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Later there were Ken, Carey, Peter, John Foyster, myself and goodness knows who
else playing poker on the floor. Quite suddenly the room began to fill with people
which meant that the films must have finished. Several new people were dealt into
the game but many more congregated about the room and insisted an getting to the
refrigerator where the booze was by standing right in the middle of our floor level
card table. We dedicated card players were not amused but not distracted too much
from our game either.
The party was only just beginning to find its voice when there
was a knock at the door. Unusual since the door was already open. It was the under-
assistant-nightmanager and he wanted us to keep quiet, though if he'd taken a good
look at the number of people packed into the room he would have known it was impossible.
All the same people went quiet for a while but gradually became noisieragain.
Even more
people were somehow fitting themselves in and by the time the under assistant knocked
again the party was a mad house and he had to shout to make himself heard.
At first I
think he thought he was going to older us to stop the party, but thirty or forty sets
of glaring fannish eyes must have unnerved him so instead he said that we tidally
shouldn't have been making so much noise, that he didn't want to stop us enjoying
ourselves so he'd open up one of the small function rooms and we could party on there.
We were collectively grateful, but probably not as much as he was when we went
quietly.
Valma had gone downstairs to pick up something she'd left there and so I went
down to tell her of the change of venue. The convention room was a mess, bheer cans
everywhere (which was a no-no since the hotel, so we had learned, was dry and didn't
appreciate such things). Paul Stevens and Valma and a few others were madly trying
to make the place look more respectable before some hotel staff member happened
across the scene of the crime, and we didn't get the clean up finished a moment too
soon, the last piece of incriminating evidence was disposed of just before the under-
assistant made an appearance.
Later, back up at the relocated party things were going
well. Fans were sprawled all over the place, the piano in the corner was being put
to good use and the poker game had installed itself into a little side room where, a
year and a half earlier, the trufans of Melbourne had played poker for two days with
fanzines as stakes I was dealt back into the game but it was no longer the harmless
little game I'd left, directly across the table sat Pedr Gurteen who was good, not
that luck had much to do with it, he was efficient. There was a cold fire in his
eyes as he played and it only took on that characteristic twinkle of amusement as he
raked in the pot, which was not quite every hand, I had thought that John Foyster was
good, he plays like a mathematician who has studied the odds, but with Pedr playing
he was reduced to the same level as the rest of us, bumbling idiocy.
"How did you learn to play so well?" some poor fool asked.
"I learned in the Marines, humans," he replied as he pulled in yet another handful of
money. Pedr often refers to people as "humans" and the way he says it makes you
glad that he bothers to speak to you at all. And when he said "Marines" we knew he
didn't mean the US marines and there's only one group worse than them and that's the
Royal Marines. After that it was a wonder that we didn't simply hand over our money
and go home.
Soon, though, it was about two and Valma and I reminded each other that
we'd have to go home soon. A while later we reminded each other again and I said
we'd go as soon as I lost all the money I had on the table, which surely wouldn't
last more than another three hands the way things were going. My estimate was about
right and, as with the night before, we stole out through the darkened lobby,
searched out a taxi and went home.
The last event of the convention was to be a Great Wall of China at one of the local
chinese restaurants, but before that the convention had to be officially closed and
after it there was to be a party hosted by Lee Harding and Irene Pagram. Valma and I
were in two minds about going to either the Great Wall or the party, with less than
twenty-four hours before we were to leave there still seemed to be an unlimited number
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