Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 29

“It can’t be!” I shrieked across the noise. “Anyway, it wasn’t one room, it was two.”

Odile, looking fractionally more worried, punched buttons some more. “Mr and Mrs Mallory,” she said. “One double room, already taken. That is all there is on the computer. No doubles left. Sorry.”

“We aren’t Mr and Mrs Mallory,” Nick attempted to explain.

And I probably made things worse by adding, “We’re cousins. Those Mallorys are his dad and his mum. We want a single room each.”

“I’m sorry,” Odile intoned. “Al

l rooms have been taken by the convention.”

She obviously hadn’t understood a word we said, but we still tried to behave as if she was rational. “We know,” we said in chorus. Nick said, quite slowly and loudly, “Two of those rooms are for us.”

Odile looked blank. She punched more buttons. “One double room for Mr and Mrs Mallory is already taken by the convention. Sorry.”

By this time, we were both leaning rather desperately over the desk, as if we could get through to Odile if we got close to her. Nick said, “Look. Look at us. Do we look as if we’re married?”

Odile shot him a blank, worried look. Perhaps where she came from people do get married at Nick’s age. Anyway, she said, “It is in the computer.”

So I had a go. I said, “Listen, Odile. Try single rooms in the name of Mallory. Please? As a favour.”

Without altering her blank, worried look, Odile went back to pressing buttons. The suspense was too much for both of us. We sort of turned away, and Nick muttered, “I think she’s a robot.”

“Android anyway,” I muttered back. Then I discovered that the ceiling of the hotel foyer was a mass of mirrors, large and small. The entire confusion of folk was reflected there, upside down, milling about, sort of hanging there mixed up with trees in urns and piles of suitcases. There were the three people with the baby again, passing the baby chair round from one to another so that they could hug someone they had just met. I could see Nick and me. We rippled from one mirror to another as I moved my head – one tall dark good-looking teenage boy and one short girl who looked surprisingly like a normal human being. It gave me a queer feeling, as if I was reading the future in the sky. It caused an anxious thought to strike me. “Nick,” I said. I could see from the ceiling that he was looking at the three with the baby, cautiously and sort of sideways, trying to see which of them was female and which male. It wasn’t easy to tell. Two of them could have been either. I jabbed his elbow with my longest fingernail. “Nick, who actually booked our rooms? Janine or Uncle Ted?”

“Oh – Mum did,” he said.

As he said it, a little of the blankness faded from Odile’s face. We both spotted it in the ceiling and turned to her eagerly. “Mallory,” she said. “The computer has one single room booked for Nick Mallory.”

“Oh fun!” I said. “Dear Janine.”

“Look some more,” Nick said to Odile. “There should be one for Maree Mallory too.”

The blankness descended on Odile again, but she pressed buttons. I suddenly couldn’t bear to look. I thought I was going to cry. I mean I know Janine hates me, but to have it publicly demonstrated like this was almost too much – and the thought of driving all the way back to Bristol in the dark was definitely too much. I looked firmly at the ceiling, where the man the three with the baby had been hugging was now moving upside down across the foyer, greeting this person and that. He stood out for his very white T-shirt with a row of large flat badges on it, and he had some sort of equipment clipped to his belt. But his stomach bulged and hid most of his belt. And then he went all blurred. In order not to cry, I rounded on Odile again. She was shaking her head.

“Oh look here!” I said. It came out booming. “There has to be a room for me if there’s one for Nick. My uncle’s Guest of Honour at this convention. He was told there would be rooms for his family!”

The man in the white T-shirt came up beside me. “Having trouble?” he said.

We both jumped. It was odd to find him real, as well as upside down in the ceiling beside my small shock-headed figure. One of his row of badges said COMMITTEE and when I pushed my glasses up my nose, I could see the name beneath that: RICK CORRIE. The rest of the badges said things like ALL POWER CORRUPTS, BUT WE NEED ELECTRICITY and DYSLEXIA RULES KO, and the thing clipped to his wide waist was a radio phone. He had a black streaky beard and a round pleasant face.

“This robot-woman thinks I don’t have a room booked,” I told him. I was ashamed of the angry, booming sob in my voice.

“Happens all the time,” Rick Corrie said cheerfully. “I’m supposed to be Hotel Liaison. Let me see what I can do.” He pushed me gently aside and started talking rapidly to Odile in a foreign language. Odile’s face turned from worried robot to the face of a human being and she began pushing buttons again with a will. Rick Corrie turned to Nick. “What was your name again? We’re trying to get your sister a room next to yours.”

“Cousin,” Nick said. “I’m Nick Mallory. She’s Maree.”

A great smile split Rick’s beard. “Then you’re the great man’s family! In that case we must definitely do a bit of room-juggling.” He leant back over the counter and exchanged more foreign talk with Odile. In under a minute, he was turning back and holding a key out to each of us. “Here you are. Rooms 534 and 535. Just sign these forms and then I’ll take you up to register with the convention.”

We signed, me at least in a wash of gratitude, and picked up our bags and followed Rick up the nearby stairs. I had a last glimpse of us in the ceiling, looking flurried and glad, and me a shock-headed scramble of legs as I caught up with Rick. “How did you work that?” I said.

“Easy,” he said. “I told her to give you a room that someone hadn’t turned up to claim.”

“But won’t he mind?” I puffed. The stairs were short but steep.

Rick shrugged his plump shoulders. “Too bad if he does. He hasn’t arrived when he said he would, and the Opening Ceremony’s coming up in half an hour. A lot of the programme items have already started. He’s late. Or he’s not coming and hasn’t bothered to cancel.”

There were more mirrors at the back of the wide landing the stairs led to. We watched ourselves advance as Nick asked, “What language did you speak to the robot-woman in?”

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
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