“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?”
“Finnish,” said Rick. “More of an android really. The hotel hires her cheap because she wants to get programmed in English.”
“Then this is the Tower of Babel,” I said.
“Yes,” he said feelingly. We arrived into a crowd on the landing and had to wait our turn at a long table there. He said, “It’s caused a lot of trouble already. The Romanian fans arrived without their luggage, the Russians can’t find their interpreter, and the Germans don’t like the plumbing. At least the Americans speak English, even if there was a muddle about their rooms – you’re not the only ones.”
We broke through to the long table then, where a big hand-painted notice said PHANTASMACON REGISTRATION. Several people were sitting behind the table, half hidden by boxes with teddy bears propped against them. Rick Corrie led us up to a blue teddy with a large M under it. A notice hung round the teddy’s neck said I AM SOCRATES. I ♥ CONVENTIONS. I looked it in its mournful button eyes and wished I hadn’t. I was not sure I was going to heart anything about this weekend at that stage.
“Mallory,” Rick Corrie said to the fat girl behind the box. Her badge said WILLOW, but Rick called her Wendy. “The rest of the GOH family party, Wendy.”
Wendy gave us a hasty smile that lifted her cheeks into lumps like tennis balls, and then lowered the lumps to say to Rick Corrie, in a strong, whining voice, “Rick, I hope someone’s going to relieve me here soon. I need to get into con-clothes for the Ceremony.”
“Not my problem,” Rick told her cheerfully. “Speak to Magnus or Parabola.”
Wendy muttered something and searched through hundreds of plastic bags in her boxes. It took her a while, because her long hair kept falling over her massive shoulders and she kept stopping to hurl it back. When she at last discovered two bags and leant forward, smiling tennis balls again, to hand them round Socrates, her vast bosom pooled on the boxes in cushion-sized lumps. I saw Nick look hastily away. I think he thought she was some kind of cripple.
“Here you are,” she said. “Programme and breakfast-tickets, lucky number and badge. Please wear your badge at all times. We’re having trouble with gate-crashers.”
Nick took his bag sort of sideways. I took mine. “Right,” said Rick Corrie. “I’ll take you up to your—” His radio phone began yelling. He unhitched it and listened to the agitated quacking coming out of it with growing dismay. “But we weren’t expecting anyone from Croatia!” he said to it. “All right. I’ll be down in two seconds. Out.” He was on one foot ready to run by then. “Hey you,” he said to a pale young man loitering by the end of the table. “You take these two to rooms 534 and 535, will you. I have to go,” he said to us. “See you at the Ceremony.” And he left at a sprint, taking the stairs in threes.
The pale young man solemnly held out a hand for my bag. “The lifts are just along here,” he said. He had hair so fair it was greenish, almost matching the colour of his T-shirt, which had words on it in a strange language. Finnish? I wondered, while he was pressing the lift button for us.
I was going to ask, only a tremendous noise broke out behind us. A tenor voice was howling, “I insist on satisfaction! I’m a guest at this convention!” and other voices were clamouring, trying to soothe it.
Luckily the lift arrived just then. Nick and I both hopped in and then looked anxiously out as the door slid shut. Sure enough, Mervin Thurless was leaning over the long table, beard jutting, mauve with rage again. “I bet I know what’s happened,” I murmured to Nick.
“Not your fault,” he murmured back as the lift started upwards.
“I am Dutch,” remarked the young man. “My name is Case. That is spelt K-E-E-S. It is short for Kornelius.” And he spelt that too.
“Oh,” I said.
“Ah,” Nick said.
There was a mirror in the lift too. It showed us both staring cautiously at Dutch Case.
“I’m Maree,” I said. “This is Nick.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Case. “You are not Old Nick and I am not a nutcase. There is a Dutch joke for you.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Oh,” said Nick.
We were both glad when the lift stopped and the door slid away to show a board with arrows. It said
← ROOMS 501–556 ROOMS 557–501
→
“I think we can find our – hang on,” Nick said. He took another look at the notice.
“Precisely,” Case said smugly. “It is not so simple. Also a Committee member has told me to take you and I must do what he says. I am a Gopher.”
“Gopher?” we both said together as we all turned left. “Oh, I get you!” I said. “You go for—”
But Case told us anyway. He was that kind. “It is spelt G-O-P-H-E-R and it means people who fetch and carry and whom the Con cannot do without.” We pushed through swing doors and went down a long, long corridor. “People who run errands,” he said. “No doubt it began as a joke, meaning ‘Go for this’ or ‘Go for that’, but now it is an institution. Round here.” We turned left again and went down another corridor. Case said, “At PhantasmaCon it is also an institution that the Gophers are known as Hobbits.” We turned another left-hand corner. There were mirrors at each of these corners. They produced a very odd effect, a brief illusion of us coming and going, and wheeling elsewhere.
As we wheeled round the fourth left-hand turn, I tore my eyes off the mirrors and said politely, “Your English is very good.”
“Thank you,” said Case. “I am rather proud of it.”
The numbers on the doors we passed now said 523, 524, 525. “It can’t be much further, surely?” Nick said.
“You may be wrong,” said Case. “This is a very peculiar hotel. I think it is straight out of Escher. Escher was a Dutch artist, you know, who drew things so that they look as if they go up when they go down, but when you look closely they do both and you cannot tell.”
“Er… yes,” said Nick. The numbers on the doors were in the forties now. And believe it or not, we turned left again and I really think that was five angles by then. Nick said uncertainly, “We’ll be back at the lift again at this rate, won’t we?”
“I think not,” said Case. “Yes, in most hotels. But here you can turn five corners and still not make a square.”
And, you know, he was right! Nick muttered things about this building must be built in a sort of Greek key-pattern and it wasn’t possible, but I’m here to say it was. We turned left yet again and had to walk most of the way down a long corridor lined with red carpet before we came to room 534. I felt it was quite lucky that room 535 was next to it. At that rate, it could have been anywhere. All the same, we were both quite sure that Case had taken us the long way round and that the lifts must be just round the next mirrored corner. We suspected another Dutch joke, and we each decided, quite independently, to go that way when we went to look for this Opening Ceremony.
Meanwhile, Nick tried to get even with Case. Case announced that, well, he would love us and leave us now, Nick held the door of his room propped open on one foot and leant backwards out of it. “I hope you don’t mind me asking,” he says, very serious and polite, “but what does your T-shirt say?”
Case looked smugly down at his narrow chest. “It says,” he said, “I AM A HOBBIT”. He bowed and walked away. “In Elvish,” he added as he left.
That round was Case’s, hands down.
We didn’t stay long in our rooms, just long enough for me to look in the placcy bag I’d been given. It had a smiley face and “PhantasmaCon” on the outside, and a mass of bumf on the inside, one item of which was a whole glossy magazine with a story by Uncle Ted in it; but there were appeals for AIDS victims and ads for things called Swords N’Attire and… anyway, I found the badge with my name on it and threw the rest away. In this I was less than clever. Master Nick had had the sense to notice that the scruffiest bit of paper was in fact the programme to this madhouse. It was all organised in columns labelled “Parallel Universe One”, “Mallory World”, “Home Universe”, and so on, and it made not more sense to me than the hotel corridors. But Nick had it worked out. He said. He said the Opening Ceremony was in Home Universe and that was the first floor in the big function room. So we tried to go there.
We went the other way, expecting to get to the lifts any moment. And we didn’t. I lost count of the corners we turned, but I remember Nick saying they were all right-angles, which meant that by now we had walked round two and a half squares at least, and it didn’t make sense. I said we ought to have met ourselves, or walked into a new dimension or something, but all we did was get to the lifts, in the end.
Downstairs it ought to have been simple. There were even notices with arrows, saying HOME UNIVERSE, but I suppose the trouble was that we didn’t know what we were looking for. And everyone seemed to have gone by then, so we couldn’t ask. Anyway, we wandered for a bit, until we came to an official-looking door, and we opened the door and looked round it.
We found a small, rather dark room, where a dozen or so people were clustered round a blackboard. Every single one of them wore a long robe with a cowl to it – like mad monks. You couldn’t see any of the faces at all, not even the face of the one who was writing on the board and turning to explain to the others. He was writing symbols that made my stomach feel queer after only one glance. Really queer. At the moment we looked in, he was saying, “For the strongest effect, you should visualise all these written in fire on a background of flames.”
Nick and I, with one accord, backed out and closed the door very gently. After that I let fly a giant burp, because of the funny way my stomach was feeling. “Which universe do you think they were in?” I whispered.
“Somewhere very alien,” Nick said decidedly.
We continued our search by going along to the next door and opening that. I was saying, “If Uncle Ted was wanting to punish us, I think he’s succeeding,” and Nick was agreeing, “But not quite in the way he—” when we found we were in a vast hall full of faces all turning to look at us. We were there. It was like a bad dream, but it was the Opening Ceremony right enough. We slid into the back row of seats with hot faces.
It was just starting. There was Uncle Ted in the act of taking a seat on the far-off platform, along with ten or so other people we didn’t know, and Janine being shown to a seat in the front row. As we sat down, a glossy-faced youngish man in a T-shirt, with a great deal of wriggly blond hair, sprang up and began welcoming everyone to PhantasmaCon. But he’d only got as far as “…pleasure it is to have with us as Guest of Honour…” when the door that end burst open and a high tenor voice cried out, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I know you’re just starting and I haven’t come to stay!” and Mervin Thurless rushed in and rushed up on to the platform. “I just wanted to tell you it’s a disgrace,” he said. “I’m a guest of this convention and you’ve put me in the Station Hotel!”
Half the people on the platform sprang up. Rick Corrie sprang up too, out of the audience. He bounded to the platform, seized Thurless by one arm and hurried him aside, where he talked to him in urgent whispers. Thurless was not placated. In the end, Rick hurried him outside and the door banged on Thurless shouting, “I don’t care! I insist on a taxi!”
“That was Mervin Thurless,” said the blond, glossy man gravely.
The audience, to my surprise, clapped and cheered. A lot of people laughed. They were like that, the people at this convention – surprisingly good-humoured and in a holiday mood: as if they had come to enjoy themselves as much as listen to writers talk about books. I spent the rest of the very boring Ceremony looking around at them.
My first thought was that the police would be in trouble here, if there had been a crime and they needed descriptions of the man on the scene. About nine-tenths of the men had beards and wore glasses. Otherwise there were people of all ages, from the eccentric-looking old man with the hearing-aid to the long-haired people’s baby (which had to be carried outside crying around then) and quite a number of children. There was also more than a fair share of achingly glamorous young females. But there were also more than usual numbers of Wendy-shaped fat ones. There was a whole row of them, male and female, just along from Nick and me, and I stared fascinated at their huge tightly stretched T-shirts, each with something clever or weird written on it. T
hey made me feel pleasantly slender for a change. The men were none of them my types, fat or thin. I don’t go for beards and glasses. But I thought I could quite fancy one or two of the willowy types in paramilitary gear, or the dark one in black leather and mirror shades sitting beside Uncle Ted on the platform. But I know what really struck me: the hall was full of people I’d like to get to know. An unusual feeling for sulky, solitary me, that. This feeling extended particularly to the large sprinkling of shy-looking middle-aged ladies (much to my surprise). I found myself looking at the skinny greying one nearest – she was in a bright patchwork jacket – and thinking that whatever she did for a job, it bored her, and she didn’t get on with her workmates, so she clearly lived a passionate life among books instead. And I would have liked to talk to her about some of the things we’d both read.
By the end of the Ceremony, I was thinking that the punishment was not really a punishment at all. Ha, ha. That was before Janine swept down on Nick with “Come along, darling. We’re going to eat with the other guests,” and whisked him away.
I was left on my own for the rest of the evening.
It was a bit like your first day at school or college. I didn’t know anyone and I had no idea what to do, and everyone was charging and bustling around me, knowing exactly where they were going and who they were going with. So I pushed my specs up my nose, squared my shoulders and went to my car to bring my most valued things up to my room. I did the first load unhindered – or unhindered by anything except the weird effect of those mirrors on the corners of the corridors. And there were five right-angle corners. I counted. There and back, going to the lifts both ways. And I was standing waiting for the lift to go down for the next load when I happened to look back at the nearest corner. And I saw the MOST FABULOUS MAN I’d ever seen in my life. Tall and Nordic and slim, deep-set eyes, no beard, no glasses – just staggering. To die for, as Robbie’s bint Davina would say.