“Quick! Back inside!” Kalvin hissed.
“Way ahead of you,” I murmured, feeling behind myself for the door.
I found it ... sort of. The door was there, but there was no handle on this side. Apparently the bar owners wanted it used for exits only. Terrific.
“ ... The only question is: Are you gonna give it to us quietly, or are we gonna have to take it?”
I’ve faced lynch mobs, soldiers, and sports fans before, but a half-dozen Pervish plug-uglies was the most frightening force I’ve ever been confronted with. I decided, all by myself, that this would be an excellent time to delegate a problem.
“C’mon, Kalvin! Do something!”
“Like what? I told you I’m no good in a fight.”
“Well, do SOMETHING! You’re supposed to be the Djin!”
I guess I knew deep inside that carping at Kalvin wouldn’t help matters. To my surprise, however, he responded.
“Oh, all right!” he grimaced. “Maybe this will help. With that, he made a few passes with his hands and ...
... And I was sober! Stone cold sober!
I looked at him.
“That’s all I can do for you,” he shrugged. “From here, you’re on your own. At least now you won’t have to fight ‘em drunk.”
The thugs were starting to pick up boards and pieces of brick from the alley.
“Time’s up!” their leader declared, starting for me.
I smiled at Kalvin.
“I think your analysis of friendship was only a little short of brilliant,” I said. “There are a couple of points I’d like to go over, though.”
“NOW?” the Djin shrieked. “This is hardly the time to ... Look out!”
The leader of the pack was cocking his arms to take a double-handed swing at me with a piece of lumber he had acquired somewhere along the way. As the wood whistled toward its target, which is to say, my head, I made a circular gesture in the air between us with my hand ... and the board rebounded as if it had struck an invisible wall!
“Magikal ward,” I informed the gape-mouthed Djin. “It’s like a force field, only different. I did mention I was a magician, didn’t I?”
The gang stopped dead in their tracks at this display; a few had even retreated a few steps.
“Oh, before I forget, thanks for the sobering-up job, Kalvin, You’re right. It does make it a lot easier to focus the mind. Anyway, as I was saying, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of wards. They can be used like I just did, as a shield, or ... ”
I made a few quick adjustments to the spell.
“ ... You can widen them out into a wall or a bubble. Coming?” I had expanded the ward and was now starting to push the gang back down the alley ahead of us. It was a minor variant of the trick I used to break up a fight at the Big Game a while back, so I had reason to have confidence in it. I figured we would just walk out of the alley keeping the thugs at a respectful distance, then hail a cab to get us the heck out of there.
The gang leader had turned and trotted out ahead of the others a few paces.
“Cute. Real cute,” he called, turning to face me again. “Hadn’t figured you for magik. Well, let’s see how you handle this, wise guy!”
With that, he pulled what looked like a couple of blackboard erasers from the pocket of his jacket. At first, I thought he was going to try to throw them at me, but instead he clapped them together over his head, showering himself with what appeared to be white chalk dust. It would have been funny ... if he hadn’t looked so grim as he started for me again.
Just to be on the safe side, I doubled up on the ward in front of him ... and he walked right through it!
“That’s what I thought!” he called to his cronies, pausing once he had penetrated my defenses. “Real low level stuff. Go to Class Two or heavier, guys ... in fact, the heavier the better!”
I should have seen it coming ... maybe would have if I had had more time to think. In a dimension that used both magik and technology, there were bound to be counter-magik spells and weapons available. Unfortunately, it seemed I was about to learn about them first hand!
The other gang members were all reaching into their pockets and producing charms or spray cans. I had a bad feeling that my magikal ward wasn’t going to protect me much longer. Apparently Kalvin was of the same opinion.
“Quick, Skeeve! Have you got any other tricks up your sleeve?”
“I’ve always figured that, in times of crisis, it’s best to play through your strongest suit. Still hoping to avoid any actual violence, I pulled my energy out of the wards and threw it into a new disguise: an over-muscled Pervect easily half again as tall as I really was.
“Do you boys really want me to get rough?” I shouted, trying as best as I could to make my voice a threatening bass.
I had thought of making myself look like a policeman, but had discarded the idea. With my luck they probably would have surrendered, and then what would I have done with them? I wanted them to run ... as far out of my life as possible!
It didn’t work.
I had barely gotten the words out when a large chunk of brick ripped through the air just over my head ... passing through what would have been the chest of the disguised me.
“Disguise spell!” the thrower called. “Go for him like we saw him before!”
To say the least, I figured it was time for the better part of valor.
Trying to keep my mind under control, which is harder to do than it sounds with half a dozen bully-boys charging down on you, I slapped on a levitation spell and took to the skies.
... At least, I tried to.
I was barely airborne when a vise-like grip closed on my ankle.
“I’ve got him!”
The grip hurt, which made it difficult to concentrate on my spell. Then, too, it seemed the day had taken a lot more out of me than I had realized. Normally, I can, and have, levitated as many as two people besides myself ... count that as three since one of them was Massha. In the scramble of the moment, however, I was hard pressed to lift myself and the guy who was holding my ankle. I struggled to get him into the air, then something bounced off my head and ...
The ground slammed into me at an improbable angle, and for a moment I saw stars. The pressure seemed to be gone from my ankle, but when I opened my eyes, the leader was standing over me with his trusty board in his hands.
“Nice try, wise guy!” He sneered. “But not good enough. Now give me the ... ”
Suddenly he went sprawling as someone piled into him from behind.
“Quick, Mr. Skeeve! Get up!”
It took me a moment to realize it was the street vendor I had spoken to that morning. He crouched over me, facing down the circling gang.
“Hurry up! I can’t hold these guys off by myself!”
I wasn’t sure I could get up if I wanted to, but at this point I was willing to abandon any hopes of a non-violent solution to our problems. Propping myself up on one elbow, I reached out with my mind, grabbed a garbage can, and sent it sailing through the gang’s formation.
“What the ... ”
“Look out!”
If they wanted physical, I’d give it to them. I mentally grabbed two more trash cans and sent them into the fray, keeping all three flying back and forth in the narrow confines of the alley.
“Cripes! I’m on your side! Remember?” the street vendor cried, ducking under one of my missiles.
I summoned up a little more energy and threw a ward over the two of us. Somehow, I didn’t think anyone had thought to use their anti-magik stuff on a garbage can.
A few more swings with the old trash cans, and it was all over. Heaving a ragged breath, I dropped the ward and brought my makeshift weapons to a halt. Four of my attackers lay sprawled on the ground, and the other two had apparently taken to their heels.
“
Nice work, Skeeve,” Kalvin crowed, appearing from wherever it was he had taken cover when the fracas started.
“Are you all right, Mr. Skeeve?” the street vendor asked, extending a hand to help me to my feet.
“I think so ... yes ... thanks to you ... J.R. isn’t it?”
“That’s right. I was walkin’ home when I saw these jokers pilin’ into you. It looked a little uneven, so I thought I’d lend a hand. Cheez! I didn’t know you wuz a magician!”
“A mighty grateful magician right now,” I said, digging into my pocket. “Here, take this. Consider it my way of saying thank you.”
“Excuse me,” the Djin drawled, “but didn’t we just get into this whole brawl so you could keep your money?”
He needn’t have worried. J.R. recoiled from the gold as if I had offered him poison.
“I didn’t help you for money!” he said through tight lips. “I know you don’t mean ... Cripes! All you rich guys are the same. You think your money ... Look! I work for my money, see! I ain’t no bum lookin’ for a handout!”
With that he spun on his heel and marched away, leaving me with an outstretched hand full of gold.
It would have been a beautiful exit, if the alley hadn’t suddenly been blocked by a vehicle pulling in ... a vehicle with blue and red flashing lights on top.
“I STILL DON’T see why we should be detained.”
It seemed like hours that we had been at the police station, we being myself, J.R., and, of course, Kalvin, though the police seemed unaware of the latter’s existence and I, in turn, was disinclined to tell them. Despite our protests, we had been transported here shortly after the police had arrived. The thugs had been revived and placed in a separate vehicle, though I noticed they were handled far less gently than we were. Still, it was small consolation to being held against our will.
“You don’t? Well, then we’ll have to go over it all again slowly and see if you can get a hint.”
This was spoken by the individual who had been conducting our interrogation since we arrived. From the deferential way the other policemen treated him, I assumed he was a ranking officer of some sort. He possessed bad breath, a foul disposition, and what seemed to be an endless tolerance for repetition. As he launched into his oration, I fought an impulse to chant along with the now-familiar words.
“We could charge you with Being Drunk in Public.”
“I’m stone cold sober,” I interrupted, thanking my lucky stars for Kalvin’s assistance. “If you don’t believe it, test me.”
“There are a lot of witnesses who said you were falling down drunk in the bar.”
“I tripped over a chair.”
“Then there’s the minor matter of Assault ... ”
“I keep telling you, they attacked me! It was self-defense!”
“ ... And Destruction of Private Property ... ”
“For cryin’ out loud, it was a garbage can! I’ll pay for a new one if that’s ... ”
“ ... And, of course, there’s Resisting Arrest.”
“I asked them where we were going. That’s all.”
“That’s not the way the arresting officers tell it.”
Realizing I was getting nowhere in this argument, I did the next most logical thing: I took out my frustration on an innocent bystander. In this case, the nearest available target happened to be J. R., who seemed to be dozing off in his chair.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” I demanded. “You’re in this too, you know.”
“There’s no need,” the street vendor shrugged. “It’s not like we were in trouble or anything.”
“That’s funny. I thought we were in a police station.”
“So what? They aren’t really serious. Are you, Captain?”
The Pervect who had been arguing with me shot him a dark look, but I noticed he didn’t contradict what had been said.
“I’ll bite, J. R.,” I said, still watching the captain. “What are you seeing that I’m not in this situation?”
“It’s what isn’t happening that’s the tip-off,” he winked. “What isn’t happening is we aren’t being booked. We’ve been here a long time and they haven’t charged us with any crimes.”
“But the Captain here said ... ”
“He said they could charge us with etc., etc. You notice he hasn’t actually done it. Believe me, Mr. Skeeve, if they were going to jail us, we’d have been behind bars an hour ago. They’re just playing games to stall for a while.”
What he said seemed incredible considering the amount of grief we were being put through, yet I couldn’t find a hole in his logic. I turned to the captain and raised an eyebrow.
“Is that true?” I said.
The policeman ignored me, leaning back in his chair to stare at J. R. through half-closed eyes.
“You seem to know a lot about police procedure, son. Almost as if you’ve been rousted before.”
A sneer spread across the street vendor’s face as he met the challenge head on.
“Anyone who works the streets gets hassled,” he said. “It’s how you police protect the upstanding citizens from merchants like me who are too poor to afford a storefront. I suppose it is a lot safer than taking on the real criminals who might shoot back. We should be grateful to our defenders of the law. If it wasn’t for them, the dimension would probably be overrun with street vendors and parking violators.”
I should have been grateful for the diversion after being on the hot seat myself for so long. Unfortunately, I had also logged in a fair amount of time as the Great Skeeve, and as such was much more accustomed to being hassled than I was to being overlooked.
“I believe the question was ‘Are we or are we not being charged with any crimes?’” I said pointedly. “I’m still waiting for an answer.”
The captain glowered at me for a few moments, but when I didn’t drop my return gaze, he heaved a sigh.
“No. We won’t be bringing any charges against you at this time.”
“Then we’re free to go?”
“Well, there are a few more questions you’ll have to answer first. After that, you’re free to ... ”
“That’s ‘more’ as in new questions, not the same ones all over again. Right?”
The policeman glared at me, but now that I knew we were in the clear, I was starting to have fun with this.
“That’s right,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Okay. Shoot.”
I suddenly realized that was an unfortunate use of words in a room full of armed policemen, but it escaped unnoticed.
The captain cleared his throat noisily before continuing.
“Mister Skeeve,” he began formally, “do you wish to press charges against the alleged attackers we currently have in custody?”
“What kind of a silly question is that? Of course I want to.”
Kalvin was waving frantically at me and pointing to J. R. The street vendor was shaking his head in a slow, but firm, negative.
“ ... Um ... before I make up my mind on that, Captain,” I hedged, trying to figure out what J.R. was thinking, “could you tell me what happens if I don’t press charges?”
“We can probably hold onto them until tomorrow morning for questioning, but then we’ll let them go.”
That didn’t sound like particularly satisfying treatment for a gang that had tried to rob me. Still, J.R. seemed to know what he was doing so far, and I was disinclined to go against his signaled advice.
“ ... And if I DO press charges?” I pressed, trying to sort it out.
“I’m not a judge,” the captain shrugged, “so I can’t say for sure ... but I can give you my best guess.”
“Please.”
“We’ll charge them with Attempted Robbery and Assault with Intent To Do Great Bodily Harm ... I don’t think we could make Attempted
Murder stick.”
That sounded pretty good to me, but the policeman wasn’t finished.
“ ... Then the court will appoint a lawyer—if they don’t already have one—who will arrange for bail to be set. They’ll probably raise the money from a bondsman and be back on the streets before noon tomorrow.”
“What? But they ... ”
“It’ll take a couple of months for the trial to be scheduled, at which point it’ll be your word against theirs and they’re not only locals, they have you outnumbered.”
I was starting to see the light.
“ ... That is, if it gets to trial. More than likely there’ll be some plea bargaining, and they’ll plead guilty to a lesser charge, which means a smaller sentence with an earlier parole—if the sentence isn’t suspended as soon as it’s handed down ... ”
“Whoa! Stop! I think I’ll just pass on pressing charges.”
“Thought you would,” the captain nodded. “It’s probably the easiest way for everybody. After all, you weren’t hurt, and you’ve still got your money.”
“Of course, the next person they jump may not be quite so lucky” I said drily.
“I didn’t say it was the best way to handle it, just the easiest.” Before I could think of a witty answer to that one, a uniformed policeman rapped at the doorframe, entered the room, and passed a sheet of paper to the captain. Something about the way the latter’s lips tightened as he scanned the sheet made me nervous.
“Well, well, Mis-ter Skeeve,” he said at last, dropping the paper onto the desk in front of him. “It seems this isn’t the first time you’ve dealt with the police since arriving in this dimension.”
“Uh-oh,” Kalvin exclaimed, rolling his eyes, “here it comes!”
“What makes you say that, Captain?”
I had a hunch it wouldn’t do any good to act innocent. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any other ideas about how to act.
“What makes me say that is the report I just received. I thought I should check with the other precincts to see if they had heard of you, and it seems they have.”
“That’s why they’ve been stalling,” J. R. put in. “To wait until the reports came in. It’s called police efficiency.”
MA08 Myth-Nomers and Im-Pervections Page 10
