ready for his evening performance. Bloody boring it was, too. Didn’t the Yanks ever get tired of “Auld Lang Syne?”

  He decided to have a quick look over the arrangement of his opening song, but a knock on the door saved him the trouble.

  “Yes?” he called out. “Who is it?” You never knew about crime in the States, even in good hotels—which this one wasn’t, not with Martians in the lobby.

  “Mr. McRory!” More tapping.

  “I’m Donnie McRory!” he yelled back. “I asked who you were!” He decided to open the door. It wasn’t likely to be autograph hunters in this godforsaken—“Well?” he demanded of the burly young man on the threshold.

  Miles Perry nearly lost his nerve, but the thought of Appin Dungannon’s tiny face, purple with rage, spurred him on. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I’m one of the organizers of the science fiction convention, and we had a sort of emergency come up. I … I was wondering if by any chance you had some British candy with you?”

  Donnie McRory narrowed his eyes. “Would it be a scavenger hunt?”

  “Oh, no! Our guest author at the convention has asked … demanded, really … that we get him some Yorkies and Smarties, and we were wondering if … if …” Miles realized how inane all of it must sound to someone not faced with Appin Dungannon’s malevolent presence. “He’s a very famous person.”

  Donnie McRory sighed. A very famous person. He played to sell-out crowds at the Glasgow City Hall, packed them in at every Edinburgh Festival for the last five years, had a couple of specials on the BBC … but this writer bloke was a “very famous person,” and he was somebody to borrow candy from. The United States could be very bad for one’s ego. He looked again at Miles Perry’s anxious face. “Well,” he said, shaking his head, “I can let you have a couple of Yorkies. Didn’t bring anything else
with me. Why don’t you get him some M&Ms? They’re pretty similar.”

  Miles accepted the chocolate bars as if he had just pulled them from a stone in suburban Camelot. “Oh, thank you! You’ve saved my life! Listen, if you’d like to come to the Con …”

  Donnie McRory waved him away. “Thanks all the same, but I’ll give it a miss.” Ah, well, he thought, closing the door, it will make a fine story to tell back home. “What did you do in America, Donnie?”—“I loaned chocolate bars to the Martians.”—Ah, well. He picked up a magazine: “Learn to Say No Without Guilt.” Perhaps he ought to have a look at that.

  THREE

  Jay Omega tried to stand still as Diefenbaker patted an adhesive name tag onto the pocket of his blazer. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a mousy young girl in a harem costume talking earnestly to an Imperial Stormtrooper.

  “Interesting outfits,” he remarked to Diefenbaker.

  “Much of a muchness,” said Dief, shrugging. “All the girls who weigh less than one-twenty wear as little as possible, and the rest of them put on cloaks and medieval dresses to conceal their bulk. You get used to it. I’d invite you to judge the costume contest, but we’re using that honor as a sop to Dungannon.”

  “I don’t know anything about costume design, anyway,” murmured Omega.

  “Neither does Dungannon. He lets his gonads do the judging, which means that the Galadriel with the best cleavage will win. Oh, dear, I think you’re about to be put on the spot as guest author.”

  Jay reached into his pocket for his felt-tip autographing pen, but before he could fish it out, he realized that the pudgy young man who had just walked up was holding a sheaf of computer printouts, not a copy of Bimbos of the Death Sun. He managed a weak smile, hoping that this was not a Tech sophomore who had tracked him to the Con with a Drop-Add form.

  “Really glad to meet you, Jay Omega,” wheezed the fan. “I’ve read your book.”

  Walter Diefenbaker glanced at the name tag, winced, and began to edge away.

  “I’m a fellow writer, and I thought we could talk a little shop.”

  “What have you written?” asked Jay Omega. As soon as he said it, he realized that he might be talking to Stephen King, in which case he had just committed the worst blunder in con history, but instinct told him that this could not be so. Stephen King’s presence would be heralded nonstop if he should so much as stroll through the lobby, and besides, Jay Omega was sure that if he ever did meet Stephen King, he would not be greeted as a fellow writer and invited to talk shop.

  Bernard Buchanan began to rifle through his papers. “I publish a fanzine called Apa-Lling, and beginning in this ish, I have a parody of Tratyn Runewind, called “Scratchy Woodwind,” and instead of a magic sword, he has an enchanted oboe. Get it? Woodwind?” He thrust a Coke-stained page into Jay Omega’s hand. “Now in this one, he offers to give the Demon Emperor a blow job. Get it? Like the Pied Piper!”

  Jay Omega flipped through the pages of Apa-Lling, because it seemed preferable to actually talking to the crazed being in front of him.

  The fanzine, a grainy photocopy of a computer-generated document, featured on its title page a still from The Day the Earth Stood Still. In front of the Washington Monument, Michael Rennie as Klaatu stood with his robot, Gort, but the photo had been altered so that Gort had the face of Ronald Reagan. The caption, serving as the fanzine title, was: “Now That’s APA-LLING!”

  Omega turned to a page at random. The words “Person to Person” were hand-lettered at the top in magic marker, and the rest of the page consisted of two columns of short messages, addressed to a name or a set of initials. Still trying to make sense of the page, he read a few:

  “John and Pat: Hope you’re no longer croggled by all the mundanes in ’Frisco. Remember, the Force is with you.”

  “Chip Livingstone: Thanks for your letter; great as always, but writing letters is such a hassle. Why can’t you call? If bread is a problem, call me at work, and I’ll call you back on the WATS-line. It would be easier to settle things without having to rely on the Post Offal.”

  “M.P.: Don’t forget that in the British election of 1859, Italy was one of the few issues that solidly united the British Left. The Workers liked Garibaldi as a popular leader with an army; the Liberals liked bigger trading partners and the principles of nationality; and the Whig Lords approved of the climate. I know Browning wrote: ‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s here!’ but he was in Italy at the time—and a good thing, too, since most Aprils in Britain are solid fog and rain. No wonder they conquered India!”

  “Never mind that,” said Bernard, peering over Jay’s shoulder. “Read my parody. Chip Livingstone says it’s brilliant.”

  Jay Omega blinked. “Who’s Chip Livingstone?”

  Bernard Buchanan looked shocked. “You’ve never heard of Chip Livingstone? Why he’s a super-fan! He’s a major contributor to a dozen fanzines, and he’s ranked third in the wargamers’ poll, and I’ve heard that he is a personal friend of Robert Silverberg!”

  “Jay Omega is an author,” said Diefenbaker gently. “You can’t expect him to know fan politics.”

  “What is this stuff?” asked Jay Omega, still staring at the page of non sequiturs.

  “APA’s are soap boxes for people who can’t get anyone to publish them,” murmured Diefenbaker. “These are messages to individual subscribers.”

  Jay Omega blinked. “Then why don’t they just write personal letters to each other?”

  “Would you like to keep that copy?” Bernard persisted. “I was saving it for Walter Diefenbaker, but I can’t find him anywhere.”

  “Perhaps he’ll turn up later,” Dief assured him, grasping Jay Omega firmly by the elbow. “We have to dash.”

  When they had put several clumps of warriors and slave girls between them and Bernard Buchanan, Jay Omega looked again at the grubby print-out. “I still don’t understand what this is.”

  “Think of it as a chain letter for disturbed children,” said Diefenbaker soothingly. “I doubt if you’ll find Bernard’s parody very entertaining, so you can either lose that copy or be prepared to dodge him for the rest of the weekend. Unless, of course, you fancy telling him the truth about his work.”

  Jay Omega slid the papers into an R2-D2 trash can.

  “Wise move,” nodded Diefenbaker approvingly. “Let’s hide out in the art gallery until he latches on to someone else.”

  “Did he want advice about his writing?” asked Jay, still trying to make sense of it.

  “Not advice, really. Praise. And then he’d have wanted the name of your agent, and your editor’s phone number, and a letter of recommendation to both.”

  Diefenbaker led the way out of the hotel’s lobby, a marble-floored rotunda dotted with red plush couches and potted palms, and into a corridor which connected a cluster of meeting rooms used for conventions within the hotel. Small white cards attached to the hotel’s printed map, labeled the Pocahontas Room “Hucksters,” the adjoining Powhatan Room “Art Gallery,” and the Thomas Jefferson Room at the end of the hall was marked “High Tech,” indicating the computer display area. Past the vending machines and the rest rooms, a smaller meeting room, the Patrick Henry Nook, had been labeled “Private,” and was reserved for the use of Miles Perry and his fellow convention officials.

  “These rooms are for the permanent exhibits,” Dief explained, “The seminars and gaming sessions are scattered throughout the hotel in smaller meeting rooms, and tomorrow night’s banquet will be upstairs in the auditorium. You’ll find a map on the back of your program in case you need it.”

  He led the way into the art room, where six freestanding partitions had been set up, each holding a collection of paintings and sketches, which were framed or mounted, and bore the artist’s name on an index card below.

  Jay stared up at a picture of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock changing into a werewolf on a chessboard in space. Not Salvador Dali, he decided.

  “I like this one,” Diefen
baker remarked, pointing to an oil painting of a unicorn beside a waterfall. “My taste in art is rather Victorian, I fear.”

  Jay Omega was staring at an orange spaceship arching above a red and silver planet. “I don’t think the perspective is quite right on that one.”

  “Probably not. It’s one of Eric Bradley’s, and he’s only fourteen. But very promising, don’t you think? Part of the proceeds from Rubicon go toward an art scholarship.”

  “Umm.” Jay Omega thought they might do well to invest in some psychiatric counseling as well, but he reminded himself that if he had any fans, these were they, and that charity was in order.

  “Sometimes we have a professional artist come to the con as a special guest. Of course, we can’t afford Boris Vallejo, but we did try to get Peter Seredy. He did your cover, you know. His style is unmistakable.”

  Omega nodded. Certainly is, he thought, but my book advance won’t cover the price of a hit man.