AbductiCon Read Online Free Page A

the evening wears on…
    “Libby, was it Alice who was in charge of the writers’ workshop this year?” somebody shouted into her ear, to be heard above the general noise level.
    “No, she handed over to Lou Martin – I don’t think she could make the con this year,” Libby shouted in response.
    “Seen Lou? Need to sort out something!”
    “Don’t think she’s here yet!”
    “Oh! Okay. I’d better email her. Hope she checks her email before she gets here tomorrow. One of her pros…”
    But someone else was pawing at the envelopes, and Libby turned back to try and keep some control over the process. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed something that was sufficiently out of kilter with the rest of the scene for her to actually take notice. Amongst the heaving happy throng crowding the Green Room there was one person standing alone, with as much space between herself and everybody else as that was possible to achieve under the circumstances, a woman standing very still with both hands loosely by her side. She was dressed in something that may or may not have been a costume (not outlandish enough to be tagged as one immediately; just not commonplace enough to be immediately dismissed as not being one). There was something… strange… about her – the stillness, the ever–so–slightly off shade of her silvery skin, something about her eyes – but there was no time for further inspection. Someone else slipped in between Libby and the woman, and when Libby could look that way again she was gone. Libby could not even be certain any more what had attracted her attention, but the strange woman’s afterimage remained in the back of Libby’s head like a ghost, distracting her from something that she knew she had been about to do before she was distracted by something else before that.
    She saw Xander slip back into the suite, and burrowed her way across to him to where he had gone back to the computers set up in the back room.
    “Your movie star sorted?”
    “I thought he’d be upset, but he was a pig in clover, surrounded by pink–haired chicks with fairy wings who were clamoring for his autograph and some really weird dude painted kind of silver or something who just stood there and watched – creepy, really, I don’t know if I ought to go give Sim and Security a shout about him.”
    “What, you think we have a stalker or something on hand?” Libby yelped.
    “He’s a mother–lovin’ movie star, doesn’t it come with the territory?” Xander said. “But maybe he was just a dude who was trying to pretend to be an android and fit in with the theme of the show, I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading too much into it.”
    Libby’s mind went fleetingly to the woman she had seen standing so very still in the melee of the Green Room, and come to think of it she too looked like she was playing an android character… but then, robots were this year’s theme, after all, and everyone was just tired and jumpy. That was all.
    “There are a number of droids out there,” Libby said slowly. “And I distinctly remember seeing a baby blue Dalek near the Hospitality Suite area earlier.”
    “Actually, to be honest, I’m more astonished that there was at least one dude dressed in a replica of the uniform Rory Grissom graced on the good ship Invictus ,” Xander said, dismissing the matter. “I don’t know how the groupies even found him that fast, they must have been waiting at the front door for as long as it took for him to manifest. He seemed to be enjoying it all rather too much – I almost had to drag him bodily away from there before he spent all his con capital on one spectacular meet and greet – we have plans for him at Opening Ceremonies, after all, and that’s in just a few hours. Where’s the Steel Magnolia when we need her?”
    Ξ
    The Steel Magnolia, which was what Andie Mae was known as behind her back half in affection and half in abject terror, was chewing on her perfect lower lip while