“That’s all right then,” she said. “But you’ll have to wait. I’m out on my feet. I have to go to sleep.” She folded over as she said this and I only just put my arm out in time to catch her. “Need sleep,” she said.
“Here,” I said, and guided her over to the bed where Nick was.
Maree threw herself on it. Her fist pounded at Nick’s shoulder. “Move over, lump!” This Nick, without waking, instantly did. Maree was at her most irresistible. I thought that, like Nick before, she was asleep at once. I was just turning away, with a lightness of mind I could not have imagined five minutes before – Nick had not lied, all would be well, all problems solved – when Maree’s arm shot up, holding her glasses. “Put them somewhere,” she said. “And please wake me in time for Uncle Ted’s speech. I promised him.”
Rupert Venables continued
We woke Nick and Maree just before two. Maree, looking at Nick’s still-unopened eyes, was inclined to think we had left it too late. “There’s no way he’ll be alive by three – and I must go and get changed. These clothes are frightful,” she said.
Zinka said quickly that she would fetch Maree some clothes. We did not want Maree going into her room yet. I had spent the morning trying to delouse her computer and Nick’s. Nick’s was easy – only a matter of cleaning out an enslavement programme – but Maree’s computer was woven through and through with thorny, sterile growths from that wretched bush-goddess. I was thinking of junking it and offering her one of my own computers instead, except that, so far, I could not see a way to do it without Maree knowing that I had looked at her files. There was quite a lot in the latest ones about me, none of it complimentary.
Nick surprised Maree by opening both eyes and eating the lunch we had brought. Then he too said he needed to change. I looked at him properly for the first time and saw that he was wearing clothes as ragged as Maree’s, very short and tight, as if he had grown out of them, and shoes through which his toes showed. Something to do with Babylon, evidently, although neither Nick nor Maree said so. In fact, they both behaved as if there was an embargo on them talking about their time in the dark landscape. When I tried to discover why Maree had been so far behind Nick, she and he looked at one another, sharing some knowledge, and did not say anything.
Will, Zinka and I exchanged glances and tried not to ask any more.
Before we left to hear Ted Mallory’s speech, Maree asked if she could use my telephone to get news of Derek Mallory. She referred to him as her “little fat dad” and her manner made me wonder if she even knew he was not her father, let alone knowing who her real father was and what had happened to her because of him. I really do not think she remembered being stripped. But some of the rest she must have known. She turned from the phone with her face a heart-shape of delight and looked at Nick, full of meanings.
“It’s gone down almost to nothing already!” she said.
Nick, understandably, looked a little dour. He had made a genuine sacrifice and, whatever it had been, it clearly still hurt. I was sorry about that. I almost wish he had been selfish enough to ask for what he wanted. Whatever it had been, I was certain it would have been in direct conflict with the plans of Dakros and, since this was the Babylon secret, Dakros would not have got his way. Now I was going to have to do something. While I worked on the computers, I had come to the conclusion that Will’s idea of laying a geas on Nick was probably the only way to stop Dakros. But only as a last resort, I thought. There must be some other way.
Just before three, we were all smartened up, except Will, who is uncomfortable in any but the oldest clothes. I had got round to shaving at last. Zinka, when she fetched Maree some clothes, had changed into a flowing green velvet gown, which made her by far the most striking member of the group. We left my room in a body. And, I
see in retrospect, that was the last moment when events were in any way within my control.
In the corridor outside my room was a large crowd of people, all of them concerned and agitated. Mr Alfred Douglas, the hotel manager, was prominent among them and so was Rick Corrie. The rest seemed to be the entire convention committee, with the exception of Maxim Hough. As we came out of my room, Mr Douglas was pointing to the large brown pebbly area in the ceiling where Gram White’s bullet, deflected by my shield, had brought down the plaster. One of the committee was saying huffily, “Yes, of course we’ll pay for it, if you can prove it was a convention member who did it. Frankly, I don’t see how—”
“Uh-oh!” said Zinka. “Let me handle this. You go. I’ll catch you up.” She took hold of Rick Corrie’s arm. As we edged past towards the lift, she was saying to him, “You’d better send the bill for this to Gram White. He loosed off with a gun. I saw him do it. Want me to speak to the manager for you?”
And Corrie replied frantically, “Well, don’t tell him that! He’d never let us hold the convention here again!”
“Trust me,” Zinka said and walked demurely up to Mr Douglas. Goodness knows what story she was preparing to spin, but I felt I could trust her to say something convincing. We went on without her.
Zinka had still not caught up with us when we reached the main function room. It was largely full already. The seats on the far side of the aisle were packed. I saw fat Wendy over there and one or two people I knew, but a surprising number of them were either concealed in grey capes or wearing armour. Chain mail and horned helmets predominated, but plate armour was in there too, from every conceivable era of history. I heard Nick explaining to Will – both of them looking rather wistfully at the costumes – that a lot of people arrived on the Sunday specially for the tournament. New arrivals or not, these people were certainly having fun. Most of them had tankards or bottles to hand and, from time to time, a sort of clanking Mexican wave was in progress, accompanied by huge shouts and much waving of a long white banner with SWORDS AND SORCERY painted on it.
The nearer side was nearly as full, mostly with people I had come to know over the first day or so. I saw the lady with OOOK on her, my world-sharing American friends, the singers who had interrupted my tête-à-tête with Thurless, and the three folk with the baby, now dressed quite normally in jeans. In fact, almost the only empty seats were in the front row on this side. It is curious the way nobody likes to sit in the front row. The only people in it were Tina Gianetti and her boyfriend, near the centre aisle. It seemed that Gianetti was keeping to her vow never to chair anything involving Ted Mallory.
I saw Kornelius Punt rise from his seat somewhere in the centre in order to stare at us avidly as we filed into the empty front row, but this was so much his usual behaviour that I thought nothing of it. I could sense also that the crowd in the armour were raising power, but this is something an excited crowd does anyway. I thought little of that either, except to make sure that we had the usual protections around us. Most of my attention was on the half-laughing argument I was having with Maree. Both of us were enjoying the sense that so much more was going on between us, behind the argument.
As we were sitting down, most of the men in horned helmets broke into low, lilting song. One of the three ladies-and-gentlemen with the baby remarked, “They will keep doing that. I suppose it keeps them happy.”
I grinned at him-or-her and said to Maree, “But I’ve got a big yard at the back. They’ll have lots of exercise.”
“They’ll need to swim,” Maree said. “It’s bad for aquatic birds not to.”
“I tell you what,” I said. “Andrew, my neighbour’s, got a pond in his garden just up the road. I know he’ll let the quacks use it.”
“They’ll probably find it anyway,” she said. “Is it clean?”
“Good question,” I said. “As Andrew is an inventor and the most absent-minded man I ever knew, probably not. I’ll make him have it dredged. Or perhaps I should change houses with him.”
“I still think you should dig a pond in your kitchen,” Maree said. “People who keep pets have to make sacrifices.”
“Wouldn’t it do,” I asked, “if I simply went and stood in Andrew’s pond? Day and night, of course.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “In your nice suit and Will’s green wellies.”
We were laughing at this image when we looked up to find Janine standing over us, in a new jumper that looked as if she was being eaten by a lettuce. Little green beads like caterpillars danced on her left shoulder. “How did you get here?” she said to Maree.