Myth 13 - Myth Alliances

by Asprin, Robert

  motions he went through were the same as the blunt-​faced male.

  “Do you know, Master Skeeve,” Zol replied, after a few moments study, “it's no kind I've ever seen before.”

  “I sew roses,” a third Wuhs began.

  “I make leaf motifs.”

  “We missed something,” I muttered to Zol. “We have to go back in there and find out what is going on.”

  Tananda leaned over my shoulder at that moment. She had an armful of linens, and pretended to display one for me.

  “The spy-​eyes are all turning this way, handsome. Should we do something about them?” I started to turn to look, but she gripped my shoulder with iron fingers. “Don't look this way. Not with your own face on.”

  I felt icy fingers running down my back. Hastily, I reached out with my mind for the nearest energy line. For?tunately, there was a strong one running through the build?ing, a possible reason the Pervects had chosen to build on this site. There was no time to warn Bunny. I saw the look of puzzlement on the face of the Wuhs serving her at the kiosk as she changed from a Klahd to a Wuhs in the middle of the transaction. Not an everyday occurrence for either one of them, but my assistant handled it with aplomb.

  She put her hands to her cheeks and felt them. “Oh, my! My illusion spell wore off! I've got to go now.”

  She hurried to our table and handed me her purchases. “Shall we go now?” she urged pointedly.

  Zol and I were already standing. The Wuhses who were still “assembling” tea towels that weren't tea towels paid no attention, but the keen-​eyed old female watched us with in?terest. We started edging toward the door.

  When my hand touched the knob, a klaxon began to blare out. “Intruder alert! Intruder alert! No one is to leave the building. Repeat: no one is to leave the building.”

  I heard a rumbling noise, and felt a drain on the energy

  line below my feet. One of the Perverts must be in the factory.

  “How do we get out of here?” Bunny asked.

  “Not easily,” Tananda asserted. “This place seals up tighter than a drum.”

  I glanced around. “Just start walking toward the exit.”

  As I said that, sheets of metal slid down and sealed off the doors and windows of the cafeteria. I reached for the D-​hopper. “Where shall we meet? If there's any possibility they can zero in on where we've gone I don't want them following me home. K ÑI mean, my dimension can't han?dle it.”

  “Kobol,” Zol suggested promptly. “Meet you there.”

  The little gray man vanished. The Wuhses broke into shrieks and cries of alarm. They immediately stampeded toward the metal-​covered door and started pounding on it.

  “So much for an unobtrusive departure,” I mourned, and started to dial the D-​hopper. At that moment the wall be?hind the sales kiosk opened up, and a stocky Pervert female in a coverall stamped through. She made straight for us.

  “You!” she shouted, pointing at us. “Come here! I want to talk to you!”

  Without hesitation, I grabbed Tananda's and Bunny's hands and yanked them into the mob of bleating, milling Wuhses. Where was that line of power? I summoned up as much energy as I could and stored it inside me.

  I felt a touch of power on the back of my neck like a clamp attached to a derrick. The Pervert was trying to pull me towards her! Knowing how much her species hated fire, I flung a ball of crackling heat over my shoulder at her. She ducked, swearing, as a hundred tea cozies shaped like sun?flowers burst into flames. Her spell let go.

  As soon as I was free I burrowed deeply into the crowd. I noted as many of the faces as I could then, in my mind, I erased the Wuhs features we had just assumed, and ex?changed them for new ones. The Pervert could not easily

  identify us now. She would have to grab everyone, and by then, I intended to be long gone.

  “Skeeve!” Tananda hissed, looking about her for me.

  When I put a disguise spell on others, they see them?selves with their new faces, but I still see them as they re?ally are. I set the D-​hopper for Kobol, threw one arm around Bunny, and grabbed Tananda's wrist with my other hand. As the Wuhses whimpered in terror about the angry Pervect and the burning display, I pushed the button.

  Niki grabbed a can hanging from a string on the wall and shouted into it.

  “We've had a security breach! Spies! Two Klahds, a Trollop and an I don't know what it was! I think we've found our magician.”

  In a moment a voice crackled in her ear. “Did you catch them?”

  “No, they boogied out of here. Someone or something must have tipped them off.” She glared around the room at the Wuhses, now all plastered against the far wall in terror. “I'm going to find out who.”

  “We're already working on it,” Caitlin replied. “Over and out.”

  “Who were they?” Loorna roared at the Wuhs.

  After they had hung up with Niki, the Ten had opened the snow globe prison on their table and restored the Wuhs inside it to full size. The rabblerouser who had actually in?vaded the castle and led a thousand of his countrymen into the Pervect Ten's very own headquarters didn't look like such a hero now. His vest and trousers were torn, his pale hair and face dirty, and his white shirt showed the effects of having been lived in for a week straight.

  Vergetta's keen nose wrinkled at the smell he emitted. She snaked up a cluster of power and threw it at him. There. Dry-​cleaned, no charge. Loorna tossed her a grouchy look, but Vergetta ignored it. Why should they all suffer for the length of time it took to wring information out of the Wuhs?

  “W-​w-​who, dear lady?” he panted. “I d-​d-​don't know who you're talking about.”

  Vergetta, in her seat next to Caitlin's computer, groaned. That was all they had managed to get out of him: evasions and bad grammar. Apart from his name, of course, which was Wensley. “That's whom, bubalah. I don't know about whom.”

  “Shut up,” Loorna snarled at her senior. She turned back to the prisoner. “Answer the question!” She grabbed the chattering male by his shirt front and shook him. “Where do they come from? What do they want?”

  “They've got some kind of chutzpah, walking right into our place without a by-​your-​leave,” Vergetta declared. “Must be pretty confident, or pretty dumb. I'll take votes either way.”

  “So?” Loorna demanded, as designated interrogator, “Who are they? Industrial spies? What's your connection with them?”

  “What makes you think this sorry little sheep has any?thing to do with transdimensional travelers?” Oshleen asked, in a bored voice, filing her nails with a twelve-​inch rasp. “Plenty of people know we're here. When we started having to seek out venture capital to try and re?coup our losses we had to let them know where we were. Niki's intruders could be industrial spies who are taking advantage of the fact that we are having some unrest to rip us off.”

  “It could be bill collectors,” Tenobia grumbled. “I told you these stupid Wuhses would spend us out of house and home.”

  “They usually send a notice before showing up,” Osh-

  leen reminded her, “and I've been keeping them placated with small payments. It has to be that wizard.”

  “It's a coincidence! It's snoops from some other con?cern on Perv.”

  'The timing's suspicious,“ Loorna retorted, dropping her prisoner to confront Oshleen. ”I've been around a long time, and I don't believe in coincidences."

  “What were they looking for?” Paldine asked. “I've kept my research hush-​hush. The dimensions where we're planning to sell this gadget haven't got enough magik to blow their noses, let alone shake Niki on her own ground. There's a high-​powered wizard out there.”

  “It's probably this Great Skeeve,” Charilor interjected. “He's the one who got us locked up on Scamaroni. Well?” she turned to the Wuhs, who cowered in the corner.

  “It's bill collectors,” Tenobia insisted. “Who knows what the Wuhses bought in the last week? With the treasu?ry empty there's no money for the Wuhses
to steal to pay for their purchases. They're looking for saleable assets or collateral.”

  Loorna lost her patience. She jumped at Wensley and held him high in the air by his collar.

  'Talk!“ she shrieked. ”Where is that damned D-​hopper?"

  “I don't care if you torment me, foul green viragoes,” Wensley choked out, drawing up his narrow chest as far as he could over his little round belly. “I will not betray my friends.”

  “Oh, now it sounds like he read a book,” Charilor sneered.

  Caitlin laughed. “What would you know about reading books, you rave queen?”

  “Girls!” Nedira snapped. “He's confessing, and you won't even let him speak.”

  “I am not confessing,” the Wuhs protested, then clamped his plump lips shut. The Pervects looked at each other in disbelief.

  “A Wuhs with a backbone,” Vergetta hooted. “I never believed such a thing existed.”

  “Threaten to tear his legs off,” Caitlin suggested.

  “Talk, or I'll tear your legs off!” Loorna shouted.

  “Now shake him until his teeth rattle.”

  Loorna shook her fist, and the Wuhs's limbs flailed like those of a rag doll.

  “Wait a minute!” she demanded, looking at the youn?gest Pervect. “Who's conducting this interrogation? You or me?”

  “Oh, you can, if you really want to,” Caitlin yawned, leaning back in her chair. “I figured as long as you were go?ing by the book I could just coach you. It saves time.”

  “Why isn't anyone taking this seriously?” Paldine asked. “Our future is at stake here.”

  “I am. You're pretty brave for a sheep,” Loorna hissed right in Wensley's face, “keeping your mouth shut. Got some Dutch courage from somewhere? I don't smell any alcohol on you.”

  “I need no alcohol. I know I don't have to tell you any?thing!”

  Loorna grinned. “Well, I don't know if you've ever taken a look downstairs in the dungeons of this sweet little palace of yours. You keep talking about how your ancestors were always so peaceful, cooperative and nice, but I'm here to tell you that there is some pretty nasty torture equipment down there that even Pervects would never have thought of using on another living being. I am just on the edge of taking you down there and using some of it on you. Or,” she leaned close enough so that the Wuhs could see the gold flecks in her bright yellow eyes, “we'll make you eat some of our food. Talk!”

  Myth 13 - Myth Alliances

  TWENTY-TWO

  'What does this have to do with assembling the Death Star?"

  G. M. TARKIN

  “Whew!” I whistled, as we emerged in the tidy gardens of Kobol. Zol stood up from the marble bench where he had been waiting for us. “Do you think that Pervect got a good look at us?”

  “I think we must assume,” Zol replied, “that she did see us as we were, undisguised. And if she did not, there were plenty of witnesses to our tour. I think you must assume that she will have a full description of us very soon. The Wuhses are more adept at self-​preservation than they are at maintaining discreet silence.”

  “You mean they'll save their own skins,” Tananda translated.

  "More than that: the odd behavior that we all witnessed among a segment of the workers indicates to me that they are engaged upon an enterprise of which even they are un?aware. You saw the look of stupefaction on the faces of those males. They all believe that they make handcrafts, but it is clear from the involuntary re-​creation of the repet-

  itive motions they went through that it could be nothing of the sort. Since Wuhses cannot keep a secret they must not know it."

  “The situation is worse than I thought Ñworse than Wensley thought,” I stated grimly. “Not only are the Pervects in total control of the country, they're bending the minds of the inhabitants. It's inhumane.”

  “What do you suppose it is that they're making?” Bunny asked. “It seemed when that fellah pounded on the top that it looked like something mechanical.”

  “Some kind of armaments?” Tananda guessed. “But it's nothing I've seen anywhere, in or out of the Assassins Guild.”

  “It does rather look like a weapon of some kind,” Zol suggested. “How curious. There must be a spell on some part of the process to fool the conscious mind into believ?ing that they are still performing their usual functions.”

  “That would be why we never found out who was mak?ing those glasses,” I mused, thoughtfully. “Nobody would remember doing it. Do they plan to take over another di?mension?”

  “Or to sell to one,” Zol suggested. “These are enterpris?ing women, and you will have observed that they did not need arms to take over Wuh or Scamaroni. In one they are already successful, and in the other they would have been, if not for your intervention.”

  “Next time I'm going to make sure they're captured and stay under lock and key,” I asserted, pounding my fist into my palm. “ All of them. We have to get back into the castle to figure out where they're going and head them off.”

  “Oh, we don't need to do that,” Zol informed me. “Now that my notebook has been in contact with their computer, we can access their drive remotely.” To my puzzled expres?sion he explained, “We can see what they see in their magik mirror.”

  “I thought you couldn't get through their encoding,” Bunny queried.

  “We don't need to. My countrymen back on Kobol broke their basic program code. What they are working on at any given moment is not going to be stored under lock and key. We can spy upon their plans as they make them. I merely need to be in the same dimension, preferably upon the same energy line.”

  “You can't do it from here?” I asked. “On Perv they could communicate with the banks on Deva through their computers.”

  “That was with the cooperation of the Devan comput?ers. The Pervect Ten will surely not want us reading their plans. We need to be close for my subterfuge to work. Our only fear then will be discovery.”

  “I'll keep us hidden,” I vowed, grimly. “I won't fail again. I owe it to Wensley's memory.” A thought occurred to me just then. “You know, I hate to say this, but it's just as well that he isn't around any more. If we had plotted this out in front of him he would have blabbed to the Ten about us.”

  “We're having to do this because of you, honey,” Vergetta confided to the snow globe on the table as Niki dragged in the first invitee.

  All their threats of torture, all their shouting and shak?ing had done nothing to dent the resolve of the Wuhs leader, Wensley. Vergetta had to admit to herself that she was pretty impressed, with the little guy. It took a strong person to defy a Pervect, let alone the whole minyan of them. Big, brave Trolls had broken down in tears when faced with the Ten in full fury. Even a bowl of purple Pervish gumbo had not been enough to make him open his mouth. A miniature picture of defiance, he sat crosslegged and arms folded on the bottom of the paperweight.

  “Let's see how long you hold out when you see us take some of your friends apart.”

  The little face turned away from her. Vergetta grinned.

  “First things first,” Tenobia demanded, when the fat Wuhs with black curls had been flung into the “hot seat,” a chair in the middle of the room.

  They had drawn straws to see who got to be “Lady High Executioner,” and she had won. In celebration she had put on a silver bustier and a tight black skirt that she usually saved for wild parties at home on Perv. The ensemble looked suit?ably dangerous and very impressive, the virtual caricature of a dominatrix torturer. The Wuhs's eyes nearly started out of his head at the sight of her. She smacked her palms down on the arms of the chair and leaned into his face.

  “Where's the D-​hopper?”

  “I d-​d-​don't know what you mean, madam...” Gubbeen babbled. “It's not my department to keep track... we are the friends of public health ... the D-​hopper is more of a safety issue....”

  Charilor came back upstairs, grunting under the weight of a vast, lumpy bag. She threw it on the stone floor in f
ront of the Wuhs. It clanked and banged like a suit of armor in a garbage disposal. Their guest nearly jumped out of his seat at the noise.

  “I don't have it!” Gubbeen exclaimed, his eye on the sack, though none of them moved towards it. “I haven't had it for ages. It's been my turn ... I mean, I would have safeguarded it on your behalf, but I really don't know, dear ladies, Ardrahan had it last time I saw it... please don't hurt me!”

  “I don't know why we didn't do this six months ago,” Loorna grimaced.

  She kicked open the folds of the bag and extracted a metal implement with a rotating wheel and several long, sharp strands of metal. She pointed it at Gubbeen and ro?tated the little handle that made the tines clash violently against one another. The Wuhs recoiled into his chair, try?ing to meld with the wooden staveback.

  Vergetta recognized the device as a whisk they used to

  aerate hot drinks. She hadn't seen it for months. It had probably gotten dumped into the hold-​all drawer in the kitchen, or shoved into a box in a storage closet. She smiled. Obviously the Wuhs, who had never seen one, was making up his own uses for it in his head, and none of them made him comfortable.

  They played with him a while longer, going up the threat scale from kitchen implements to sports equipment, and through to genuine torture devices, but the Wuhs con?tinued to shriek out that he had given them all the informa?tion that he had about the missing D-​hopper. They had no choice but to believe him. He was so overwrought that Vergetta called a halt to the questioning. Nedira escorted him down to one of the padded cells in the basement to calm down a little bit before they would let him go.

  Vergetta waved her arms, bringing Wensley out again.

  “We were interrupted, darlink. Your friend wasn't much help. Would you like to cooperate a little?”

  “Never,” the Wuhs declared. “We will be rid of you and your foul enterprises soon. The Great Skeeve will see to that!”

  “What's this?” Vergetta demanded, leaning close to make sure she had heard him correctly. “What about the Great Skeeve?”

  “He will defeat you.” Wensley made a gesture that in?cluded every Pervect present. “All of you!”