Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones Page B

named a modest fee – that he apologised for: it seemed the sum had gone up after Christmas. He would, he said, send me the details and the hotel booking-form, and urged me to get it back to him quickly because the hotel was already quite full.
    I gave him my address. “What happens if I send my form back but you find the hotel is booked solid?” I asked.
    “Oh, we try to fit everyone in,” he said cheerfully. “A lot of fans sleep on the floor – don’t tell Alfred Douglas that – but I’ve got the Station Hotel lined up to take the overflow if there is one. But you’ll want to be in the Babylon if you can. That’s where the action will be.”
    I promised to get my application back to him by return of post and rang off. Then I did a small amount of adjusting before I left, to ensure that I and my four candidates would indeed have rooms here. And – perhaps it was the thought of a letter by return of post – I found myself once more interrupted by a surge of rage against Mallory. So, as an afterthought, I did some more adjusting, to make sure that Mallory could have nothing to do with this. Then I went home, rather pleased with my day’s work.
    There followed a time of intense, detailed labour to wind the fatelines in exactly the right way. Almost the only communication I had with the outside worlds was when I received from Rick Corrie a bundle of highly peculiar stuff. Opening it, I wished that Fisk, Punt or Thurless had replied to me anything like so promptly (in fact, none of them ever replied: either my letters went astray or they did not strike any of the three as important) and was once again seized with irrational rage at Mallory. My fingers quivered with fury as I examined Corrie’s bundle.
    Some of it was the booking-forms he had promised me. That concerning the hotel was normal enough – except that I was required to state whether or not I wanted mushrooms for breakfast – but the booking-form for the actual convention was full of curious passages. I read: ‘Fans wishing to enter the Masquerade should state in advance whether Animal, Human or Other. We’re having three classes this year’ and a little further on: ‘PhantasmaCook entries must be checked in on arrival. The hotel manager has asked that no actual construction of green slime etc. be done in the hotel bedrooms’ and right at the end: ‘We regret having to ban explosions, but after last year the cost of insurance is now too high.’
    Wondering what happened last year, I turned to the thing labelled Progress Report III and stared at it. My face was probably a study. Stan demanded to know what was the matter.
    “‘Hobbits will be mustering under Gandalf as usual in the Ops Room,’” I read out to him. “‘Esoterica with the Master Mage is in a dimension yet to be fixed… Filking will be in the Home Universe this year… Writers’ Circle is rounding nicely in the hands of Wendy the Willow but there are rumours of another. Watch this space… Bumpkin has agreed to handle Games and Games Workshop… No charges of fraud in the Tarot classes this year, please. Our new reader is a genuine sensitive… There are still a few places in the Dealers Room. Apply to Eisenstein… Security will be handled by HitlerEnterprises and all swords are to be in their charge until Sunday…” Stan, who are these people?”
    “Ordinary folks having fun, I expect,” he said. “Nobody’s really normal when you come down to it. But I’ll tell you something – they can’t draw.” He was right. The brochure – if that’s what it was – was decorated with blurred portraits of wizards, witches and girls wearing little but jewellery. All were extremely badly drawn.
    “Oh, well,” I said, and sent the man Corrie a cheque.
    A week later he sent me a receipt and a certificate to say I was now an official member of PhantasmaCon, with a room booked in the Hotel Babylon to prove it.
    Otherwise, as I said, I was hard at work, both in the house and in