Bimbos of the Death Sun (16 page)

“It’ll be an exact copy?” asked Ayhan.

“Yes,” said Jay Omega. “It’ll copy all forty tracks on both sides.”

“The fingerprints, too?” asked Ayhan.

Jay Omega took a deep breath, and prepared to launch into a disk lecture.

“He’s putting you on,” said the uniformed cop. “Here’s the disk. Have you got a blank one?”

Jay Omega looked up just as Joel Schumann arrived at the open door. “I brought the disks. Dr. Mega!” he called out.

“Here they are now,” said Omega.

The photographer waved Joel through.

Joel and the uniformed cop grinned at the solemnity
with which Jay Omega sat down to carry out this simple computer task. He inserted the DOS disk in drive A, and reached for Dungannon’s master disk, but Ayhan, holding one corner with a handkerchief, signaled that he would do it himself. Finally the computer was ready to copy: master disk in A; blank disk in B.

“You brought an extra disk?” asked Ayhan.

Joel handed him one.

“Good. Consider this our fee for the favor. Another copy, please.”

Two minutes and a series of clicks later, Jay Omega handed the copies to Ayhan and Louis Warren. He pointed to drive A. “You can take it out now,” he told the young policeman. “Just make sure nobody tries to put it back in a computer after that.”

Louis Warren held his disk gingerly between thumb and forefinger. “How do I get this on paper to give to an editor?” he asked.

Joel Schumann shrugged. “The high-tech room’s IBM doesn’t have a printer. You can read it on a screen there, though.”

“Read it!?” Louis drew back in horror.

“You know, check to make sure it’s all there—” said Joel soothingly.

“Oh,” said Louis, still dubious. Joel smiled at the editor’s expression of distaste and suspicion; he’d often seen that reaction in people over thirty being confronted with new technology. “Come on,” he said, leading Louis away. “I’ll set it up for you.”

Ayhan handed his copy of the disk to the young officer. “Anything else interesting?”

Jay Omega smiled at the note of triumph in the young guy’s voice.

“We found this in the wastebasket, sir.”

The lieutenant unrolled the crumpled piece of paper, and studied the elegant, black calligraphy of the message:

After reading it twice, Ayhan glanced at the officer. “Dusted?” An affirmative nod. The lieutenant passed the paper to Jay Omega. “What do you think?”

Omega ran his finger over the page, squinted at the calligraphy, and finally said, “Macintosh.”

The younger cop nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

Ayhan whipped out his blue notebook. “Macintosh? Description? What’s his first name?”

Jay Omega shrugged. “Apple?”

“London Font,” said the young cop.

“I make it eighteen point.”

Ayhan stopped writing. “Somebody’s babbling,” he announced. “Have you called in a handwriting expert?”

Jay Omega handed him back the note. “You don’t need a handwriting expert,” he explained gently. “This is a computer-generated document. We think it was done on a Macintosh in calligraphy script.”

“So how do we find out who wrote it? Do we know who owns one of these things?”

“Well,” said Jay Omega. “There’s a Macintosh with a printer in the high-tech display room downstairs. My guess is that it was done there. If so, maybe Joel could tell you who used it.”

“The kid that just left?” Ayhan motioned to the young cop. “Go talk to him, Simmons. Since you speak the language.”

“I guess you got your first real clue,” said Jay Omega, trying to be soothing.

“Yeah,” growled Ayhan. “And the suspect is a fifty-pound hunk of plastic named Macintosh. I love this case.”

T
he Rubicon Banquet and Costume Ball began promptly at seven in the main ballroom of the hotel, which had been decorated for the occasion with streamers and SF movie posters. The speakers’ table was set beneath a vintage
Thief of Baghdad
poster, and sported centerpieces of yellow candles and blue Tribbles, arranged in small clumps around handfuls of grain. The second chair to the left of the podium was conspicuously empty.

At the long banquet tables perpendicular to the main one, an assortment of medieval dignitaries and extraterrestrials sipped grapefruit punch (listed on the menu as Pangalactic Gargleblaster), and exchanged the latest rumors about the murder of Appin Dungannon. Since Lieutenant Ayhan had spent a long and tedious afternoon interviewing a
cross-section of Rubicon participants, many of them had a good idea how the investigation was going, and what matters were likely to interest the police.

“Did you mention the costume contest?”

“Of course! If you didn’t, they’d think you were suspicious! But did you tell them how he ruined Douglas’s books with a Tolkien signature?”

“I hear Douglas told them he was glad someone had iced Dungannon, when they questioned him.”

“Did they ask you about a note?”

“Yeah. And a lot of funny computer questions, too.”

“Did somebody steal Dungannon’s computer?”

“I heard he threw it at the murderer. Is this punch alcoholic?”

At the elevated speakers’ table, above rabble and rumors and to the right of Miles Perry and the empty chair, sat Marion, sandwiched between Jay Omega and Walter Diefenbaker. The other side of the podium was reserved for the guest artist, three Rubicon board members, and the chief mourner: Clifford Morgan, a.k.a. Tratyn Runewind. Of the honored guests only a woman board member and Morgan/Runewind had appeared in costume. Dief wore his Canadian formal attire, a brown turtleneck and tweed blazer with maple-leaf lapel pin; the other men wore suits and ties. Marion had decided to be an elegant Mrs. Peel in green watered silk and pearls, but she kept the Sixties hairstyle as a tribute to her heroine.

“What is that music?” she whispered to Diefenbaker.

“Schubert. ‘Death and the Maiden.’ We were going to use
Star Wars
soundtrack albums, but
Miles thought that this would be more fitting under the circumstances.”

“Better than ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’” Marion conceded. “I’m sure somebody suggested that.”

Jay Omega sipped his Gargleblaster. “I don’t have to say anything formal, do I?” he asked Miles Perry.

“Not a speech,” Miles promised. “But I’ll introduce you later, and you can stand up.”

Jay nodded toward the audience. “Are you going to introduce him, too?”

“Who?”

“Lieutenant Ayhan. He’s sitting at that table on the left.”

After an invocation by a board member directed to the Entity Who Engineered the Universe, a visibly moved Miles Perry took the podium. “Tonight is a more solemn occasion than we had meant it to be,” he stammered, trying not to stare in Lieutenant Ayhan’s direction. “At this year’s Rubicon we wanted to honor one of the giants of fantasy literature—”

Several people in the audience snickered.

“A writer whose stature—”

Miles Perry reddened and pawed at his notes. “Unfortunately, Appin Dungannon is not able to be with us tonight…”

“Unfortunately?” called a heckler.

People began to chant “The Monkey’s Paw!”

Against his better judgment, Miles glanced at Lieutenant Ayhan. Blast the man! He was smiling again! “Our program designed to honor Appin Dungannon, creator of the Tratyn Runewind
series, has instead become a tribute to his memory. We ask that amid the festivities you keep within you a solemn remembrance of Appin Dungannon … a shining star in the annals of fantasy!”

Someone kicked over a folding chair.

Further speeches were not scheduled until after dinner, by which time Miles hoped that the hilarity would have worn itself out. He ate his tepid chicken with a grim expression suggesting that he could hear it pleading for mercy. For once he hoped there weren’t any journalists present; the mood of facetiousness thus far exhibited at the banquet would show them in a very bad light if reported in cold newsprint.

Lieutenant Ayhan had decided that as long as he had to do some questioning at the con, he might as well observe things at the banquet—when all the cracked eggs were in one basket. He was seated now across from a desperately plain young man in a brown polyester leisure suit, and a courting couple who reminded him of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. He had planned to say that he liked a good science fiction novel now and then, if anyone had asked why he was there, but so far no one had taken any notice of him at all. The people he had questioned were seated at other tables. Ayhan decided that he would just listen to the general discussions, and if that proved unhelpful, he might try a few conversational gambits of his own.

“Pass the salt,” said the leisure suit, whose name tag identified him as J. Bonnenberger.

Ayhan handed him the salt shaker, but before he could venture a get-acquainted remark, Bonnenberger
turned to the “Kermit” kid with the turtleneck and medallion. “So who do you think killed McAfee?”

Ayhan’s fork froze in midair. Who was McAfee?

“Terrorists, I guess,” shrugged Richard Faber. “My organization doesn’t have any plastic explosives. We can’t afford them yet.”

“I think he was a double agent, anyway, so it’s probably none of my business who killed him. Unless he still had the microchip on him, of course. We want that.”

Ayhan’s hand itched for his blue notebook. He might have to call in the NSA on this one.

“So, if he was a double agent, Bonnenberger, who do you think he was working for?” asked Faber.

“Probably the KGB. And if that was the case, then the hit was only made to
look
like a terrorist attack, to divert suspicion from the real power-brokers.” Bonnenberger’s last remark was somewhat garbled by the mouthful of lettuce impairing his consonant-formation. Dribbles of salad dressing ran down each side of his mouth like a thousand-island Fu Manchu.

“Okay,” nodded Faber, unaffected by his comrade’s table manners. “So you think it was the Girl Scouts.”

“Definitely,” Bonnenberger managed to say.

“Okay. Then it was probably O.O. Wolfe. He’d have access to explosives at Fort Belvoir, and he has a high skill rating in demolitions. The Girl Scouts have nuclear capability now, too. Did you know that?”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Lieutenant Ayhan, who felt that he would explode if he
didn’t ask.

His table partners looked at him with faint surprise at such rude inquisitiveness from a stranger. The fat girl, eager to show off her limited supply of knowledge, explained. “They’re in a TSR game called
Top Secret
. It’s sort of like
D&D
, but it deals with spies and secret organizations. You get characters to control, and your organization assigns you a mission. …”

Lieutenant Ayhan stopped listening, and went back to his chicken. He supposed he ought to see if Miles Perry could help him find one of the con guests who had been mentioned as a vehement critic of Dungannon. Some kid named Chip Livingstone. Truly elusive. Half a dozen people had showed him mimeographed newsletters containing criticisms of Dungannon, all signed “Chip Livingstone.” But he couldn’t get a decent make on the guy. White male, early twenties—that was ninety per cent of the con. And the guy wasn’t on the hotel register, either. Hmmm. Also true of half the people at the con. Everybody seemed to be sleeping on couches, or six to a room. If Ayhan wasn’t in Homicide, he could have a field day writing up misdemeanors. But he had put the word out to find Chip Livingstone and sooner or later he would turn up.

So far, though, zilch. Probably afraid to. Half the people Ayhan had talked to had mentioned this guy as an enemy of Dungannon. Maybe that was a bit obvious for a murder suspect, but in Ayhan’s opinion, most murderers were obvious. And if the guy was innocent, where was he? Pulling out his notebook, he scribbled a note to Miles Perry, finishing it just as the waiter appeared to refill his iced tea.

“Could you give this to the gentleman sitting next
to the speaker’s stand?” he asked the waiter.

Faber and Bonnenberger glowered suspiciously as the white-coated waiter glided away with the note. Suppose the old guy with the crew cut was an agent for the Girl Scouts? You couldn’t trust anybody these days.