Sweet Myth-tery of Life

by Robert Asprin

  “Of course not.” Grimble replied easily. “That’s only to be expected.”

  “How’s that?” I said.

  “Well, Lord Skeeve,” the Chancellor smiled, “you’ll find that accountants are pretty much like vultures ... we thrive when things are worse for other people. You see, when a kingdom or company is doing well, no one wants to be bothered with budgets, much less cost savings. As long as there’s money in the coffers, they’re happy. On the other hand, when the operation is on the skids, such as is currently the case with Possiltum, then everyone wants answers ... or miracles . . . and it’s up to us irritating beancounters to provide them. More analysis means more man-hours, which in turn means a larger staff and expanded facilities.”

  “Charming.” Aahz growled, but Grimble ignored him.

  “So,” he said, rubbing his hands together like a blow-fly, “what would you like to address first? Perhaps we could discuss our overall approach and strategy over lunch?”

  “Umm . . .”I said intelligently.

  The horrible truth was that, now that I was actually confronted by Grimble and his paper mountains, I didn’t have the foggiest notion of how to proceed.

  “Actually, Grimble,” Bunny said stepping forward, “before we think about lunch, I’d like to see your Operating Plan for the current year, the calendarized version, as well as the P and L’s and Financial Statements for the last few months . . . oh yes, and your Cash Flow Analysis, both the projections and the actuals, if you don’t mind.”

  The Chancellor blanched slightly and swallowed hard.

  “Certainly. I ... of course,” he said, giving Bunny a look which was notably more respectful than his earlier attentions. “I’ll get those for you right now.”

  He scuttled off to confer with a couple of his underlings, all the while glancing nervously back at our little group.

  I caught Aahz’s eye and raised and eyebrow, which he responded to with a grimace and a shrug. It was nice to know my partner was as much in the dark as I was regarding Bunny’s requests.

  “Here we are,” Grimble said, returning with a fistful of paper which he passed to Bunny. “I’ll have the Cash Flow for you in a moment, but you can get started with these.”

  Bunny grunted something non-committal, and began leafing through the sheets, pausing to scrutinize each page intently. More for show than anything, I eased over to where I could look over her shoulder. In no time flat, my keen eye could tell without a doubt that the pages were filled with rows and columns of numbers. Terrific.

  “Um ... I do have some spread sheets to support some of those figures if you’d like to see them.” Grimble supplied uneasily.

  Bunny paused in her examinations to favor him with a dark glance.

  “Maybe later,” she said. “I mean, you do know the origin of spreadsheets, don’t you?”

  “Umm . . .” the Chancellor hedged.

  “They were named after the skins used by trappers,” Bunny continued with a faint smile. “You know, the things they dragged after them to hide their tracks?”

  For a moment Grimble stared at her, bewildered, then he gave a sudden bark of laughter, slapping her playfully on the shoulder.

  “That’s good!” he exclaimed. “I’ll have to remember that one.”

  I glanced at Aahz.

  “Accountant humor, I guess,” he said with a grimace. “Incomprehensible to mere mortals. You know, like ‘We’ll make it up on volume’ jokes?”

  “Now that’s not funny,” Grimble corrected with mock severity. “We’ve had that line dumped on us all too often ... in complete sincerity. Right Bunny?”

  I couldn’t help but notice that he was now treating Bunny with the deference of a colleague. Apparently her joke, however nonsensical it had been to me, had convinced the Chancellor that she was more than my arm ornament.

  “Too true,” my assistant said. “But seriously, Grimble, getting back to the problem at hand, we’re going to need complete, non-camouflaged figures if we’re going to get the kingdom’s finances back on course. I know the tradition is to pretty things up with charts and studies of historic trends, but since we’ll be working with insiders only, just this once let’s try it with hard, cold data.”

  It sounded like a reasonable request to me, but the Chancellor seemed to think it was a radical proposal . . . and not a particularly wise one, at that.

  “I don’t know, Bunny,” he said, shooting a look at Aahz and me one normally reserves for spies and traitors. “I mean, you know how it is. Even though we usually get cast as the villains of bureaucracy, we don’t have any real power to implement change. All we do is make recommendations to those who can change things. If we don’t sugarcoat our recommendations, or slant them so they’re in line with what the movers and shakers wanted to hear all along, or clutter them up until the Gods themselves can’t understand what we’re really saying, then there’s a risk that we end up being what gets changed.”

  “Nobody really wants to hear the truth, eh?” Aahz said, sympathetically. “I suppose that’s typical. I think you’ll find it’s different this time around. Grimble. If nothing else, Skeeve here has full power to implement whatever changes he thinks are necessary to bring things in line.”

  “That’s right,” I said, glad to finally be able to contribute to the proceedings. “One of the things I think we should do as soon as possible is cut back on the size of the army . . . say, maybe, by one-half?”

  Knowing the Chancellor’s long-time feud with military spending, I thought he’d leap at this suggestion, but to my surprise, he shook his head.

  “Can’t do it,” he said. “It would cause a depression.”

  “I don’t care if they’re happy or not!” Aahz snarled. “Let’s get ‘em off the payroll. The Queen’s agreed to stop her expansionist policies, so there’s no reason we should keep paying for an army this size.”

  Grimble gave my partner a look like he was something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe.

  “I was referring to an economic depression,” he said tersely. “If we dump that many ex-soldiers on the job market at the same time we’re cutting back on military spending, it would create massive unemployment. Broke, hungry people, particularly those with prior military training, have a nasty tendency to revolt against those in power . . . which, in this case, happens to be us. I think you’ll agree, therefore, that, in the long run, huge cutbacks in the military force is not the wisest course to follow.”

  I was rapidly developing a greater respect for Grimble. Obviously there was more to this beancounting game than I had ever imagined.

  “We might, however, achieve some savings through attrition,” the Chancellor continued.

  “Attrition?” I said. I had decided that, if I was going to be any help at all in this effort, it was time I admitted my ignorance and started learning some of the basic vocabulary.

  “In this case, Lord Skeeve,” Grimble explained with surprising patience, “the term refers to cutting manpower by not rehiring as people terminate at the normal rate ... or, for the army, that we stop adding new recruits to replace those whose term of enlistment is up. It will still cut the size of the army, but at a slower rate more easily absorbed by the civilian work force.”

  “Can we afford to do it slowly?” Aahz said, seemingly unfazed by his earlier rebuke. “I was under the impression the kingdom was in dire straits financially.”

  “I believe I had heard some rumor that we might be raising our tax rate?” The Chancellor made the statement a question as he looked at me pointedly.

  “I’m not sure that will do any good,” Bunny said from where she was reviewing the figures Grimble had passed her.

  “Excuse me?” the Chancellor frowned.

  “Well, from what I’m seeing here, the big problem isn’t income, it’s collections,” she said, tapping one of the sheets she was holding.

  Grimble sighed, seeming to deflate slightly.

  “I’ll admit that’s one of our weak suits,” he s
aid, “But ...”

  “Whoa! Time out!” I interrupted. “Could someone provide a translation?”

  “What I’m saying is that the kingdom actually has a fair amount of money,” Bunny said, “but it’s all on paper. That is, people owe us a lot on back taxes, but it isn’t being collected. If we could make some inroads into converting these receivables . . . that’s debts owed to us . . . into cash which we can spend, the kingdom would be in pretty good shape. Not stellar, mind you, but enough to ease the current crisis.”

  “The problem is,” Grimble said, picking up the thread of her oration, “the citizens are extremely un-cooperative when it comes to taxes. They fight us every inch of the way in admitting how much they owe, and when it comes to actually paying their tax bill . . . well, the variety of excuses they invent would be amusing, if we weren’t going bankrupt waiting for them to settle their accounts.”

  “I can’t argue with them there,” Aahz smirked.

  “It’s the duty of every citizen to pay their fair share of the cost of running the kingdom through taxes,” the Chancellor said testily.

  “And it’s the right of every individual to pay the lowest possible amount of taxes they can justify legally,” my partner shot back.

  For a moment, it sounded like old times, with Aahz and Grimble going head to head. Unfortunately, this time, we all had bigger fish to fry.

  “Check me on this,” I said, holding up a hand to silence them. “What if we see if we can kill two birds with one stone?”

  “How’s that?” Grimble frowned.

  “Well, first, we implement your suggestion of reducing the army by attrition . . . maybe hurrying it along a little by offering shortened enlistments for anyone who wanted out early ...”

  “That might help,” the Chancellor nodded, “but I don’t see ...”

  “And,” I continued quickly, “convert a portion of those remaining in the service into tax collectors. That way they can be helping to raise the cash necessary to cover their own pay.”

  Grimble and Bunny looked at each other.

  “That might work,” Grimble said, thoughtfully.

  “It can’t do much worse than the system that’s already in place,” Bunny nodded.

  “Tell you what,” I said loftily. “Kick it around between the two of you and maybe rough out a plan for implementing it. Aahz and I will go discuss it with the Queen.”

  Actually, I had no intention of visiting Hemlock just now, but I figured it was as good a time as any to escape from this meeting . . . while I had at least a small victory to my credit.

  Chapter Four

  “I’m getting paid how much?”

  M. Jordan

  THE NEXT SEVERAL days were relatively uneventful. In fact, they seemed so much alike that I tended to lose track of which day was which.

  If this sounds like I was more than a little bored, I was. After years of adventuring and narrow escapes, I found the day to day routine of regular work to be pretty bland. Of course, the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing contributed greatly to my mood.

  I mean, within my own areas of specialization . . . such as running from angry mobs or trying to finagle a better deal from a client ... I was ready to admit that I was as good or better than anyone. At things like budgets, operating plans, and cash flows, however, I was totally out of my depth.

  It was more than a little spooky when I realized that, even though I didn’t know what I was doing, the recommendations I was making or approving, like converting part of the army into tax collectors, were becoming law nearly as fast as I spoke. Still, it had been impressed on me that we had to do something to save the kingdom’s finances, so I repeatedly crossed my fingers under the table and went with whatever seemed to be the best idea at the time.

  Before I get too caught up in complaining about my situation, however, let me pause to give credit where credit is due. As bad as things were, I would have been totally lost without Bunny.

  Though I didn’t plan it that way, my administrative assistant ended up doing double duty. First, she would spend long hours going over numbers and plans with Grimble in their high speed, abbreviated jargon while I sat there nodding with a vacant look on my face, then an equal or greater amount of time with me later patiently trying to explain what had been decided. As mind numbing as it was, I found it preferable to my alternate pastime, which was trying to figure out what to do about Queen Hemlock’s marriage offer.

  Every so often, however, something would pop up that I felt I DID know something about. While it would usually turn out in the long run that I was (badly) mistaken, it would provide a break from the normal complacency. Of course, I wasn’t that wild about being shown to be specifically stupid as well as generally ignorant, but it was a change of pace.

  One conversation in particular springs to mind when I think back on those sessions.

  “Wait a minute, Bunny. What was that last figure again?”

  “What?” she said, glancing up from the piece of paper she was reciting from. “Oh, that was your budget.”

  “My budget for what?”

  “For your portion of the financial operation, of course. It covers salaries and operating expense.”

  “Whoa! Stop the music!” I said, holding up my hand. “I officially retired as Court Magician. How did I end up back on the payroll?”

  “Grimble put you back on the same day you came back from Perv,” Bunny said patiently. “But that has nothing to do with this. This is your budget for your financial consulting. Your magical fees are in a whole separate section.”

  “But that’s ridiculous!”

  “Oh Skeeve,” she grimaced, rolling her eyes slightly. “I’ve explained all this to you before. We have to keep the budgets for different kingdom operations on separate records to be able to track their performance accurately. Just like we have to keep the types of expenses within each operation in separate accounts. Otherwise . . .”

  “No, I didn’t mean that it was ridiculous to keep them in separate sections,” I clarified hastily, before she could get settled into yet another accounting lesson. “I meant the budget itself was ridiculous.”

  For some reason, this seemed to get Bunny even more upset rather than calming her down.

  “Look, Skeeve,” she said stiffly. “I know you don’t understand everything Grimble and I are doing, but believe me, I don’t just make these numbers up. That figure for your budget is a reasonable projection, based on estimated expenses and current pay scales . . . even Grimble says it’s acceptable and has approved it. Realizing that, I’d be very cautious to hear the exact basis by which you’re saying it’s ridiculous.”

  “You don’t understand, Bunny.” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not saying the number is ridiculous or inaccurate. What I mean is that it shouldn’t be there at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I was starting to feel like we were speaking in different languages, but pressed on bravely.

  “Com’on, Bunny. All this work is supposed to be saving money for the kingdom. You know, turning the finances around?”

  “Yes, yes,” Bunny nodded. “So what’s your point?”

  “So how does it help things to charge them anything for our services, much less an outrageous rate like this. For that matter, I don’t think I should charge them for my magical services, either, all things considered.”

  “Um, Partner?” Aahz said, uncoiling from his customary seat in the corner. If anything, I think he was even more bored by these sessions than I was. “Can I talk to you for a minute? Before this conversation goes any further?”

  I knew what that meant. Aahz is notorious when it comes to pushing our rates higher, operating under the basic principle that earning less than possible is the same as losing money. As soon as I started talking about not only reducing our fees, but eliminating them completely, it was only to be expected that Aahz would jump into the fray. I mean, talk about money in general, and about our money specifically, would bring
Aahz out of a coma.

  This time, however, I wasn’t about to go along with him.

  “Forget it, Aahz,” I said, waving him off. “I’m not going to back off on this one.”

  “But Partner,” he said menacingly, reaching out his hand casually for my shoulder.

  “I said ‘No!’” I insisted, ducking out of his reach. I’ve tried to argue with him before when he has gotten a death grip on my shoulder, and was not about to give him that advantage again. “This time I know I’m right.”

  “What’s right about working for FREE!” he snarled, abandoning all subtlety. “Haven’t I taught you ANYTHING in all these years!”

  “You’ve taught me a lot!!” I shot back at him. “And I’ve gone along with a lot ... and it usually turned out for the best. But there’s one thing we’ve never done, Aahz, for all our finagling and scrambling. To the best of my knowledge, we’ve never gouged money out of someone who couldn’t afford it. Have we?”

  “Well, no. But . . .”

  “If we can beat Deveels or the Mob out of some extra money, well and good,” I continued. “They have lots of money, and I got most of it swindling other people. But with Possiltum we’re talking about a kingdom that’s on the ropes financially. How can we say we’re here to help them when at the same time we’re kicking them in the head with inflated fees?”

  Aahz didn’t answer at once, and after a moment, he dropped his eyes.

  “But Grimble’s already approved it,” he said finally, in a voice that was almost plaintive.

  I couldn’t believe it! I had actually won an argument with Aahz over money! Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to be magnanimous in my victory.

  “Then I’m sure he’ll approve of cutting the expense even more,” I said, putting my hand on Aahz’s shoulder for a change. “Aside from that, it’s just a clerical adjustment. Right, Bunny?”

  “No.”

  She said it softly, but there was no mistaking her answer. So much for my victory.

  “But Bunny ...” I began desperately, but she cut me off.