Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb Page B

sure.
     
    “I’m really glad I found you,” said Bernard Buchanan, still clutching his sheaf of computer printouts. “My parody is really coming along. In fact, I was hoping you might show it to Appin Dungannon …”
     
    “Novibazaar!” said Richard Faber in his most non-negotiable voice.
     
    “I have a question about the term ‘Brudhorc,’” said one of the strangers.
     
    Diefenbaker tried to look patient. “I don’t have any of my Brandonian files with me at the moment …” he murmured.
     
    “Are you free for breakfast?” asked Bernard Buchanan.
     
    Dief was prevented from expressing the conviction that starvation would be preferable to dining with Bernard by the agitated appearance of Bill Fox in the doorway. “Dief, man, you gotta come now! Somebody’s yelling their head off in one of the upstairs halls, and it’s going to disturb half the hotel.”
     
    The hostage was so relieved to be rescued from Far Brandonian politics that he nearly forgot to ask what the difficulty was, but at the last moment it occurred to him that the information might prove useful, and he inquired.
     
    The messenger shrugged. “Beats me. Somebody on fourth is yelling about somebody having been murdered. They sent me to get you.”
     

EIGHT
     
    A s Dief hurried out of the elevator on the fourth floor, he saw that Miles Perry and most of the crowd from filksinging had already congregated in the hall. The central attraction was a shouting match between the cloaked
D&D
player and another member of the party. Off to one side a forlorn young woman in a white tunic and slacks was clutching a packet of tissues, and sobbing loudly.
     
    “You killed him!” shouted the
D&D
player. “I can’t believe that. And they let you!”
     
    Walter Diefenbaker, wise in the ways of cons, did not spare a glance in search of a lifeless body. Edging his way through the spectators, he planted himself between the two combatants, and waited for silence. When the recriminations had trailed away into a sullen silence, he said, “Do you realizethat you could get all of us tossed out of this hotel?”
     
    Behind them, the sobbing continued unabated. Dief glanced over his shoulder. “Will somebody go and buy her a Coke?”
     
    Marion slipped out of the crowd and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Come on,” she said. “You’ll feel better if you talk about it.”
     
    The girl allowed herself to be led toward the elevator. “I didn’t know what they were going to do,” she sniffled. “But Mark is never going to believe that.”
     
    “What did they do?” asked Marion.
     
    “Well, Mark and I were going to get married tonight.”
     
    “Your player characters?”
     
    “Yes, of course. We’d been planning it for ages, and of course everybody who was in the game with us knew about it, and so did Jerry. He’s the Dungeon Master. So tonight when we started the ceremony, Daciano the Red Dwarf—that’s Phil Castellow’s player character—killed Wolfgang Bartok, who is Mark.”
     
    Marion nodded sympathetically. “And you didn’t know.”
     
    “No! But everybody else did. Phil must have been on the phone for hours setting all this up, and the DM had to have helped him. Before the ceremony, Daciano crept into Wolfgang’s room and killed him, and then, using the Shapechanging Talisman from an NPC cleric named Laurence Talbot, he assumed Wolfgang’s appearance.”
     
    “Did you know about it before the ceremony?”
     
    The “widow” frowned. “I did, of course, because as a player I hear Larry describing everything tous, but the point is that my character, Arianna of the Golden Wood, couldn’t know that a switch had been made, so she had to go through with it in good faith. You have to play your character according to how they’d really act…”
     
    Marion nodded as she thought, “And this, above all, to thine own self be true …” She didn’t think a handy quote from Shakespeare would be very