“You?” Oshleen asked, narrowing her eyes. “You hired the Klahd wizard?”
“You got us thrown in jail? Fined? You got our merchan?dise confiscated!” Paldine gritted out crime after crime. She started toward the pale Wuhs with her claws out.
“That's it,” Vergetta exclaimed, getting in between them. “You stop,” she told the marketing specialist, then turned to point at Wensley. “You get a permanent time-out while I figure out what we are going to do with you.”
She waved her hand, and the Wuhs was restored to his spherical prison.
“But you heard what he said!” Paldine exclaimed, trying to get around her elder.
“Yes, and what good will it do to tear him to pieces? It won't solve our problem. But now we have at least some of the answers. We've been looking for the cause of our trou?bles all over the dimensions, and it was right here under our noses. I bet the Great Skeeve got Zol Icty involved, got him to condemn us for a favor.”
“If it really was Zol Icty,” Oshleen cautioned. “Skeeve's supposed to be such a great wizard it was probably one of his illusions.”
“Here's the next one,” Niki grunted, hauling in another Wuhs.
“We'll finish with you later,” Paldine promised Wensley, gold veins standing out in her yellow eyes. “Count on it.”
“Cashel's your name, right?” Tenobia asked, planting a silver spike heeled boot on the Wuhs's knee and sticking her fists into her hips. “I've seen you in the castle a lot lately. But you don't work here, do you? Where do you work?”
“Factory number nine,” Niki supplied.
“Right. So what are you doing down in the treasury all the time? You wouldn't be the one who's always extracting money, even though you know that we've got rules about requesting hard currency.”
“M ... money, dear ladies?” Cashel gulped, his eyes darting warily to all the various pieces of hardware that Tenobia was idly fondling. “I wouldn't break rules, not at least ones I understood to be absolute strictures against... certain behaviors ...”
“Just what did you think that money was for?”
The Wuhs looked up hopefully. He must have thought he knew the answer to this one. “... Er, buying things?”
“What things?”
“... Uh ... things for you?”
“No, you fool!” Tenobia roared, throwing up her hands in exasperation. "Supplies. Staples. Building materials.
Food. Equipment. A consulting contract that your leaders signed willingly two years ago! Things for you! Your spending habits are driving us crazy!"
Cashel looked from one Pervect to another in deep con?fusion. “Then ... I don't understand, ladies, why you're upset. We're buying things for us. I mean,” he added, re?coiling at the furious expression on Loorna's face, “whoever's taking the money. It's certainly not me. I'm in favor of public support, really.”
Vergetta shook her head. They were getting nowhere. Naturally the ones they interviewed were never the ones who had brought in new merchandise or stolen the money. It was always somebody else.
“Who has the D-hopper?” Tenobia interrupted before the Wuhs could start another string of evasions and lies. “Who had it the last time you saw it? Answer now!”
“Coolea,” Cashel sobbed, dropping his face into his hands. “Yesterday. He ought to be back by now. I hope. He really wouldn't listen to the instructions, he was so eager to see other dimensions ...”
Nedira threw a nod to Vergetta, picked one of their in?visibility cloaks off a hook on the wall and vanished out of the chamber. It was the closest they'd come to current in?formation, and they wanted to check up on it before it changed hands again.
Cashel was led out, still pleading his innocence but bleating earnestly that he would never again take anything that didn't belong to him. Vergetta popped Wensley out of his spherical prison.
“Honestly, darlink,” she told him, “would it be so bad if anyone told us the truth? You have anything else you want to say?”
Wensley pressed his lips together and shook his head.
“Wait a minute,” Caitlin spoke up, “Nedira's coming back.”
The motherly Pervect was among them a second later. Vergetta had to pop Wensley back into his prison so as not
to distract the stable boy, who wore an awestruck expres?sion when he realized he was in the presence of the full force of the Pervect Ten. Shaking her head ruefully, Nedira held up a bag.
“Banana-skin shoes. The Deveel who sold them to him is probably still laughing.”
“'Slippers,'” Vergetta groaned. “That's such an old one, honey, it plain amazes me that you fell for it. But you're just a kid. What'd you pay for them? A silver piece? They're not worth more than a copper or two, and usually they come with a free banana inside each one.”
“Four gold pieces a pair,” the boy managed to get out.
“Aaagggh!” Tenobia shrieked, waving her fists. Coolea fled behind the chair for shelter. She pounded on the table. “Every junk seller in all the dimensions must be looking out for you morons, to unload the most useless trash they've got!” She gestured angrily at the others. “I feel like locking him up and throwing away the key.”
“No,” Oshleen smirked, grinning widely enough to make the Wuhs sway with fear, “send him back and make him ask for a refund.”
“The Deveels?” the boy gasped. “No! No! Oh, please, good dames, spare me! Not a refund!”
“Good idea,” Nedira agreed with her allies. She grasped Coolea by the shoulder. The two of them disappeared.
“Slippers!” Tenobia pointed a finger at the glass sphere on the table. “You people make me so furious I could eat you, except your lily livers would give me indigestion! Af?ter all we've done for you!”
The little figure in the snow globe on the table looked thoughtful.
“All right,” Vergetta grunted. “Let's try and get some business done.”
Myth 13 - Myth Alliances
TWENTY-THREE
“It's so good, it practically sells itself!”
FROM THE PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL
FOR THE EDSEL
A shaggy-coated herdbeast bleated in my ear. We were sit?ting among them in the shadow of the king's statue in the park at the other end of town from the castle, on the energy line that supplied power to the Pervect's computer. I had disguised the four of us as beasts to blend in.
Unfortunately, that was earning us some unwanted at?tention, Tananda especially. Whenever I used an illusion spell to make us look like the denizens of a dimension, she always insisted on being made a beautiful whatever-it-was. In this case, that meant she was the prettiest ewe in town, and every ram in the field was doing his best to get her attention.
Bunny was less enamored of sitting in the middle of a smelly feed lot, and didn't care what kind of a herdbeast she looked like. Normally she would be neck and neck with Tananda, insisting on the current standard of beauty, but at the moment she was watching Zol avidly as he linked his little notebook to the Pervect's magik mirror. I
noticed that Bytina having touched Zol's computer, now had exactly the same pictures appearing in her little look?ing glass. It seemed that infinite links could be made very easily.
“The ironic thing,” Zol began, as his long fingers flew over the button board, “is that the easiest way into a system is through its security gates. The least safe mode for a com?puter is when it is operating.”
“Stands to reason,” I replied. Though I knew nothing about computers, I knew something about systems. “When you're in the midst of a mission, the last thing you have time to do is watch your own back.”
That was why I had partners. At the moment I was in the “back-watching” position, and Zol was gathering the infor?mation we needed.
Zol gave me a luminous smile of approval. “Precisely, Master Skeeve! I never ceased to be amazed by your ca?pacity for comprehension.”
I smiled back, a little uneasily. Not that I didn't enjoy basking in the little gray man
's fulsome praise, but after having to pry compliments out of my former associates with a crowbar I mistrusted someone who threw off acco?lades whenever ... he felt I'd earned one. He seemed just a little too easy to please. He didn't seem to notice my discomfort.
“Now, by looking at the active components, the open books on the desktop, so to speak, we can see what they have been doing today. Hmm ... they have a weather-prediction program ... that one they are using hasn't got the latest updates. The prognostication section has a flaw. It foretells firestorms when it means light rain. It's given rise to panic in some dimensions, as you might guess. Yes, see here?” he pointed at the center of the mirror. “ 'Partly sunny, with widespread devastation toward evening.' There's a partial letter home... and the operator has played over five hundred games of solitaire, with a 7:1 win-lose ratio.”
“Whew!” I whistled. “I'd have liked to hire her as a dealer for the casino our partnership once owned. She must have very fast fingers.”
“Oh, they aren't physical cards, Master Skeeve; they're magikal projections. You can play hundreds of different card games on a magik mirror like this. Unfortunately, in everything but solitaire, your virtual opponents tend to cheat.”
“Just like real players,” I nodded.
“But among all of this detritus they are working on plans,” Zol said, his huge dark eyes reflecting the light coming from the small square mirror. “We are in the envi?able position of being able to monitor their every move. See this? Men, machinery, logistics, principles of general?ship ... They must be out for empire-building. This is big?ger than I ever dreamed possible. Marvelous!”
“Marvelous?” I echoed.
Zol beamed at me. “Yes, seeing how the minds of Pervects work. Released from the ease of their own dimen?sion's comforts, they set their sights on spreading then-influence across the multiverse. What an opportunity to observe! Untrammeled ambition! How the two halves of their nature intersect! They seek to Pervert the course of the future in these places, to Pervect their vision.”
“Well, it won't do,” I snapped. “This isn't an experi?ment, it's all these people's lives. Their real lives. It cost our friend Wensley his life, in case you have forgotten.”
“I'd forgotten how straightforward you Klahds are,” Zol offered sincerely. “Please accept my apologies. I became too enthusiastic a scholar, and forgot to be a loving, caring being. I am so sorry.” The big dark eyes turned sad.
“He's not upset, Zol,” Bunny hurried to assure the au?thor. “Are you, Skeevie?”
I winced. She knew how much I hated to be called Skeevie, so she must be trying to make a point. “But what do we do?”
“You must use that Klahdish sensibility,” Zol told me.
“Confront them. Head them off and prevent them from achieving their latest objective.”
I peered over his shoulder. “Can we tell where they're going this time?”
“Yes, indeed,” Zol replied, enlarging a map so I could easily read the name in the center. “Ronko.”
“It slices. It dices. It cooks. It even cleans itself if you dunk it in water,” Paldine expounded to a roomful of potential distributors.
Ronko ought to be the ideal dimension, she had argued to her companions; they loved gadgets of all kinds, putting even Perv in the shade when it came to techie-toys. She leaned over the Formica podium with one of Niki's inven?tions in her hand. The development of the dimension was at about the era of early sitcoms, perfect for a gadget like hers.
“It has only one moving part. You push it down. When it pops up, you push it again. When your food looks the way you want it to, you stop. It's so easy an animal can use it.” She didn't add, “like you.” She might have thought it, but she would never say it.
“That's not in the sales brochure,” complained one of the Ronkonese in the front row.
She knew he was going to be trouble from the begin?ning. His tanned face was wrinkled and lined as if he had spent too many an afternoon out with his pocket fisherman, obviously a veteran of thousands of intense sales pitches.
“Well, you can confide that to a buyer when you're try?ing to sell him one,” Paldine countered, getting exasper?ated. “Exclusive information they can only get from you!”
“Is it safe?” asked a Ronkonese female, raising a pencil in the front row next to Paldine's “problem child.”
"Of course it's safe. You think I could have gotten an
import license from your government if it hadn't passed a dozen tests first?"
Paldine turned the business end down onto her palm and pounded the plunger up and down a few times. Then she displayed her unmarked hand to the audience.
“If it's not food, it won't cut. In other words, don't try to use it to shred those confidential documents, folks; it won't work.” An appreciative chuckle ran through the room.
She went through flip charts showing sales projections, giving them every wrinkle she had worked out to attract the attention of the average and below-average buyer. They might be scared witless of her looks, and they were wise to pay heed to that discomfort, but no one listening could deny that she knew what she was talking about.
If her master's program in marketing at the Perv Acad?emy of Design hadn't been enough to teach her her busi?ness, a full century at Bushwah Tomkins and Azer had certainly cemented her reputation as an innovative sales thinker. She had won the coveted Euphem Ism Queen title twelve years running. Since the Pervect Ten usually under?took accounting and refinancing contracts she hardly ever got to stretch her advertising muscles, and she was enjoy?ing it.
The first two posters on her flip pad were okay, and she knew it, but the third one was the big bombshell, the sell-all ad. When she revealed it the room burst into applause. She built on it by going from there to newspaper ads, spon?sorships at halftime shows, sandwich boards, and direct mail. A pleased murmur ran through the room, as she showed them the potential profit per type of ad purchased. Paldine built upon the growing enthusiasm.
“But nothing works like word of mouth. Stress conve?nience! Stress price!” she urged them.
“Are you trying to tell us how to do our job?” the pain in the butt in the front row asked, raising his voice so all of his fellow pitchmen and women could hear him.
Paldine had had enough. She bared all her fangs and walked right up to him. When she was an inch from his face she whispered, “No.” The Ronkonese recoiled, then looked puzzled. “I'm telling you how to sell our item,” Pal?dine roared. The force of her voice pushed the trouble?maker back into his chair, his fluffy hair plastered backwards on his head. “If you don't think I'm an expert on a product that we invented, that we put all the features into, step right up here and explain it to me.”
For a moment the sales force looked as nervous as Wuhses. Paldine was satisfied. She had gotten her point across and without bloodshed. It didn't hurt that some Pervects in the past had paved the way for her by proving that they were not demons to be trifled with. In fact, the point had been proved so well that most of the Ronkonese were crowded against the back wall trying to edge warily toward the door.
“All right,” she rallied them. “Then get out there and make us some money!”
Myth 13 - Myth Alliances
TWENTY-FOUR
“Interesting place. Wonder what they sell here?”
Ñ m. polo
It was a good thing that we had such an experienced di?mensional traveler as Zol with us. Even Tananda had never visited Ronko. The route from Wuh had taken us through three intermediate hops, each into dimensions less than friendly to Klahd metabolism. I would never have tried such a transit on my own.
Gleep had perked up every time we materialized in a new place, but seemed to understand that no matter how in?teresting the smells were coming from that primeval swamp or those volcanoes, it was more important to stay close to us while Zol calculated the next jump. In the meanwhile, I kept wards around us, sealing in a bubble of air that we could breathe.
> The second hop left us teetering on a boulder perched on a mountaintop that threatened to topple over and plum?met us into an avalanche of bright blue snow. Even Gleep looked nervous as we all wobbled with our arms out, trying to keep our uneasy perch from overbalancing.
At the conclusion of the third hop we found ourselves on level ground. Well, at least it wasn't moving. The city around me, for it was a city, swooped upwards on both sides of the street on which we were standing. I had been in cities before, including the filthy and dreary burg on Perv that Aahz hailed from, but I had never seen one like this before.
Instead of plain boxes, the buildings on either side were made in fanciful shapes. To our left was a turreted castle covered with bright yellow tiles. Next to it, a squat fortress made of green stone seemed to beckon us toward its portcullis with concentric arcs of lights that blinked in se?quence from the outside inward, over and over again. Across the street stood a vast rough wooden box, fifty feet on a side, with what was the mother of all bird's nests on it, each straw as thick in diameter as my body. That was just a relative sample of the structures we could see from where we stood. And the signs! Hundreds of them were plastered on all flat surfaces, from the sides of big vehicles to entire walls of soaring buildings. Brilliant orange, pink and blue ribbons of light were shaped into letters and pic?tures. We couldn't read any of them, but the illustrations above and around them made their meaning clear. They were advertisements.
I enjoyed looking at them. Everyone in them looked cheerful, healthy and prosperous. I couldn't help being in?terested in what they were so cheerful about. The street was full of traffic, both foot and vehicle. I pressed my back against a handy lamppost so I could see the giant posters without getting in anyone's way. The denizens of Ronko were similar in shape to Klahds, though they were slightly smaller in stature, like Zol. All of them were talking on small devices or playing with square toys that beeped or bobbing their heads from side to side as they walked.
Myth 13 - Myth Alliances Page 19
