"He's around here somewhere," I yelled, waving the handful of garments, "and he's naked as a jaybird!"
Parvattani arrived at my side, already transmitting this information into the globe held to his ear. The other hand waved wildly in emphasis. "Be on the lookout for a naked Klahd. Above-average height, and-a . .. never-a mind! He's naked! That ought-a to be distinctive enough!"
"What the hell is wrong with your guards, Par?" I demanded. "I would have gotten him if one of your men hadn't jumped on my back! They're supposed to help, but I'd do better with a rubber crutch!"
"Whattayou mean?" the captain asked, his ears twitching defensively. He took a step back, but came right up to me again, his fists clenched.
"I mean," I explained, reining in my temper, "that just as I was about to take down that phony, that bad Xerox copy, that fake, one of your guys wrapped me up and tried
to apprehend me! Even in the dark, how could anyone mistake my Pervect physique for a Klahd?"
Par's fury turned to surprise.
"My guards should-a been able to tell you apart in any condition. They are-a highly trained to recognize-a the residents of six hundred-a dimensions!" He lifted the globe. "All security forces-a in area L, report to the open stage. Right-anow!"
Within minutes the tiered steps were full of uniformed Flibberites. A few shot puzzled glances at their captain in mufti, but sucked in their bellies and squared their shoulders as Parvattani marched up and down their ranks.
"All right-a," he barked. "We just hadda situation. All you have to do is arrest one Klahd. He's not armed, he's not even-a dressed! And one-a of you mistakes this-a Pervert—"
"That's Per-vect" I corrected him, peevishly. Par didn't miss a beat.
"—Pervect for the perpetrator-a! Now, whatsamatta with you? Who did it?"
The denials were instant and unanimous. "Not me." "Nope." "Not a chance." "I know what Klahds are." "Me, touch a Pervert?" "Nope."
"Come on," the captain bellowed, his voice ringing in the rafters. "Who is it? No punishment if you come-a clean now."
But no one admitted grabbing me.
"Mr. Aahz, maybe you recognize the fool who interrupted you?"
I eyed them all. None of the guards present fitted the silhouette of the guy I'd flung away. "None of them."
Parvattani goggled. "None of them?"
"No," I insisted. I turned away, disgusted with my own impotence. "None of them. Another shapeshifter had to be waiting in the crowd. In the dark none of your men could have identified him as a fraud."
"This is my fault," Massha moaned, floating down beside me. "Sorry, Aahz. My blackout ring went a little
haywire. It was only supposed to plunge Skeeve in darkness, not the whole wing. I think the overload that was in the air affected my gizmos."
"It's okay," I reassured her. "I was tracking the shapeshifter by smell." I sighed. "I need a drink."
It didn't help my mood that the buzz about the stripteasing Klahd was already making the rounds at every bar in -The Mall. I nearly coldcocked an Imp who was giving an animated description of the event to a group of his laughing friends, but it wouldn't have done any good. And it wouldn't have made me feel any better.
"It doesn't make any sense," I complained over my beer. "No one's giving the false Skeeve money or anything valuable. How can that draw energy from an audience."
"They're paying attention," Chumley suggested, after a moment's thought. "Have you never told anyone your time is valuable?"
"Time is money," Eskina interjected. "And money is power, and power is—"
"—What Rattila's trying to get," I finished, slamming a fist into my palm. "Well, we can't let it happen again. We have to head off any more performances like that. Par, can you have your guards patrol all the open spaces? If the impostor starts dancing or singing or reciting Hamlet's soliloquy, cut him off before he can gather an audience."
"Aahz, they tried," Par replied, his hands spread helplessly. "He had begun his act by the time anyone noticed. And then, you saw. Too many people were already there."
"We need to fight magik with magik," Massha insisted. "The flow cut off when the house went dark."
"But how can we do that?" Parvattani asked. "None of us are magicians."
Massha beamed broadly. "Nothing to it, honey. I know just what you folks need. Let's go shopping."
"Your boss can pick up the tab," I added.
Par looked dubious as Massha led him out of the bar. I tailed along, grinning. He was about to see a real expert in action.
"Beautiful, beautiful!" Rattila applauded Garn when he got back to the Rat Hole. "What a marvelous improvisation! I enjoyed the astonished expressions on all of those faces, and the eagerness they evinced watching you. Why have we never used mass entertainment before? It was fantastic!"
"I felt stupid," Garn admitted, handing over his Skeeve card. "I mean, all those dudes looking at me? I felt like, I was shaving all my fur off in public."
Rattila clutched the small blue square to his chest. Even without the Master Card in his hand to complete the transaction the delicious energy tickled his nerve endings. "Intoxicating!" he declared. "You may not have been comfortable, but you showed a natural talent for attracting attention."
"I do?" Garn asked, blankly.
"You do." Rattila looked at the rest of the mall-rats. "I am sure each of you conceals a hidden talent like Gam's. From now on you will all do that kind of performance art with the Skeeve card, at least once a day."
"C'mon, Ratty," Strewth whined. "We're mall-rats. We shop. We don't act. We don't sing. We don't dance. I mean, it doesn't come naturally. We haven't got any talent. I mean, what's our motivation?"
The lights in the Rat Hole went out, leaving Rattila's blazing red eyes as the only source of light. Strewth and the others cowered deep into the slimy muck.
"I suggest you look deep inside yourselves for the proper motivation," Rattila intoned. "In fact, I insist. Get me a handle on the visitors! And don't call me Ratty!"
"Let's see," the female Jahk beamed, floating ahead of the pack of guards up the hall like the banner before a troop of toy soldiers on parade. "Shall we try Meldrum's Magik-land, or Binnie's Spell Box?"
"Magik shopping," Wassup whispered to Yahrayt. "She must have half the guards on duty with her."
"Awesome," Yahrayt breathed. "It'll be all clear for the others to shop."
"Totally!"
Disguised as an elderly male Imp and a Klahdish child of six holding his hand, the two mall-rats fell into line behind the others.
"Goin' on a lion hunt," Wassup sang happily. A Mall guard glanced back over his shoulder. "Goin' on a lion hunt!"
"Shaddup!" Yahrayt hissed. "Mayno should never have brought that Imp's card to Rattila. He's not right in the head!"
"You don't love me?" Wassup asked, forlornly.
Yahrayt had had enough. He tugged Wassup by the ear into the flap of a nearby tent. "Change cards! Now! Anybody?'
Wassup pulled out his deck and selected one at random. The cloth around them bulged as he expanded suddenly from an undersized Imp to a full-sized Gargoyle.
"Cool," he gritted. "Yer right. I feel smarterer now."
"C'mon," Yahrayt snorted, grabbing his arm and hustling him after the file of guards, now disappearing into the crowd. "Follow that Jahk!"
"Wendell's Emporium?" Massha inquired, thumbing through the index at the back of the atlas as she hovered over the heads of the rapt guards. I was bored already with the enterprise, but it would have shown a lack of faith in my associate to split.
"So," I asked the nearest Flibberite, a skinny youth whose
huge tunic was more or less wearing him, not the other way around. "How'd you decide to join The Mall security force?"
"My father was in it, sir!" snapped out the recruit. "And my father's father. And my—"
"Never mind," I interrupted him.
"Yes, let's try here," Massha suggested, levitating down to
eye level.
"Hey, lady," a heavy voice grated. "Would youse mind answerin' a few survey questions?"
Massha spared a brief glance for the huge Gargoyle who shouldered through the horde of shoppers toward her bearing a clipboard. "Not right now, thanks."
"Hokay. Den would youse take dis survey, and drop it off anyplace when youse done wit' it?" The heavy fist proffered a sheet of closely printed parchment.
"Sure," Massha agreed absently, rolling up the paper and sticking it into her cleavage.
"How about youse, sir?" the Gargoyle requested, turning to me. "You gotta minute?"
"Hem!" Eskina cleared her throat.
I rolled my eyes. I didn't need the warning. I hadn't been hatched at The Mall door. "Sure, buddy? What do you want to know?"
"You gotta favorite color?" the Gargoyle asked, poised with quill in fist.
"Why do you want to know that?"
"Well... we always ask dat kinda question."
"And what do most people usually say."
"Blue," the Gargoyle answered promptly.
"Well, I ain't gonna buck the average," I insisted, in a friendly tone. "Blue's good. What else do you want to know?"
"What kinda tings you buy when you go shoppin'?"
"Whaddaya got?"
"Man, I knew you were gonna ask me dat!" The Gargoyle sucked the top of the pen thoughtfully. "Dere's clothes, shoes, toys, magik wands, posters, a real good candy store, candles, and incense—"
"Hem!" This time the warning came, not from Eskina, but from a little kid with pumpkin-colored hair and a missing front tooth.
"Tanks for yer cooperation," the Gargoyle offered hoarsely. "Hey, Troll, you spend a lotta money on discretionary spending?"
Chumley let his lower lip droop. "Huh?" he asked.
The Gargoyle grunted. "Never mind. Tanks, all of youse." He stumped away, clutching his clipboard, the tot following in his footsteps. I grinned.
"You're gonna have to do better than that, Rattila."
Massha and Par finished their conference and headed for the door of Wendell's. As she passed, I reached up and plucked the survey out of her decolletage.
"Hey," she protested.
"You're not gonna need that," I informed her as I shredded the parchment and let the fragments sift to the floor.
Massha didn't need to have the whole picture painted for her. She grinned at me.
"Thanks, Green and Brainy. I'd better be more careful. If I hadn't been so busy, I might have filled it in."
TEN
"That was useless!" Rattila's voice echoed angrily in Wassup's and Yahrayt's minds. "The Pervert turned every single one of your questions back at you, you idiot!"
"Hey, don't be mad, man," Wassup protested. "Dis—I mean, this Gargoyle's a mechanic, not a census taker!"
"Try another tack!"
"Tack?" Wassup's lips moved as he tried to figure out what Rattila meant.
Yahrayt came to the rescue. "I'll figure out a way to get close to 'em, Big Cheese. Over and out."
"... And these amulets will tip you off when you're near a specific magik source," Massha continued her spate, piling silk-wrapped packets into Parvattani's arms. "Once we get ahold of one of these shapeshifters we can tune it to pick up that spell. The amulets are cheap, so they break easily— the gems are only glass—but the good thing is they're easy to replace, too. They're not like the Ring of Oconomowoc.
That'd be your best tracker, but there's only one in existence, and it's in a dragon's hoard about seventeen dimensions from here."
Par's eyes had long ago glazed over from her cheerful lecture, but he passed along his burden to the next guard in line.
"And these," Massha added, gleefully seizing a handful of gleaming pebbles and letting them drop through her fingers, "are terrific for keeping you from getting lost."
"We don't need those, madame," Par ventured timidly.
"Well, sure you do ... I guess you don't," Massha corrected herself, with a sheepish grin. "Sorry. This is your stomping ground. I'll take a few, though. I guess that's all here."
Par stepped up to the counter, where a Deveel merchant was rubbing his hands together in joyful anticipation.
"I have a letter of credit from Mr. Moa," Par began, reaching into his tunic for the document.
"Wonderful, wonderful!" the Deveel crooned. "I'll just take that—"
"Hold it right there," I pronounced majestically, before he could put it on the counter.
"What do you want, Pervert?" the Deveel snarled. "This Flibberite and I were about to do business."
"That's right," I agreed. "And I'm his business agent. Now, about these amulets. Six gold pieces each is out of the question ..."
"I still can't believe you got us a fifty percent discount!" Parvattani kept saying.
I whistled as I walked. "That was a pretty nice piece of negotiation," I acknowledged. "Nobody who hangs with me ever pays retail."
Massha and Chumley rolled their eyes. I had to admit that maybe I had kept repeating myself, too, but it had been a damned fine deal. Because of all the years I'd spent on
Deva, all the arrangements I'd come to with other Deveels, I knew when to cut the offer and crank up the volume. About halfway through the negotiations we were yelling at one another at the top of our lungs just as if we had been in a dusty tent in the middle of the Bazaar. The low, civilized, conversational tone people generally used here in The Mall was left far behind. I found it kind of refreshing. The Deveel seemed surprised at first, but like any merchant of his species the bartering he learned at his mommy's knee came right back to him. The highest percentage I paid for any item was the first one we dealt on. After that I started a lot lower and fought a lot harder. It had been such a frustrating few days there in The Mall chasing shadows it was really nice to win at something for a change. I strutted all the way to the next store on Massha's list.
"—No, I don't want to enter a drawing," Massha exclaimed, batting at a fairy clad in diaphanous pink who fluttered beside her pushing ticket slips into her hands.
"Go 'way," Chumley ordered, swatting at the winged pest. The fairy flew hastily out of reach.
We got pestered a lot in between stops. Moa had assured me that all solicitors carried a license, a blue crystal that they had to display on demand. Most of these didn't have 'em. Rattila kept sending minions after us, some pretty, some obnoxious, some ugly and menacing, all of them nosy. I wondered how he managed to sneak all of these people in and out of the building every day. Then I realized that they looked like everybody else. For all I knew he had six shapechangers who could turn into a hundred or so customers apiece working for him.
"All the more reason," Eskina insisted, when I broached the subject, "that we be well prepared and well armed." She cocked a pocket crossbow and tucked it into her thick fur coat. It disappeared without a trace.
"What else have you got in there?" I asked, with a wicked grin.
She winked. "I must know you much better before I tell you that."
"That one," Yahrayt whispered, pointing, as he hovered over the head of Lawsy, who was disguised as a Mall guide. The Flibberite female whose image she wore had been a find Rattila gloated over. Dinii was a deep-seated shopaholic who never kept track of the purchases on her employee credit card. She paid the minimum on whatever balance her statement showed. At this point she was years behind on her payments, but the card was the only one that the administration didn't have a watch on. She came in very handy when one of the mall-rats needed to be in a restricted area during business hours. Dinii's identification was all up-to-date. They had to be careful not to use Dinii up; she had to keep her job in The Mall, or the cloned pass card that was their key to going where she could go would be changed.
"She's friendly?" Lawsy asked, studying the big female who hovered just above the heads of the crowd.
"She talks the most," Yahrayt corrected Lawsy. "Like, the Big Cheese told us to look out for opportunity. I think sh
e's it. The big purple guy talks in one-note words. The other one is nasty. Go where the going's easiest."
Lawsy straightened her neat uniform. "I get it. Later, man."
"Later, dude."
"—Well, you don't want to skewer this thief," Massha argued, as Parvattani pawed through racks of polearms looking for the most serviceable.
"I do," I put in.
Massha ignored me. "You want to snare him, at a distance."
"Before he can get away," Par nodded.
The weapons shop salesclerk, a bronze-skinned individ-
ual, nodded until his chin clanged. "May I suggest these?" He rapped his chest with a shiny fist. "You can try them out on me."
"How was that?" Massha asked in a low voice, as we left the weapons shop.
I twisted my mouth. "You did fine. You know, you're not an apprentice any longer. You really need to stop doubting yourself. What would—er, what would Skeeve say?"
Massha instantly snapped out of her funk. "You're right, Aahz." She sighed.
"Take a break," I advised. "Your part's done. Now I'm going to give Par and his men a pep talk on strategy. You can give them all the toys they can carry, but you're not going to turn them into operators overnight. I'm just gonna give them a few rules to follow."
"Wilco, Green and Scaly," Massha agreed, her good mood restored. "Guess I've spent so much time worrying about Skeeve I'm winding myself up in knots."
"Take a look at the big picture," I suggested. I'm not a big one for the Dutch-uncle routine, but she needed to cool down, or she was going to break down. "I want to tear that impostor's head off, but you don't see me wasting energy fidgeting. Relax."
Massha was pretty savvy, or she would never have risen to jobs as local chief magician in two different dimensions. She nodded and headed for the nearest jewelry store. Everyone relaxes in their own way.
"You'd make a good mall-rat!" the pert, uniformed clerk beamed approvingly. Massha removed her nose from the glass display case outside Sparklies 'R' Us. "Aren't those pretty?"
Massha glanced back at the glistening baubles on display. "They're all pretty."
"You like blue? I like blue, too. I noticed that you're interested in the bangles. Would you like to try one on?" When Massha hesitated, the girl grabbed her arm and started to tow her inside the shop. "Come on! You don't know if you'll love it until it's on your arm."
MYTH-Taken Identity Page 10
