“It doesn't look like the Pervects have started their strike yet,” I observed. “Maybe we've gotten here first and can head them off.”
“I'm afraid you are incorrect, Master Skeeve,” Zol replied. “We are too late.”
He pointed. My eyes followed the line of his finger.
On the side of the biggest building we had yet seen was a gigantic representation of a Pervect female wearing a military uniform. Serpentine yellow eyes caught passing glances and held them, daring one to look away. The Per?vect in the picture held an object which I didn't need to have anyone tell me was what the Wuhses in the factory were assembling. It was a cylinder about the length of my forearm, with a plunger at one end and wicked-looking blades protruding from the round casing at the other.
“It's a weapon,” Tananda mused critically. “It must be nasty, if it has to have a safety casing like that around the business end.”
“I wonder what the poster says?” I asked.
Bunny held up Bytina. “She translated it for me. Look.” Bunny held the PDA under our noses. There, on the little screen, was a miniature representation of the huge adver?tisement. Instead of the square script of the Ronkonese, curly letters in Klahdish spelled out an order.
“We want YOU to join the growing army of happy Pervomatic users!”
“It's a recruiting poster,” I growled.
Zol's dark eyes went wide. “How could we have missed the clues?” he demanded, shaking his head at his own naivete. “It was there on their desktop: they were looking for a force. But for what purpose?”
I smacked my fist into my hand. “To take over other di?mensions. They supply the weapons here on Ronko, then use the Ronkonese as a strike force somewhere else. It's brilliant.”
“What are four of us going to do?” Tananda asked.
“Gleep!” protested my pet.
“Sorry, Gleep,” Tananda replied, scratching him around the jowls. "Five of us ... And if your suggestion is join up,
I may love you like a brother, but the answer this time is a flat no."
Having seen how complications can set in even in such a straightforward enterprise as trying to disrupt an army from within (for further information on the last time my companions got involved in an operation like that I draw your attention to the fine book M.Y.T.H. Inc. in Action), I shook my head.
“We're going to shut them down,” I informed them.
“How?” asked Bunny.
“I don't know yet,” I admitted. “I'll figure it out on the way there. Bunny, can Bytina lead us to this recruiting of?fice?”
“You bet,” she answered, pleased to show off her pet's prowess.
“No, wait, Master Skeeve,” Zol halted us. “If you will allow a little advice? It is not enough to attack a single out?let, as you saw before. You need to reach as many people as possible.” He pointed to a shop window where people were gathered to look at screens similar to computers but some?how not as sophisticated.
“Black and white,” Zol explained, “not as advanced as in some dimensions, but all-pervasive here on Ronko. I seem to recall having been interviewed some years ago at a media outlet, though I cannot recall precisely where it is.” He turned to Bunny.
She touched the tiny keyboard, and an arrow filled the round mirror. Bunny held the small device level, and ges?tured over her head. “This way.”
I glanced into the screens as I passed. The images in them didn't look black and white to me, but a spooky gray blue and chalky white that made the beings pictured look otherworldly. But I was the demon here. Maybe that looked good to the denizens of Ronko.
The television station was a building off to itself at the edge of a big park square. It had been built like one of its
own screens, a huge box with a glass front. Inside Ronkonese hurried around three-walled rooms with lights, boxes on wheels and hand-sized padded sticks, which they pushed in front of one another's faces.
I told my story to the receptionist. She gestured us to a seat, and we waited. The lobby had a wall of screens, each showing a different activity. On one, a male gestured with both palms at a map. It had a smiley sun face and a frowny rain cloud facing one another over a dashed line that sepa?rated rough halves of the geographical area pictured. In an?other, a cheerful looking female in a frilly apron held up a cylindrical bottle and a sponge. I guessed she was promot?ing some kind of cleaning product.
In a while, an eager little Ronkonese female came out to meet us. She was dressed a lot like Bunny often did, in a trim skirt suit with a ruffle at the neck.
“I'm Velda Skarrarov,” she introduced herself, shaking hands with all of us and ending with a pat on Gleep's head. The fact that we all looked very different from natives of Ronko, or that we had a dragon with us, seemed not to faze her at all. “I'm very interested in your story. Will you come to my studio with me, please?”
We followed her through the chaotic hallways. Velda talked to us over her shoulder as she negotiated her way, striding past busy men in headsets pushing big pieces of equipment. “I'm an investigative reporter,” she confided. “They all think I'm insane, a girl trying to make it as a rough-and-tumble journalist, but I know they're wrong.”
“They are,” Zol replied, keeping up with her effort?lessly. “Why, in a few years it will be the norm to see fe?males in your position. Be strong, be intelligent, and when the time comes, be generous to your detractors. They can't see what you do.”
“Why, thank you,” Velda smiled. “I really appreciate your confidence. Of course I know who you are. I'd like to interview you after I speak to your friend.”
“With pleasure,” Zol assured her.
I didn't like the television station, and I could tell Gleep felt as uncomfortable as I did. A shrill whine permeated every room all of the time. There was no escape from the sound. It made Gleep flatten his ears sideways. I wished mine were as mobile.
“It's the monitors,” Velda informed us. “They don't like to work, and they want us to know they're unhappy. They don't like to suffer alone.”
“Misery loves company,” Zol intoned. Velda regarded him with the same sheeplike expression Bunny did. I could tell she was falling under his spell.
“Can we get back to the reason we're here?” I insisted, with some heat.
“Oh, yes!” Velda exclaimed, gesturing us into an office, once again with only three solid walls. The fourth was a section of the vast window that made up the front of the building. She showed my friends a line of chairs against a wall, and pointed me at a seat in front of a row of hot lights. “Please sit there.”
The room was very plain except for a panel behind us that looked like the cityscape we had admired on the way there. Opposite it on the far wall were several big monitor screens, with different scenes on each one.
Two big boxes were wheeled in that looked like siege cannon except that the gun end had a glass lens in it. Each contraption moved on a platform with three or four Ronkonese to steer it. A woman appeared wielding a pow?der puff and an eyeliner pencil. She applied both to Velda and then to me. Tananda and Bunny, safely out of the way, giggled at my discomfiture.
“Ready?” Velda asked me, as she settled herself in the seat opposite mine in front of the lights. “Tell me your story.”
I told her the entire tale, beginning with the arrival of Wensley in my study, going on through his description of the Pervects' domination of the Wuhses, our surveillance
of them in their lair, their attempt to take over Scamaroni, and our discovery of the new plot against the Ronkonese.
“Those things that we saw in the poster,” I explained. “We think they're weapons. I believe that the Perverts in?tend to use your people as soldiers, assembling an army that will be under their absolute command.”
“But Ronkonese are very independent thinkers,” Velda countered. “We wouldn't make a good army to attack any?one else.”
“But you wouldn't know you were doing it,” I pointed out. “I told you t
hey've also invented these mind-bending spectacles. If you were wearing those you might march on an unsuspecting enemy thinking you were doing no more than, say, cutting up food.”
- Velda nodded sagely. “I thought those Pervomatics sounded too good to be true,” she said. “I thought they were just food choppers, like the ads say.”
But I wasn't listening. My attention had been drawn to a Ronkonese female on one of the blue-white screens.
'Today on the Happy Homemaker,“ the cheerful female chirped, ”we're pleased to introduce you to the greatest new labor-saving device of the age, the Pervomatic. Just put all your ingredients here on the worktable,“ she nar?rated, piling hunks of meat and vegetables together, ”place the Pervomatic over them, pound on the plunger, and be?fore you know it, you have a hot and tasty Pervert patty, every time! Your family will love them!"
“Food chopper,” I repeated faintly.
“Yes,” Velda said. “That's what they've been selling them as. But if, as you say, they have the potential to be weapons, then that's a big story! Tell me more. It'll be all over the eve?ning news! You've made my reputation, Mr. Skeeve!”
“I'm sorry,” I blurted, getting to my feet, as the whole reality of my error slapped me in the face. “There's been a terrible mistake. Never mind. Um. I'm sorry. It's actually a really neat item. You ought to buy it. Uh, goodbye. Please don't run this story.”
Velda looked shocked. “But I have to,” she insisted. “It's news. It's big news.”
“No. I... you can't. It's wrong. I was wrong!”
“I must speak for my young friend,” Zol interjected, stepping in between me and the glass-eyed cannon. “This interview is at an end.”
Velda glared at him. “But we haven't gotten into all the details yet!”
I didn't wait to hear any more. I had to get a breath of fresh air. I rushed out of the studio and into the street. I had to get away. I looked around me wildly, hoping I could re?member how to steer the D-hopper to get me home.
But a firm hand closed around my upper arm, and a fa?miliar shape looped around my legs.
“Gleep!” chirped the latter.
“Hold on there, handsome,” insisted Tananda, the pro?prietor of the aforementioned hand. “Where do you think you're going?”
“Anywhere,” I replied desperately. “Away. Out of here!”
“All right, then,” Tananda agreed, with a glance at Bunny and Zol.
The landscape around us vanished.
Myth 13 - Myth Alliances
TWENTY-FIVE
“If you don't want egg on your face, don't make omelets.”
ÑB. CROCKER
“I feel really stupid,” I exclaimed, as we arrived back on Wuh. I didn't want to endanger any of the locals, so we landed behind the statue in the park instead of at Mont?gomery's inn.
“I saw what you saw on that screen,” Zol informed me gently. “It would appear that we have erred in our judg?ment. I did try to talk Velda out of running the story, but I doubt I have dissuaded her. Ronkonese believe strongly in word-of-mouth communications.”
“I ought to go back there and try and straighten it out,” I declared, wishing not as much that I could get away from my friends as that I wanted to get away from myself. “I have been a complete idiot. I'm supposed to be a hotshot, experienced magician, but I have made every single rookie mistake that Aahz was always pounding me over the head for. I made all those assumptions about the Pervects' plans, but I never looked at one of those things up close. A food processor!”
I clutched my head. A gigantic ache was hammering in between my eyes like a troll with a mattock. It wanted out if it killed me, and I almost wished that it could.
“Don't,” Zol replied softly. “It's a mistake anyone could have made.”
I groaned again. Not anyone. Just the Great Skeeve. Just a guy who had had too much success too soon in the last few years, knocked his own supports out from underneath his own feet and tried to jump right back in the first time someone asked him for help without using any of the expe?rience that he had supposedly gained. I made a decision there and then. I turned to the little gray man and put out my hand.
“Zol, I want to thank you for all of your help. It's been a privilege meeting you. I know you were going to stick around, but after today there's going to be nothing left to see.”
Zol's thin black eyebrow went up his gray forehead. “Why the farewell?”
“Because I'm going to resign,” I informed him. “I've made a total mess of this whole mission. Those things we thought were weapons were labor-saving gadgets. The Pervects were just trying to sell them. The same probably went for those spectacles. All I've done is make a fool of myself and of all of you. I'm going to find Gubbeen. He seems to be the ranking Wuhs around here. I'll tell him I'm sorry, but I can't do what he wants. It may be too late, but I'm go?ing to take Aahz's advice. This mission was too much for me. I'm willing to admit it.”
“Oh, Skeeve, that's not true,” Bunny cooed, winding herself into my arm. “You can't quit now.”
“I'd better,” I told them, “because I've made nothing but bad decisions all the way through this.”
'Things might not have gone the way you thought they would, Tiger,“ Tananda purred, burrowing close on my other side, ”but you made the right moves. It's not your fault if the plans didn't work out the way you expected
them to. You're not finished yet. I've never known you to be a quitter.“ Her soft lips were next to my ear, and her voice dropped so only I could hear it. ”I know why you wanted to take this mission. You wanted to learn on your own, to be able to fail on your own. Okay, but that doesn't mean that you stop after you fail. Right? You try again. Humiliation's not fatal, even if it feels as though it ought to be."
I turned crimson with shame. She was right. I would never have even contemplated backing out of a contract when I was the president of M.Y.T.H. Inc., or leaving a friend in the lurch even before that. Not that I had had too many friends until the day Aahz exploded into my life.
Gleep, not to be left out, plumped down at my feet, making the ground shake, and wound his long neck around all of us. He gave me a big slurp on the face which, with both arms full and my legs immobilized, I was powerless to avoid.
“Those choppers and the spectacles were made by un?witting slave labor,” Zol reminded me. “A situation which is still ongoing. And the Wuhses are not yet freed of the Pervects' rule.”
“But one of my friends was killed,” I reminded them sadly. “I'm afraid to put anyone else in harm's way.”
“Isn't that our choice?” Tananda replied, shaking her head with a little smile on her face. “I've been around the dimensions for a while, and I'm not taking a risk without both eyes wide open.”
“I may not have been as far around ...” Bunny began, then shot an apologetic glance at Tananda, “no offense Ñ we Klahds don't live as long as you Trollops.”
“None taken,” Tananda waved, without ire.
“... But I know that you're right, and they're wrong. It's as simple as that.”
“Elegantly put, Miss Bunny,” Zol applauded.
“You're right,” I acknowledged, giving her a warm hug, then letting her go. “You're all right. I felt sorry for myself Ñ really sorry for myselfÑbut I won't let that stop me again.”
“Oh, look, there he is!”
I turned at the sound of a female voice. Kassery stood on the edge of the park jumping up and down and waving her hand vigorously at us.
“Master Sk Ñaagh!” the petite, darkhaired Wuhs cried.
Suddenly she choked, grabbing at her throat. She dropped to her knees, her face turning purple. I glanced around in horror. Tananda was throttling a handful of air. I threw a ward in front of Tananda's hands, cutting off the flow of magik to her target, then I ran to help Kassery to her feet. She was gasping for breath. I carried her to the steps of the statue and laid her down.
“Why did you do that?” I asked Tananda.
My fault again. I should have brought us in with dis?guises in place. Hastily I remedied the omission, trans?forming us all into Wuhses. “I apologize, Kassery. Are you hurt?”
“No, I am all right.” Wensley's mate stood up and clutched my hands. She seemed more than all right. Her eyes were glowing, almost full of hope.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I have just heard a rumor at Montgomery's,” the little female whispered. “Wensley is alive! Gubbeen saw him in the castle.”
At first I felt nothing at all, then as her words sunk in joy welled up inside me until I could no longer contain it.
“Whhheeeeeee-HAH!” I cheered, grabbing Kassery around the waist. I kicked off against the ground and flew high into the air, higher than the treetops. He hadn't been killed after all!
The world around me turned white. I realized that in my
enthusiasm I had zoomed all the way up into the clouds. I stopped, and looked down. Four tiny specks on the ground in the center of the green sward were looking up at me. Talk about stupid overreaction, when I had just chided Tananda for the same thing. Kassery was clinging to me with all her strength.
“I'm so sorry,” I stammered, throwing the illusion of birds on us so that our descent would be more unobtrusive than our ascent. “I bet you're afraid of heights. I didn't mean to scare you.”
But the little female's eyes were shining. “I'm not, but thank you for being concerned. It is true what they say, that you care for those you serve, with all the affection a father shows his children. You are as kind and as powerful as your reputation paints you.” She gave me a shy kiss on the cheek.
I was glad the illusion covered my face. It felt like it was on fire with embarrassment.
“Believe me, I'm not,” I insisted. “I'm just an ordinary Klahd. Ask anyone.”
Myth 13 - Myth Alliances Page 20
