the_last_resort | (no subject)

Bertie strolled the garden paths with his hat on (now lined with tinfoil) and wangee in hand. He peered up at the clouds as a bit of thunder grumbled. He hoped that the heavens wouldn’t open up and Sturm and Drang upon him. Leastwise not unlike he’d finished his walk and his errands for the day.

Bertie was looking for a little light r. for the evenings, something with excitement, mystery. Hard boiled American detectives were always a smash. Or stories with ghosts in them. Something that wasn’t too taxing on the old grey matter, as Monsieur Poirot would call it.

But he also felt that he should buy something to bring back to Jeeves when he returned home. Thus, he found himself peering at the books in the philosophy section, holding Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra in one hand and Marx’s Das Kapital in the other and looking befuddledly between them.

Bertie rushed in and slammed the door behind him. He leaned back against it, breathing hard.

Blink.

Frown.

Wait just a moment. This wasn’t his room. He must have got turned around somewhere.

Bertie was sitting on the piano bench by the resort bar, tinkling out a few notes to a half remembered song with one hand, glass of champagne in the other.

“Something...something...knoooows. Anything goes.”

As much as he wanted to work on his arts and crafts project in the lobby, Wander soon realized that taking up space with his pile of aluminum foil, tape, glue, tissue paper, beads, string, construction paper, scissors, and a large green hat would be too troublesome for the other guests, so he opted to staying in his room for today. After hearing the news about the neuralflu, he immediately set to buying a roll of foil to make a small tinfoil hat for himself and for any potential guests that would need one. Of course, he couldn't resist the temptation of decorating it, and spent what few emeralds he had left for hat beautification purposes.

...At least he could now give out pretty tinfoil hats instead of those plain grey ones.

He was in the middle of folding paper roses when he heard his door open and slam shut, startling him to tear a yellow slip in half. Even though he unlocked his door as an open invitation for others to meet him, he would have appreciated if they had knocked, but a potential friend is a potential friend even if they needed a lesson in politeness. He stood up from his spot on the floor behind the bed, his head and tinfoil hat (colored green with a thick, rounded five-pointed star attached to it) barely visible to anyone standing at the door.

"Hi! I'll be right there inna moment." He walked around the bed to get a better view of the guest.

Bertie peered at the...man(?) for a long time, shook his head, and peered some more. He'd only had one drink so far today, otherwise he'd wonder if he were hallucinating.

"I say!"

More peering.

"I say!"

Aunt Agatha would be appalled by his manners, but he couldn't think of a dashed thing to say beyond his "I says."

It was definitely a member of the human species that were surprisingly common here, and the tallest one he'd seen so far. He would bet that this one could easily stare down a Zbornak even if it was standing on its hind legs.

Not like this fellow could successfully intimidate Sylvia with that shocked expression.

"Sorry for the mess," Wander smiled, indicating at the strewn bits of string covering the floor. "Didn't 'spect anyone to come here."

He spoke in a soft voice with an accent that most humans from Earth considered to originate from the southern region of the United States, though he met a few that pinpointed it to some place Wander never even heard of. The communicators seemed to make interesting translating choices.

"I gotta chair right over here that's big enough for you to sit on, if y'like." He lifted an arm out towards an ornate wooden chair that came standard with the rooms by the dresser. "We can have our introductions once we're both comfy, right?"

George Smiley liked the bookshop; there was a faint whiff of the Bodleian about it in the more obscure corners of the place, and he felt pleasantly at home. So much so that he wondered if he was dreaming this, and if he would soon wake up to confront the consequences of all that had passed in Berlin.

He chose not to dwell on this, however.

Instead he was now engaged in re-organising a shelf of German poetry that had been left in disarray by a previous client, not far from Bertie's perusal of philosophy.

"What ho, there!" Bertie said, spotting the bookish looking man amongst the books. "Might you be a good chap and point me in the right direction vis a vis volumes of an improving nature? The sorts of books fellows who eat lots of fish and wear large hats to cover their copious heads would read?"

Bertie thought the man was awfully small. And orange. And a dashed peculiar configuration in every way. Still, it would be rude to mention it, so Bertie swallowed his questions, even though he was buzzing with curiosity, and took the offered chair like a proper gentleman.

"How do you do. I'm Bertram Wooster."

"Pleasure to meetcha, Mister Wooster. Name's Wander, and I am so glad for you to stop by."

In a more typical setting for him, Wander would offer Bertram some food cooking over the fire, but unfortunately, there weren't many places to safely build a cooking fire unless he traveled far from the town. Fortunately, the resort supplied water heaters and a pitiful number of tea bags among the basic amenities.

"Sir, would some tea be alright? Got some sugar if you like it real sweet!" He picked up a basket with more sugar bags than what most people put in their drinks, but there was nothing wrong with having extra supplies in his opinion.

"There's only two kinds though: peach and chamomile. Which will it be?"

[Boone looks up as soon as someone opens his door and slams it behind them. He's in a chair facing the door, his rifle in his hands and aimed at the intruder. Beside him on the floor, Rex has lifted his head and looks poised to get up and attack if Boone tells him to. Both cyberdog and sniper stare for a second, until Boone gets over the initial shock of someone bursting into his room and lowers the rifle again.]

You lost?

[He wonders why he's in such a hurry, but that question can wait. At the very least, from the look on this guy's face he can tell this was an accident.]

Briefly, an image of Roddy Martindale seemed to superimpose itself over the image of this ridiculous-sounding young man and Smiley had to suppress an urge to simply turn tail and flee. But this man's circumlocutions were elaborate to a degree of which Roddy was entirely incapable, and that alone caught Smiley's interest. Pushing through an instinctive feeling of dread, he merely frowned, genuinely confused as to exactly what sort of person this man could possibly be alluding to.

"I beg your pardon?" And then: "Fish?"

Bertie helpfully replied, "You know, scaly things that swim in the sea...or rivers, I suppose, and lakes upon occasion, or ponds."

"I didn't know tea came in multiple kinds." Usually Jeeves took care of the tea-making business. Bertie merely drank the results with no knowledge of how the beverage came to be. "Peach then." Only because he wasn't certain what chamomile was, but thought it sounded like a kind of grain--like cornmeal or wheatmeal--and that didn't sound like a thing that ought be in tea.

"Thank you, Mister Wander. I say, are you from America? Do you know Rocky Todd? He lives in America."

[Bertie's eyes go even wider at the sight of the gun. Usually people who have guns end up pointing them at him sooner or later, and firing at him as he desperately flees through the undergrowth in his formal evening dress only to stumble into the arms of an unwanted fiancee.

It's a very specific but common problem for him.

But then the man lowers his gun, and Bertie's terror eases somewhat.]

Indeed I am. I was running for my life and seem to have found myself in the incorrect hallway. Or perhaps the incorrect floor.

I say, could you be an aid to a fellow man in desperate need and allow me to hide here for a spot of time?

"Yes, quite," Smiley said, the faintest edge of impatience in his voice. "I simply couldn't quite follow your ... description of your sample reader." Smiley was generally good at figuring out what someone was getting at, even in the most rambling of digressions, but this fellow had left him completely and uncharacteristically at sea, as it were.

Wander set out a cup and saucer as he boiled the water. "Really? There's all different kinds of tea!" He walked to his spot behind the bed and returned a large green hat, rummaging through its crown. "You should try other flavors when you're here." He pulled out a small doily with embroidered flowers. "There you go!" And placed it underneath the saucer.

America...he heard that somewhere before. Some of the other humans mentioned it around him; maybe it was a major planet in their system? "Sorry Mister Wooster, I've never been to America, so I never met this Rocky Todd feller."

Despite popular belief Charon did take a break from patrolling. Rarely. Sometimes. Though they were usually very short breaks in which he'd sit at the bar and have a drink or two, because sometimes even he needed a drink. Especially with this neural flu going around, giving him a headache. Normally he would just avoid people all together with something like this going around, but he had a tin foil hat so he wouldn't have to worry about shared thoughts being a concern.

The music he hears being played from his spot at the bar is actually a familiar one. He heard it on the kid's pipboy all the time, on that Galaxy News Radio station. He also vaguely had the impression he remembered it from far before then, even. Back before the Great War. It was comforting in a way Charon couldn't really pinpoint, and he honestly didn't dwell on it too much. But it's that almost-memory that has him turning towards Bertie at the piano. Hopefully this time he won't scream at the sight of him. His head hurts too much to deal with that.

His tone is brusque -- but then again when isn't it? "But now, God knows. Anything goes."

Look, if he's going to sit there and play music the least he could do is get the lyrics right. And it just so happens to be one of the things Charon's brain chooses to allow him to remember. God knows he heard it enough.

Bertie didn't hear the impatience, but he took up the opportunity to sing the praises of Jeeves.

"It's for my valet, Jeeves. He is a paragon among paragons, the smartest egg to wear a size 9 bowler. Jeeves is the most clever man of my acquaintance, no problem too knotty for him to solve. He's partial to some philosopher fellow named Spinoza, but as he has the collected works thereof I am forced to find a new philosopher for him to sink his mental teeth into."

"Multiple kinds of tea...I learn something new every day, even without Jeeves around to drop tidbits of obscure erudition into the conversation."

He blinked and cocked his head again at Wander retrieving the doily. Is that where doilies usually came from, he wondered? He would never look at Jeeves' bowler quite the same way again.

"Please, call me Bertie."

"Well then, Bertie," Wander pulled a stool next to him and climbed onto it. "We should go out to try other kinds of tea sometime, y'know, as a friendly get-together. I'm sure they gotta buncha teas an' things down in the shops!" He quietly hoped that Bertie wasn't completely broke like he was; it would be just rude to cancel an outing at the last minute because neither of them could pay.

"Is Rocky Todd a friend o' yours? 'Cause if we ever find ourselves near...America," he paused to check if he got the name correct, "we can stop by his place and say that his good pal Bertie sends his greetin's!"

"Is that how it goes? Much obliged, my good...chap." He was pretty sure the person was a chap. The voice was decidedly chappish, and the height and general build and configuration, but, well, at first glance Bertie wouldn't have assumed that the chap was even alive, so he wasn't entirely sure he should trust his assumptions on this one.

He played a few introductory bars to the phrase and then enthusiastically sang, "But now, god knoooows. Anything goes."

And added a few more piano bars, and stopped.

"I don't suppose you know the lyrics to the rest of it as well. I only heard it the once right before I departed on this holiday and now I've had the blasted thing stuck in my head for days yet can't remember it."

"Rocky's an old chum. He's a literary sort, a poet of some note, I believe." Bertie didn't follow poetry much, and didn't know that Rocky was, in fact, a notably bad poet.

"Trying out the variety of teas sounds like a corking idea." Money was not something Bertie had a problem with. And he was used to reaching into his pockets to pay for others less oofy as well.

"But...you said 'we' might send Rocky greetings from yours truly...is there another person here?" Bertie looked around, puzzled. Wander was rather small, so it was entirely possible that there was a second small orange person hidden somewhere in the room out of his sight.

[Boone frowns, but holds a hand out to Rex to let him know it's okay.]

I guess.

[As part of security here now, he can't exactly tell the guy it's his own damn problem. He gets to his feet and heads over to Bertie, but it's the door he's focused on. His rifle is still in his hands.]

What're you running from? Did it see you come in here?

(no subject)

Gardens

Smiley's Bookshop

Accidentally Running Into Your Character's Room to Hide

Bar

Re: Accidentally Running Into Your Character's Room to Hide

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