"Well, just let me see it a moment," the female insisted, holding on with determination.
"I… did you meet my guests?" Wensley sibberred, desperately. "I brought them here with the wand. I will have to take them back again this evening. Yes! This evening! Possibly earlier. So, you see, I can't let go of it for now. I'm devastated not to be able to oblige you… ungh!" he grunted. With one tremendous effort he pried the D-hopper out of their grasp and clutched it to his chest with both hands. "… But perhaps later? Just a little."
The crowd looked as though they wanted to glare, but they glanced at one another out of the corner of their odd-pupiled eyes, and decided to paste on the big smiles instead.
"Of course we understand," the big, hearty male trumpeted. "So these are your guests? Welcome, welcome! You must have a tour of our beautiful city, and then dine with us. We must help Wensley shoulder the onus of hospitality. Believe me," he added, bowing to the women, "it is our great pleasure. Ladies, I am Gubbeen, committeefriend of the Committee of Public Safety."
"Committeefriend?" I asked, glancing at Wensley.
"It means, 'spokesperson among equals,'" our guide explained. "Gubbeen is taking his turn on behalf of the Safety organization that has done such an excellent job at making sure there are always handrails on stairs, and that bridges are safe and not slippery. You know."
I nodded. They did not even have the guts to risk offending the rest of the committee members by calling him the chairman. It had to have been the easiest thing ever for the Pervects to take over their government. Anyone who asserted himself on Wuh was as good as king. It must have been thousands of years since there had been a predatory species anywhere in this dimension.
"So, may we be so bold as to ask what brings you to beautiful Pareley?" Gubbeen asked, after gathering a sufficient number of approving looks from his fellows.
"We're here," I announced as positively as I could, as I dropped our disguise spell, "to help you. I am Skeeve the Magnificent."
At the sight of four outworlders and a green dragon, the Wuhses stampeded away in all directions. Wensley looked as if he would have liked to run away with them, but Tananda held on to his arm.
"Not so fast, handsome," she insisted. "You're carrying our ticket out of here."
"Eh? Oh, yes," Wensley babbled, patting the D-hopper in his arms. Making sure none of the others were around to see, he slid it into his boot. I had not let him see our D-hopper back at the inn or on Deva, using a pinch of blinding light powder to cover our transitions between Klah and Deva, and back again. I considered it our ace in the hole in case we had to depart quickly from Wuh. Tananda, a much more experienced magician than I, was capable of transporting herself up and back between dimensions without the use of a piece of philosophical equipment. Zol, too, assured me that he commanded sufficient talent. Only Bunny and I had to rely on a device. As a potential weakness, it was much better that it remained hidden. It so happened mine was in my boot, too.
One by one the Wuhses came creeping back, eyeing us curiously, at a distance at first, but approaching ever nearer until they surrounded us so tightly we couldn't move.
"Look," one of them gasped, peering into my eyes. "Round pupils!" Then, with a shocked expression in case he had offended me, "not that there's anything wrong with that!"
They seemed fascinated by our various skin colors, textures, heights and shapes. In spite of the fact they were of a different species, they admired Tananda and Bunny greatly, gazing at them shyly out of the corners of their eyes, or peering through their lashes, while circling them as closely as they dared. I had no fear that any of the Wuhses would take their admiration too far. For one thing, they were too timid, and for another, Tananda and Bunny were more than able to take care of themselves. None of the Wuhses would pet Gleep, for all he stretched out his neck and rolled his big blue eyes winningly.
"We had no idea you were different, good sir," Gubbeen stammered, putting out a tentative finger to touch my sleeve. "Please forgive my familiarity, Mmm-master Ss-skeeve the Mm-magnificent. What… what did you say you were here for?"
I felt that my dramatic gesture had been ruined by the outward stampede. I used magikal amplification so the whole crowd could hear me. "We're here to rescue you!"
"Shhh!" Wensley almost shrieked, signing to me to keep my voice down. "They might hear you!"
I guess no one had to be told who They were, because the entire crowd dropped their heads and looked around fearfully. No disaster descended from the skies, so the Wuhses relaxed, and moved in closer than before. I could have walked on their shoulders, if they had let go of me or my companions.
"You have heard of our plight, good sir," Gubbeen whispered, wringing my fingers in an excited grip. "Thank Ram you have come to help us. We were a free people, governed by our consciences and cooperation, until They came along. Now our lives are no longer our own!"
"Well, we're going to put a stop to that," I assured him. "Allow me to present my companions. This is Tananda. And Bunny. And the eminent scholar and author Zol Icty."
Though only a few of the Wuhses who had visited Deva had ever heard of me, at least half of them were acquainted with Zol Icty and his self help books. Zol produced dozens of copies of Deveels Are From Deva from the bag slung over his shoulder and autographed them for the crowd. After that, Gubbeen and his fellows couldn't do enough for us. They took us on an exhaustive tour of the city, pointing out every building larger than an outhouse. Three hours into the tour my feet were killing me from trotting over the uneven cobblestones. To the admiration of the crowd I levitated Bunny and myself so we floated just above and behind our hosts. Tananda stretched herself out on the air with her head propped on her palm, as though she was lying on a divan. Zol hovered crosslegged, his bright eyes darting here, there and everywhere. In greater comfort we finished the round back in the alley where it began. I enjoyed the glances of wonderment we received.
"And now, may we offer you some refreshment, you and your first Wuhs friend?" Gubbeen said, though his expression as he looked at Wensley was not as welcoming as the one with which he favored us.
"I appreciate your offer of hospitality," I accepted heartily. My throat had dried out every time they paraded us up and down the promenade that faced the castle. No one wanted us to resume our disguises, being proud of their extradimensional visitors. Only if the Pervect Ten maintained no lookouts at all could we possibly have gone unnoticed.
"Truly, we would enjoy that," Zol agreed. "I would love a cup of tea, and it would give me great pleasure to sample Wuhs cuisine."
That evoked a loud clamor from the crowd. All the restaurateurs begged us to dine in their various establishments. At a frantic signal from Wensley I realized that I'd cause a political backlash if I chose one inn over all the rest, but we couldn't eat in all of them.
"Good friends," I declared, smiling at the dozens of expectant faces, "we are strangers in your town. Would you choose for us?"
SIX
"If you can't say anything nice,
don't say anything at all."
— d. rickles
The resulting non-argument about where to eat might have been entertaining to watch, but it stretched on for hours. By the time they decided who would have the honor of hosting us, night had fallen.
"That's it, then!" Gubbeen announced, waking us all out of the bored doze we had fallen into. He came over to us, rubbing his hands together. He was still smiling, but he looked tired. "We will all go to Montgomery's Tavern, where you will sample the average in Wuhs cuisine! You will be our guests."
"But if we are hiring them to help us," an earnest female in spectacles put in, "then properly, they are our guests, but the cost of meals ought to be accounted for as part of their fee."
Another overly polite discussion started. "Hold it!" I insisted, stopping the argument before it began again. "We'll pay for ourselves. We'll negotiate the fee separately, once we see how serious the situation is." "You didn't set the fee up front?"
Tananda asked me in a whisper, as eager hands reached out to pull us towards a brightly lit doorway up ahead.
"Uh, no," I admitted, feeling guilty.
A green eyebrow climbed up her flawless brow. "What if they don't have any money?"
"Well, we can't just leave them under the thumbs of ten Perverts!"
"Just watch me," Tananda asserted, flicking her middle finger against her thumb. "Nobody's dead. Nobody's starving. Your services have value. You can't just run a major freebie like that. If word got back to the Bazaar…"
I opened my mouth to say that I was retired, but that wasn't true either: I was on sabbatical, as I'd told Wensley… as I'd told everybody. Some day I would be finished with my studies… and I didn't know what I wanted to do then. Tananda was right: if I went back to the Bazaar and rumors had gone around that I was giving away my talents for free I'd be flooded with applicants wanting me to take on ridiculously petty tasks, or epic heroics with no hope of remuneration. It had happened before.
"I… I…"
"Don't worry, Skeeve," Bunny assured me, planting a palm in my chest as she passed by me to go first into the brightly lit restaurant. I stopped, the breath knocked out of me. Bunny works out. She is very strong. "This is my job. I'll take care of it."
Montgomery's Tavern would not have been called a tavern in any other dimension I'd ever visited. It served liquor and spirits, as well as a simple dinner menu, but since it suffered from a total lack of smoke, graffiti, bar fights or drunks, it put me more in mind of a tea room, the kind in the town near my father's farm that my mother visited when she and her fellow teachers held a meeting on a rest-day. Montgomery's was so orderly and neat I wondered how anyone could relax in it. "It's a fern bar," Tananda observed, belting down one drink and signaling for another. "I'd love another one of these lemonades," she smiled at the innkeeper, a stout Wuhs with ruddy curls.
"I hope you're not finding our citrus martinis too strong," Montgomery said, filling her glass from a pitcher.
"Not a bit," Tananda said, monitoring her drink carefully. Montgomery stopped pouring. Tananda cleared her throat meaningfully. With a startled glance, he filled her glass to the top. "That's better. You might as well leave the pitcher. Thank you, you handsome man." When Montgomery went back to polishing the shiny wooden bar, Tananda shook her head. "They'd get thrown out of the Bazaar for watering their drinks. There's hardly any alcohol in these at all. I'll have to visit the necessary about six times before I ever get a decent buzz."
That lack made little difference to me. I was intent on nursing one beer throughout the evening so my head would be clear.
And I needed all of my clarity. Now that they had a champion to save them from their conquerors, the committeefriends of Pareley decided to hold a secret meeting to discuss how they wanted us to do it. Wensley introduced representatives from each of the kingdom's fifteen committees. For people who never fought, these Wuhses sure managed to make agreeing sound like an unresolvable blood feud, even though they never spoke directly to one another, or uttered a single harsh word.
"My learned friend," orated Wigmore, the chairman of the Committee for Public Health, "probably didn't hear me very well when I explained my position. I know he would concur with all of my points if he had. The absence of influence of a legitimate democratic system in Pareley is deleterious to the well-being of every Wuhs. It is therefore a direct concern of the health system that we are being governed without our whole approval. Therefore, I and my committee ought to be at your side to consult about the course of action you might take in this matter. If you would concur, Master Skeeve."
"My learned friend from Public Health," intoned Yarg, the chairman of Public Safety, "can't claim I am anything but fair to him. He understands, as we all do, that having outsiders assuming functions that, while it is very kind of them to take such an interest, since we presently lack the ability to counsel them as to our wishes it suggests this case to be within the breadth of Public Health. We would like Master Skeeve and his party to consider having us just a trifle more in his mind than health. Not that health is not incredibly important, you see."
There were a few gasps from the assembled. These were strong terms for any Wuhs to utter. Every one of them was still smiling, still seeming friendly, but if their eyes could shoot fire like dragonbreath, every one of them would be scorched. As Yarg retired to his seat another committeefriend leaped to her feet. The crux of her address was that Wensley should trust all of them and return the D-hopper to common circulation, specifically to her custody. In spite of the energetic gestures her speech was as mindless as the others had been. I felt myself starting to drowse. Gleep had already fallen asleep with his head on my foot. My head drooped over my half-full glass. Bunny nudged me awake in time to nod approvingly when Ardrahan sat down.
Each speaker had to have his or her turn. I felt like grabbing each one by the neck and telling them they had only one sentence to inform me what they wanted, or I'd take my entourage and go home.
Zol was perfectly at home in the midst of all this. A tea room was all he would ever need. He refused all offers of wine, beer, liquor, liqueur, intoxicants, narcotics or hallucinogens (not that any of our hosts would ever admit to partaking of the last three). The Wuhses seemed a trifle chagrined at first that he turned down their offerings in fa- vor of tea, and tea alone, but they began to produce dozens of varieties of infusions, until they covered the entire table except where his modest little pot, cup and saucer sat. I began to see why the Pervect Ten had been called in to help the citizens of Pareley in the first place. Their extravagance had to have put a severe drain on the kingdom's finances. Some of the teas I recognized as the most expensive ever grown. They were for sale in the Bazaar at approximately a gold coin per ounce. For that much the tea would have to nourish a family of eight for a month, not be thrown out after making a mere six cups. Zol sipped from his cup and listened to the exchanges.
"Yes, it is good to explain what you feel," he kept saying. "Through sharing lies clarity and understanding."
I'd long ago finished my beer. I sat slumped with my fist holding my chin up off the table. I heard birds begin singing outside. Through the window the dark sky began to lighten. Morning was approaching, and no one had really said anything yet. My eyes were burning. I didn't think I could stand one more speech. As the eighth committeefriend stood up and launched into her tale of woe, I interrupted her.
"Tell me more about the actual oppression," I insisted, pulling myself upright. I turned to the assembly, most of which looked as tired as I felt. "You've all been talking about how your committees ought to be involved with their overthrow, but what is it the Pervect Ten have really done to you?"
"Haven't you heard what our friends have been saying?" Wensley asked. "They've taken over everything! No one can do what they want to do. They control every coin. They visit all the craft centers, the factories, the farms, and keep track of everything we make."
"They would take away everything that we've gotten from all the other dimensions, too, if they could," Ardrahan bleated. "We need it. We haven't got very much magik of our own. All these labor-saving devices are so useful!" "And the items we bought to defend ourselves—not that we need defending, no!" Yarg insisted. "We have no enemies. Pareley is the safest place you could live. But… just in case… we bought a few things. We feel much safer now that we have them. The Ten want us to give them up!"
"We don't want to be cut off again," Wensley added. "All these centuries Wuh thought it was alone in the universe. Think what we've been missing! Perhaps we are not very experienced in the ways of other cultures, but how will we learn without going there?"
"Exactly!" a few of the committeefriends agreed with him.
"Yes!"
"They're being perhaps a little too cautious."
"If our exuberance about our travels circulates as far as the castle," Gubbeen explained uneasily, "they come and personally invite the traveler to the castle. Just for a chat, of course
!"
"They arrest people and take them in for interrogation?" I asked, aghast. "Has anyone been harmed?"
"Er…" The Wuhses looked at one another. "We can only say that the invitees often emerge with self-esteem issues."
"They ask very hard questions," Ardrahan put in, helpfully. "It shows how very intelligent they are. That is why we invited them here to help us. But, if I may speak hypothetically, if one has certain material needs, and they are not being met as fully as they were before certain people came along, then would you call that a disagreement?"
In spite of my muzziness I managed to extract the kernel from the center of her statement. "Shortages? What kind of shortages? It looks as though you have plenty of good food. And beverages," I added, gesturing at the wealth of tea surrounding Zol and the range of bottles on the wall behind the bar. "You're all well-dressed, and your homes seem to be in very good shape."
"We have no money!" Wensley wailed. "Barely a coin between us! Perhaps we do give the appearance of prosperity, but we have to beg for everything from Them. They store provisions for our shopkeepers, and release a day's worth of goods at a time. They lock up the warehouses at the factories. In the morning everyone has to ask for the stock to replenish their shelves. If a request strikes them as unreasonable they will not release the merchandise. And it's our merchandise!"
The others seemed at once horrified that he was speaking so frankly, and relieved that someone was saying what he was thinking. They were clearly terrified of the Pervect Ten, and afraid to speak openly.
"What's an unreasonable request?" I pressed. "More food?"
"Oh," Wensley began, a shade too casually. "Suppose a silversmith had a lot of very beautiful pendants that the Pervect Ten were minding for him, and he wanted them, say, to trade for other, more rare items?"
"I'd say it sounded like normal commerce," I shrugged. "Why don't both shopkeepers go to the castle together and negotiate the trade there? The pendants could be put into the other guy's bin, and the silversmith could have access to the stuff he bought."
Myth Alliances m-14 Page 5
