“I hope you only took those that were sealed,” Duncan said, signaling for a waiter.
“I was careful,” Doris said. “It sort of bothered me at first. But they seemed to like it and they really seemed to like my dancing. One of the drummers asked if I was going to be there tonight. I said probably. I know I have to sleep sometime, and I’m tired, but not the kind of tired where you can go to sleep. You know?”
“Yes,” Duncan said, nodding. “But you have to rest sometime. And, frankly, you could probably use a shower after dancing all night.”
“Do I smell?” Doris asked, looking panicked.
“No,” Duncan said, grinning. “But you still could probably use a shower. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Doris said.
“I’m not using my room for the next couple of hours,” he said, handing her a key. “Feel free to avail yourself of it. Get some sleep if you can, wash up if nothing else. Remember the rules of the con. Drink, Eat, Sleep, Game. Or costume, in your case. What are your plans for today?”
“More costuming panels,” Doris said. “Then I’m going to see if I can figure out how to make a harem-girl costume for tonight. I don’t think I can. There’s too much involved. And I need to figure out what costume I’m going to do for the contest.”
“If you’d like another suggestion…?” Duncan asked.
“Sure,” Doris replied. “You’ve been on the money so far.”
“Don’t spend all your time in costuming. There are a thousand things to do at this con. No person is all one thing. Or if they are, they’re called obsessives. You might try looking in on some other panels. I’m going to a demonstration by a friend of mine at one, over in the Marriott. You might want to look that up.”
“Damn, you’re up early.”
Doris looked up, then up again, at a tall, thin man with a straggly beard and long, frizzy hair.
“Ah,” Duncan said, grinning. “It’s Kelly. Kelly Lockhart, Doris Grisham. Doris, Kelly. Join us for breakfast?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Kelly said, grabbing a chair. “It’s not often that I get to eat breakfast with a beautiful lady.”
“I won’t tell Star you said that,” Duncan said, chuckling.
“Young lady.”
“Or that.”
“Redhead.”
“There you go. Foot nicely extracted. Doris, Kelly is a feature of Dragon*Con I don’t think you’ve yet had the dubious pleasure of experiencing.”
“Oh?” Doris asked, puzzled.
“I’m the court jester,” Kelly said. “Which means that since nobody takes me seriously I can get away with things that would otherwise be outrageous.”
“And people just say ‘Oh, it’s Kelly’ and shrug.”
“There you go.”
“Such as the fu…screw-up fairy?”
“Don’t remind me,” Kelly said, wincing. “Okay, there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed.”
“The problem is not crossing a line,” Duncan said. “It’s jumping across it butt naked. Or, perhaps, in the screw-up fairy costume.”
“You have all these in-jokes,” Doris said.
“Danger of an inbred community,” Duncan said, smiling. “The fu…screw-up fairy…”
“Tech-ops says that whenever something goes wrong, it’s the…screw-up fairy,” Kelly said, by way of explanation. “So one year I decided to come as the screw-up fairy.”
“Imagine yon large-hirsute, I might add-male in a size triple-XL Tinkerbell costume.”
“Technically it was Texas small.”
“Oh,” Doris said, grimacing. “Brain floss!”
“Yes, yes,” Duncan said, grinning. “We all wanted economy-size brain floss.”
“With condoms hanging from the belt,” Kelly pointed out. “Doesn’t make any sense, otherwise. I mean, it’d just be a guy cross-dressing if I didn’t do that.”
“And there is far too much of that at Dragon*Con, anyway,” Duncan said.
“I saw a great big fat bearded guy in a Sailor Moon outfit last night,” Doris said, shuddering.
“Sailor Moon cosplay should be outlawed,” Folsom said, nodding. “Seriously. There ought to be laws with stiff penalties. Hanging on first offense, with successively higher penalties.” Duncan frowned as his breakfast was served, and pulled out his cell phone to check the time. “This is fun, but I think it’s throwing my schedule off. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make Ed’s demo. Kelly, Doris is going to avail herself of my shower. After that, do you think you could be a friend and get her over to Ed’s demonstration?”
“Sure,” Kelly said. “I don’t have any plans.”
“I’m going to wolf this down and then scoot,” Folsom said. “Doris, don’t let this trickster lead you astray. He’s renowned for it. Kelly, actually get her to the demo, okay?”
“You just say that because you love me,” Kelly said, grinning.
“Or something like that,” Folsom replied.
“Eh, this is too effing weird,” Hjalmar said, looking at the crowds below. “If I’m getting this right, this is the next day, in the morning. And we were away for, what, two hours?”
“We were here for one day in this reality and out-of-body for two,” Sharice said, biting her lip. “There’s a rule going on here that I can’t define. Time is way skewed. I came right back because I was afraid we were going to miss the entire con if we stayed away. Instead, we’re right back where we should be starting again.”
“Rules of game?” Drakon said. “We rest and we restart at the proper time?”
“But who is running the game?” Sharice said. “And what are the other rules? Most especially, who is running the game? Because if it’s certain entities, then it’s going to be rigged.”
“Rigged or not, it’s the only game in town,” Hjalmar said as he threw on his mail. “What’s the plan? I take it I’m getting sentry again.”
“Where have we missed?” Sharice asked.
“It’s a huge con,” Drakon said. “We haven’t really hit the gaming areas. I covered the lower levels of the Hyatt yesterday. Ran into a fascinating guy in the anime room. He knew, like, every anime ever created and every martial arts movie ever. Even met Bruce Lee a couple of times.”
“Costuming,” Hjalmar said, waving at his armor. “There’s a whole huge track on that over at the Hilton. And we didn’t really hit the Hilton much at all.”
“Drakon, you take gaming,” Sharice said. “I’ll take costuming. Link up with Hjalmar at two. I’ll spell Hjalmar so he can get some food and rest. Then we roam again.”
“Works,” Drakon said, shaking his head. “Gaming. Why’d it have to be gaming?”
“Would you rather sit through lectures on period fabric making?” Sharice asked.
“Come to think of it, I really want to check out the gaming room…”
“You look refreshed,” Kelly said as Doris exited the elevator.
“I feel refreshed,” Doris said, heading to the lobby.
“Let’s take the tubeway,” Kelly said, gesturing in the opposite direction. “This time of day it’s not too crowded, and it’s closer.”
“I haven’t been this way before,” Doris said as they headed into the skyway. “I didn’t even know this was here.”
“There are a half-dozen ways to get back and forth,” Kelly said. “Trust me, I know them all. And you can watch the crazies from up here,” he added, gesturing down to the street. “Like the guy in armor who looks as if he’s a sentry.”
Doris stopped and considered the guy in period Norse costume.
“He looks familiar,” she said.
“That’s common,” Kelly replied, taking her arm. “And we’re walking…”
“Lots of people in costume already,” Doris said.
