MYTH-Taken Identity

by Robert Asprin

  "No," I stated flatly. "We're gonna change styles all the time."

  Truth was, I had given the Deveels a fairly free hand, and I wasn't sure what they would come up with. Also, the less of a paper trail I could leave, the better. The last thing

  we needed was to have a catalog turn up ten years from now, and have someone bug us in the middle of an impor­tant operation in search of a size eight blue left-handed garter with marabou.

  "Ah!" Marco exclaimed, enlightened. "You are an exclusive boutique. I understand."

  "Yeah. A boutique." I was picking up all kinds of vocab­ulary as I went.

  Marco made notes. "So you will want purple-and-silver tissue. Business cards—magikal will cost you a gold piece per hundred. Paper, a thousand per gold piece."

  "Paper. Er, silver ink on deep purple card. Shiny." I began to picture it in my mind. "A little frilly ring in the upper right-hand corner. The store number in the bottom right."

  "And the name?" Marco asked, pencil poised.

  "Uh." He had me there. I hadn't even considered what we were going to call it. "Garterama?"

  "Not a boutique name," the Djinn declared firmly.

  I wasn't really the marketing specialist. "We Are Garters?" I grinned evilly as a thought struck me. "Garter Snake?"

  Marco wiggled a hand. "Not really family appeal. A few species would respond to that favorably, but some won't. Cute is what you want. Perky. Make the buyers think they're in on something special."

  "Not bad," I mused.

  Good advice. But what could we let the punters in on? I had to admit that I was surprised that Massha had sug­gested garters in the first place. Not that she was body-shy; her normal attire was a modified harem-girl outfit. And she had a healthy attitude about love and marriage. She'd waited long enough for them, after all. I don't know why her idea took me off guard. I guess it had been a long time since I'd thought about the little things that made a relationship romantic. She knew them, and she was will­ing to share.

  "How about Massha's Secret?"

  Marco kissed his fingertips. "The delectable lady? Perfect, perfect! Yes, that will attract the visitors, you wait and see! Shall I prepare a lovely portrait of her to hang on the wall over the counter? It can wink at each person!"

  I cringed. "I don't think that's what she's got in mind. But, uh, you could put a winking eye on the receipts."

  Marco waved a hand, and a nice line drawing of a long-lashed eye appeared on the notepad.

  "Thicker line there, and more curve in the lashes. Yeah. Substitute that for the garter on the cards, too. And you mentioned in-Mail ads. A simple line drawing in purple on white or silver posters. No text, at least not at first. Let them wonder. Then add the store number in the second round. Then add a slogan, 'Do you know Massha's Secret?' Yeah. I like that."

  "You are very subtle for a Pervect!" Marco exclaimed.

  I nodded with satisfaction. "I've been around. Now, what about key chains? And maybe lapel pins? Bumper stickers?"

  "T-shirts?" Marco asked, writing furiously.

  "No!" I exclaimed. "I don't want to go crazy on this. I'm just trying to sell garters."

  Marco and I quickly agreed on the rest of the designs, colors, and quantity of each item. I thought Massha and the others would be pleased, and the intrigue ought to bring in the punters on the run. Everyone loved a mystery. Half the fun was becoming an insider before the other people you knew.

  "And to prevent theft," Marco concluded, with a flour­ish, "the very latest in deterrents!"

  He presented me with a very small wooden box. I opened it, to behold a second lid, this one of glass. Beneath the glass was a small, very angry-looking black-and-white bee. It threw itself at the lid, trying to get out at us.

  "They are very hard to kill, they cannot be bought off

  with honey or other sweets, and they cannot be removed without the correct spell. Anyone who carries a piece of merchandise past the alarm belt, which you will place around your door, will be stung repeatedly. The bees also have a very loud buzz, which can be heard for several feet."

  "Perfect," I acknowledged, handing the box back. "We'll take a hiveful."

  Marco tossed the box into the air. It vanished.

  "Then we are finished. Thank you for the order. You are much easier to work with than many of your species."

  'Thanks, I think," I replied sourly.

  "I just wonder—" the Djinn began, with a pensive look on his broad face, "because you came here to catch a thief—my cousins and I hope that your new interest in the retail industry will not take your attention away from that ambition."

  "Hell, no," I assured him. "That's still our primary focus. All this is to help out with the hunt. Keep that under your turban, though."

  "Of course, of course!" Marco exclaimed, overjoyed. "Then we give you the best service, and the fastest deliv­ery!" He kissed me on both cheeks. "I will see you, tomor­row by noon! You will be very pleased, I promise."

  "You look happy," Massha declared, as I strutted back into the shop.

  Chumley was hammering racks into the wall with his bare hands, aided by Eskina, who passed him nails as he asked for them. The decor was about finished. Three of the walls were mauve, and one was about the same shade as Chumley's fur. The Flibberite painters, looking pale and tired, staggered out with the buckets, ladders and drop cloths. I waited until they were out of earshot before I replied.

  "Come and see what I've got," I invited them.

  The small back room had been divided into two spaces. One of them was the storeroom, for back stock. The other was a cozy mirrored room where customers could see how they would look in a garter without having to try it on

  "It's my own spell," Cire explained smugly.

  "And it has nothing to do with that hairdresser on Imper who was using the same idea more than twenty years ago, huh?"

  Cire looked hurt. "Mine has a lot of new wrinkles! Really!"

  "Like?"

  "Like," Cire echoed, a crafty expression on his broad face, "that Imp hairdresser didn't have anything in her spell that compared the customer in her chair with the list of Rattila's victims."

  "If one of the misused faces enters," Chumley added, "the door will refuse to open. The room is quite secure. I have tested it myself."

  "Nice. Nice," I assured them, nonchalantly. "Now, I've been doing really important work."

  I spread out the boxes, ribbons, papers, sample posters, and other items on the table in the back room.

  Cire goggled. "This is important?"

  "You can't just throw open the doors without the right ambience in place," I snarled. "It'd look too amateurish."

  I hoped Massha wouldn't toss it back in my face that it had been her idea. But she was turning over the boxes and cards with a look of delight on her face.

  "Oh, Aahz, honey," Massha cooed. "They're beautiful! 'Massha's Secret'?" She went scarlet, but she leaned over to kiss me on the cheek.

  "Don't get soft," I snapped. But inwardly I was glad she liked it. "Think all of this will lure the thieves in?"

  "They will not be able to resist," Chumley assured me.

  Massha looked it all over again, holding up the ribbons and other little knickknacks. I felt a surge of pride.

  Everything was coordinated and professional-looking, and, I was sure, guaranteed to appeal to the chosen market. But an expression of faintly puzzled discomfort crossed her face.

  "Aahz, honey," Massha remarked at last, holding a rib­bon up next to my face. "You clash."

  EIGHTEEN

  With pride and trepidation I stood at the entrance to the shop two mornings later. Our hired musician, Gniggo, a Gnomish pianist whose keyboard hung suspended in midair, played old standards, vying desperately against the disco beat blatting from the bards just outside in the corri­dor and the sale music piping out good and loud from above the store facade. In spite of the protection of Massha's amulet, my ears were killing me.

  The Mall itself had opened o
nly ten minutes before, but I was not surprised that hundreds of shoppers had already found their way to the newest store on the block.

  Moa himself had agreed to be present at the grand open­ing. We also had a full contingent of security personnel on guard in case any of the counterfeits made an appearance. Though, after Sibone's intervention the other day, we had to be careful that we intercepted real phonies, not the orig­inals whose identities had been hijacked by Rattila and restored from zombiehood by the emergency infusion of coffee. Most of the rescued shoppers were back in The Mall, making up for lost time.

  Parvattani, in full uniform, caught my eye from the edge of the crowd and waggled a finger unobtrusively. I grum­bled to myself. It meant neither he nor any of his guards had managed to spot any of the impostors coming into The Mall. I knew they were there somewhere; I could feel it.

  To deafening cheers, Moa walked out in front of the crowd with his arms raised. He turned toward the store entrance and beckoned.

  Massha, decked out in a brand-new outfit of purple silk gauze trousers and abbreviated harem-girl top with silver trim and with her orange hair in a knot on the top of her head, floated casually on her side with her head propped casually on her fist to hover beside Moa. The right leg of the trousers was slit from ankle to hip, letting a lace-and-silk silver, purple-and-pink garter with a tiny silver pouch on the side peek out.

  "Mwah!" Rimbaldi Djinnelli threw her a passionate kiss from the front of the crowd. "Bella donna! She is one of my best customers, you know," he told the Imp next to him.

  "Massha, will you do the honors?" Moa asked.

  Massha reached into the tiny pocket of the garter and drew out a gigantic pair of silver shears three feet long. The crowd gasped, then cheered. She slapped them into Moa's hand.

  Moa, an old pro, stepped to one side, allowing the cen­ter of the ribbon to be visible to the crowd. "I now declare this store open. You should shop here in good health."

  He cut the ribbon and ducked hurriedly to one side as an avalanche of buyers thundered into Massha's Secret.

  "Ooooh! Aaaah! That's beautiful! I must have that!"

  I allowed myself a wide grin, listening to the murmurs, cries, and howls of approval as the visitors perused the new merchandise.

  "Mine!" shrieked a female werewolf, hanging on to one side of a powder blue feather garter adorned with a golden jewel.

  "Mine!" bellowed a female Gargoyle, firmly attached to the other end.

  The werewolf took a swipe at the Gargoyle, and blunt­ed her pink-painted claws on the Gargoyle's stone flesh. The Gargoyle rose into the air, trying to take the disputed item with her. The Djinnies we had hired from one of Marco's cousins started to move in to separate the com­batants. Chumley waded in from his post near the wall. I relaxed. If I had any doubts as to whether this place was going to be a success, they were dispelled. We were off to a great start.

  Massha plunked herself down in the violet-upholstered "husband waiting chair" under the ostrich-feather fan to the left side of the door.

  "I have never been so worn-out in my life!" she declared. "Well, maybe once or twice," she corrected her­self with a grin. "This was almost as much fun, though."

  "No details!" I protested, trying not to let pictures pop into my head as I counted out the cash box. "That's a secret you can keep to yourself."

  The Djinnies, popping gum, finished tidying up what was left of the display, and departed. The guards Par had left on duty sat against the wall next to Chumley.

  "Ni-iiice," I drawled, letting coins run through my fin­gers. "We've already got enough here to pay off the Deveels and about half of Marco's bill. By tomorrow we ought to be running in the black."

  "We did very well!" Chumley exclaimed.

  "Not really," I grunted, perturbed, as I totaled sums in my head. "It means our prices are too low. If the items are jumping off the shelves like that, it means we're under the threshold of what we could be charging. Let's raise every­thing fifty percent by tomorrow."

  "You're kidding," Massha goggled. "We made a fortune."

  "We've got an exclusive here," I argued. "We've got it for one week before the Deveels start copycat operations. Let's make the most of it."

  "All right," Massha responded, dubiously. "You know what you're doing."

  Eskina moved around the walls, poking here and sniff­ing there. She stopped, one foot still in the air, her eyes wide.

  "What's up?" I asked her.

  "It's his scent!" she replied. "I smell him! Rattila was here!"

  "When?" we all asked at once.

  The Ratislavan investigator closed her eyes and concen­trated. "Not long before the store closed. The scent is still warm."

  "Can you follow it?" I asked, but she was already on the move.

  Par jumped to his feet to follow her. I tucked the bag of coins in my pocket and ran along behind.

  Baying low in her throat, the Ratislavan investigator ran out into the corridor. The last few stragglers were being herded toward the nearest exit by a few of the guards. The bards had already packed up. All the noises that usually filled The Mall had died away in the distance. Eskina picked up speed. I had to run to keep up with her. The lit­tle figure in the thick white fur coat had stopped looking cuddly and harmless. We saw her in full police mode, the equal or better to Parvattani and his security force.

  Cire scrambled alongside me.

  "I was going to tell you, we had a few false positives in the chamber today."

  I frowned. "Why didn't your trap work?"

  "Well, the people proved they were the real thing," Cire explained. "Their credit was good. They didn't act like impostors."

  I smacked my forehead. "Half of the identity victims cleaned up their credit rating as soon as we pulled them out of their trance! As for acting like the real thing, the impos­tors are really good at letting the personality in the card overwhelm their own. I'm sure when they were pretending to be you they were pretty convincing, too!"

  "Oh," Cire murmured in a very small voice. "I guess I should have told someone."

  "Never mind," I spat out. "If Eskina can lead us to Rattila, the whole mechanism's going to collapse anyway."

  Walroids! It was all coming back to me in clear and lucid memories why I had stopped hanging around with Cire. Too bad Chloridia had split. I thought of sending a message bubble to Kail to ask her when she was coming back.

  Eskina reached the big intersection in front of Hamsterama. She ran back and forth in zigzags, stopping before the metal gate that barred the door. Her eyes were fixed on something very far away as she concentrated on keeping the scent in her mind.

  "Open up," I ordered Par.

  "The master key!" he ordered. A guard sprang forward with a magik wand and touched it to the gates. They popped open. Eskina let out a howl and snuffled her way inside. We followed into the twilit shop.

  "Cheeble cheeble cheeble cheeble cheeble!" the small, furry denizens of the shop greeted us in their high-pitched voices from their little wooden hutches. Some of them put down the poker hands they were playing, others looked up from their knitting or books. I eyed them suspiciously. Were they harboring a fellow rodent somewhere? We didn't know where he might have gone to ground, so I sig­naled to Chumley to hang out by the door. Massha levitat­ed to the ceiling, and I took a position against one of the turquoise-painted walls, where I could see the rest of the store.

  Eskina quested among the habitats, with Parvattani on her heels, his pikestaff at the ready, presumably in case Rattila sprang out at her. Every so often Eskina would glare over her shoulder at the captain. I grabbed him as they passed me.

  "Give her a little space," I whispered.

  Startled, he stepped back two paces. Eskina's shoulders relaxed, but she kept her nose near the floor. Around and

  around she went. The cheebling rose to a deafening squeal as the resident hamsters caught her sense of urgency.

  Abruptly, Eskina turned around and snuffled her way toward the door.
Baying, she ran out and turned right, con­tinuing on down the hall. I sniffed the air: hamsters, disin­fectant, a faint whiff of sulfur, the lingering body aromas from a million weary shoppers. A Pervect has keen senses, especially hearing and sight, but my nose must be no match for a Ratislavan raterrier. She could pick out one subtle scent from the overwhelming smell and follow it.

  "Awoooo!" she howled, by then pretty far ahead of us.

  Rattila had covered a lot of ground since he had left Massha's Secret. Was Eskina moving fast enough to catch him?

  "Rooooo!"

  I cringed. We didn't stand a chance unless he was deaf as a post.

  Faster and faster she ran. We stayed right with her, past the empty bandstands, past the shuttered pushcarts, and block after block of empty, dark showcases.

  "The scent is fresh here!" Eskina called to us. "He was here only moments ago!"

  I felt my blood rise. When I got my hands on that Rattila, I was going to take him to pieces. Chumley's big jaw was set so hard the fur on his face bristled. Massha had a handful of jewelry ready. We were loaded for bear.

  "Awoooo!" Eskina howled, and swung around the next corner, past The Volcano.

  It was always too hot around there. If I saw Jack Frost, I was going to remind him to turn up the air-conditioning. The scent led her around the next bend, past a row of tents. Eskina was panting with excitement.

  In and out of the canvas jungle we wove, following the eager tracker. She let out a delighted cry.

  An echo of the shrill sound came from just ahead of us. We all shut up and listened. Someone was whistling.

  Around the tent occupied by Potpourri King came a squeaking cart drawn by a knee-high ungulate. Behind it

  an elderly Flibberite swished a mop from side to side across the shining floor. He looked up at us, and the whis­tle died away. He squinted through the gloom

  "Eskina, isn't it?"

  "Treneldi?" Eskina inquired.

  The old janitor grinned and swashed forward with his mop. "What're you doing out so late, eh, dearie? Thought you'd be in the bed shop by now, turning around three times."

  "Did you see anyone come through here?" I demanded.

  Treneldi peered up at the ceiling ponderingly. "Not since the doors closed, no."