“I’ll have the file uploaded to your secure address.”
“Yes, sir, you do that. And thank you.”
“You will keep us posted?”
“As soon as I have something, you’ll get it.”
“Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Gridley.”
“Likewise.”
Jay grinned as he discommed. This was a break. He had access to the Super-Cray, as much time as he wanted. He knew people who would cheerfully kill their grandmothers to be able to do that, and that was understandable—Super-Cray access was worth gem-quality diamonds. If he could come up with a proper parameter set, he could strain down to the quantum level—and if the information was out there, he could find it.
He
He grinned again, then waved his hand over the control and waited for the file to finish downloading.
The scenario was in the dealer’s room.
Such a place was passing weird, even for VR. There were thousands of people in the huge room, a convention center space across the street from a big chain hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. There were hundreds of tables stacked with moldy, old pulp magazines, sci-fi videos, and all manner of science-fiction and fantasy impedimenta, from toy ray guns that flashed lights and made electronic cheeps and chirps, to movie posters, to real swords based on those used by Conan the Barbarian and the Highlander.
It was a zoo. Noisy, packed, and very colorful. Must be a thousand people in the place milling back and forth.
Every third or fourth person in the place was dressed in some kind of science-fiction or fantasy costume— there were Darth Vaders, Captain Kirks and Mr. Spocks, Klingons, fairies, druids, Batmen, Supermen, purple aliens, and Luke Skywalkers. There were Princess Leias, in white robes and hair buns, and girls in tiny fur bikinis—some of whom looked great, some of whom looked like they—and anybody who had to look at them—would all be better served if, instead of bikinis, they had been wearing shrouds. . . .
At one point, what appeared to be the entire cast of the
Jay shook his head. He’d read the stuff as a kid, but never really gotten into the fandom thing, though he had gone to a Worldcon once, just to see, and this was exactly what it had looked like in RW: a giant, multispecies party. . . .
Somewhere in this mob was a guy in a costume of an alien cowboy with a big six-shooter strapped on his hip, virtually speaking, anyhow. According to Jay’s Super-Cray search, this was the guy the feds were looking for, the guy who had bought the gun used to kill two Metro cops and at least one and probably a bunch of Army guys.
He hoped it didn’t turn out to be the dead and burned-up terrorist they’d found, Stark. That wasn’t going to do him any good.
Whatever.
Jay had come to one possibility he liked, a guy who had given his address as being in Alexandria, and that had turned out to be fake. Well, there
He was in here somewhere. All Jay had to do was find him and, in this scenario, get him out of his costume and see who he really was. Then he’d pass that along to folks who could go and fetch him, and that would be that. Once the authorities had one of the terrorists in hand, they could probably convince him to give up the others.
Of course, with the mass of humanity milling around, and the hundreds of costumes in evidence, it might not be so easy to find the guy here. . . .
A very stout man wearing the costume of a Klingon warrior bumped into Jay, jolting him. “Watch where you step,
“Sorry,” Jay said.
For just a second, Jay considered manifesting a blaster and turning this clown into a pile of smoking ash. He didn’t recognize the words in what he assumed was Klingon, but he knew an insult when he heard it.
Then again, why bother? Everybody had to be somewhere, and if it made this guy, who was probably a file clerk or an accountant, feel better to spend a couple hours getting into costume as a Star Trek alien to wander around a media convention spouting a made-up language, so what? It was a harmless fantasy, and better than a lot of ways he could be getting into trouble. At least he wasn’t out on the street mugging old ladies or selling crack.
Jay was all for whatever floated your boat, as long as you didn’t hurt anybody when you did it.
Jay raised his right hand and split his fingers into the Vulcan V-sign that Spock used to do on the Trek television show. “Live long and prosper, Warrior.”
The ersatz Klingon sneered, but moved off.
Cowboy, cowboy, where was the space cowboy?
Jay wound his way past a display of toy rockets and space ships, then a table stacked with lurid magazines featuring busty women in what looked like brass bikinis, being menaced by tentacled monsters. A television monitor flickered with an old black-and-white serial showing Flash Gordon in front of the Emperor Ming. The music sounded familiar. Was that Liszt’s Prelude?
He glanced up from the TV and caught a glimpse of a white hat ahead. Definitely a Stetson-style cowboy hat.
He smiled as he recalled the Stagolee scenario. All about the
Jay tried to worm his way closer, but the crowd was thick here. He stepped on an alien’s foot, and was rewarded with a curse that was very much human. He brushed past a guy with a head shaved bald, save for a topknot, with green makeup on his face and hands, and long fingernails. He was holding hands with a drop-dead- gorgeous blond woman in purple spandex and leather boots, with a blaster on a hip belt.
Jay nearly stepped on somebody down on all fours, dressed up like some kind of four-legged alien critter and following the happy couple. The creature snarked at him, halfway between a bark and a moan.
Lord.
He looked up, but he’d lost sight of the hat.
Damn!
A very tall man dressed as an Amazon woman, complete with a wig, a spear, and what looked like a fiberglass copy of a bronze breastplate over huge fake hooters, stood in front of a table stacked with tapes from 1950s Saturday morning television shows, like
“Honey, aren’t we all?” the faux-Amazon said. “Her” voice was as dark brown as L-O-L-A Lola’s, and closer to Darth Vader’s than any woman Jay had ever heard. She could sing the bass parts in opera, easy.
After a fruitless fifteen minutes of searching, which included at one point hopping up on a bare table to see better, Jay gave up, at least for now. The cowboy with his six-gun was here at the convention somewhere, but he seemed to have left the room.
Maybe he had gone across the street? There were all kinds of programs scheduled at the hotel.
