"Nossir," Bee said, hurt. "Well, it means I can disguise myself pretty good. Like this!"
Suddenly, the skinny frame of the former corporal was replaced by a familiar image. A male Klahd with a big, hulking frame, wide shoulders that tapered down to a surprisingly small waist, big hands that almost concealed the miniature crossbow in his hand. I felt a smile spread slowly on my face.
"That's Guido."
The image vanished, and Bee's narrow earnest face reappeared. "Yessir. Sergeant Swatter, we called him. I really admired him, sir."
"Stop calling me sir," I said. "Just Skeeve. Datspell's pretty good, too. What else can you do?"
"Well," Bee said, "just a few little things. But I practice them all the time. Spoo!" he exclaimed suddenly as we began the descent down a steep hill. He seemed to levitate over a rock in his path.
"That's pretty good," I said. "You know how to fly."
"Oh, no, s—I mean, Skeeve. That's just Cantrip. I learned that in the army. It helps a lot when you're on maneuvers over rough ground. A lot of the guys came in with sprained ankles and broken legs. Cantrip keeps me from falling over. 'Cept I gotta say 'spoo' to invoke it. It's 'oops' spelled backwards."
"How hokey!" Freezia exclaimed. Bee looked offended. I didn't blame him.
"Don't you use mnemonics in your magik?" I asked her innocently.
"Sure I do," she said. "But spoof She broke into giggles. "That's so silly!"
"If it works, then it's not silly. You'll see. Bee's going to teach us how to do it when we're back at the inn."
"Learn from a Klahd? Never!" Pologne declared.
I let the statement stand, and walked on in silence.
About four paces later, she spoke in a much smaller voice. "Of course, when I say Klahd, I don't mean you, Skeeve."
Chapter Seven
"Is it too late to try beads?"
G. A. Custer
It took almost two hours to walk over the rough dry terrain to where we could draw from the force line. The hike back was worse. The sun had risen higher in the sky, and the glare was blinding. I was hot, and my feet felt like they had been pounded between two large flat rocks.
By the time we were back in my target area everyone was in a bad mood, including me. Everything Melvine said came out as a whine. The three Pervects sniped at one another verbally, but united to belittle the others. Tolk growled if any of us got too close to him. Bee still spoke politely, but clipped his words off sharply.
"It's hot, and I'm tired," Melvine complained. "Let's go back to Klahd and do this tomorrow. I promise to be more economical. C'mon, Skeeve, what do you say?"
"Nope," I said. "This'll be fun. You'll see."
"Fun? This dimension is a drag!"
"Hey, you should go work for my cousin," Tolk sneered. "He's got the sullen-on-a-stick franchise for Lower Rangooza."
"Meanie!" Melvine sniveled.
"Grow up!" Pologne said. "I'm sick of both of you. It's like traveling with my little brothers."
"All right," I said, coming to a halt under the largest tree on the hill. "You've got a list of twelve things. Find them all, and get them down there," I pointed to the spit of land poking out into the glittering sea. "Go for it." I sat down against the tree trunk with my hands behind my head. I had a great view of the whole test area.
The challenge was a simple one. All of the items were brightly colored and in plain sight. The Sear natives had promised to keep from moving them until one of my students came within a couple of paces, and then they had to give a sporting chance, not dragging the item underground right away.
The other thing I had not told my class was that the natives had a very high body temperature. Freezia learned it the hard way when she spotted the first item, a bright blue cylinder. She and Bee noticed it at the same time. In spite of the Cantrip, Bee wasn't as fast on his feet as the graduate student. She dove for the cylinder, only to have it scoot from under her fingertips. Quickly, she brought the other hand smashing down, capturing the object. She plucked the tiny red Sear off the bottom of it.
"Ow!" she cried, dropping it. "They're hot!"
The little being, deprived of its shade, grabbed for the next nearest thing, Freezia's backpack. It started pulling at the strap with surprising strength. Freezia pulled back. Bee laughed at the sight of a full-grown Pervect having a tug-of-war with a creature a mere fraction of her size.
"What are you laughing at, you dolt?" she asked. "No, don't do that!"
The Sear, unable to take the backpack, crawled along the strap and wriggled inside. Freezia threw open the flap and began to excavate its contents, trying to find the intruder.
As her things began to hit the ground, more red dots came swarming up. They latched onto each item and began to drag them away. The Pervect suddenly looked up and saw her possessions disappearing.
"My compact!" Freezia shrieked, crawling after the nearest Sear. It was carrying a gold disk.
"Time!" I shouted. You don't have time! You already spent twenty minutes finding the first part!"
"I want it back! It's a Goochy San Channel!"
"You can get it later!"
She ignored me. The Sear vanished into a crack in the ground. She started picking away at the edge.
"Oh, my manicure!" she wailed as a chip of orange polish went flying. Furious, she pointed a broken fingernail at the earth. "Cavata!"
Stones and dirt began to scatter upward. She uncovered the gold disk, only to see it slip into another fissure. "No! You little thief!" The dirt flew faster. She disappeared behind the spray.
In the confusion, she had forgotten all about the cylinder. Bee picked it up and put it in his belt pouch, and went in search of the next item on the list.
With a full complement of magik under his belt, Melvine took to the air. With a pleased grin, he descended toward the spot where I had planted a folded yellow sheet. The look of alarm that crossed his face told me that the natives had appeared. They were going to beat him to it. Melvine whipped up a curlicue of wind and made it whisk around the circumference of the sheet to drive them back. I was glad to see him conserving energy.
Tolk found a bundle of bright green sticks. When he stooped to pick them up in his teeth, a native attached itself to his collar. When Tolk trotted away, his collar fell off. It started to bury itself in sand.
"Thass mine!" he exclaimed around his mouthful. He stood transfixed, staring at the swiftly disappearing neckwear. He opened his mouth to let go of the struts, then clapped his jaw shut.
"Uh-huh, you're no' go'a cash me gha' way," he said. He started digging furiously with his front paws, tossing hot sand in every direction. The collar surfaced briefly. Tolk tossed his head, and the neckpiece levitated.
But the natives had magik of their own, and they outnumbered him. He couldn't keep it in the air. He plunged forward to capture it in his paws, but it disappeared into the dirt.
"Da'!" he swore.
He trotted down to the headland and deposited his mouthful beside the cylinder Bee had already placed there. He saw me watching him, and shook his head furiously.
"My mother gave me that collar!"
I threw him a regretful shrug.
"Give that back!" I heard Melvine yell. I sprang up. The Cupy was halfway down the hill beyond a dry gully. He pointed a finger at a clump of dirt. The clump exploded upward. "No! Give it to me. Give it back!" Boom! He tracked his minute opponents to another clump, and blew that one up, too.
"Melvine! Don't waste energy!" I yelled. "You haven't got four hours to hike back to the force line!"
"They stole my blankie!" Melvine howled, his baby face screwing up in a knot. "I want it back!"
"Trade them for it!"
"I don't want to! I want my blankie!" He sat down heavily on the ground. "This isn't fun any more!"
By evening, only Jinetta of the three Pervects still had her backpack. The contents of Bee's field pack had been depleted considerably by the natives. Melvine kept patting his pockets to make
sure none of his other possessions had gone missing. Every time we heard a rustle in the grass, all six of my students jumped.
When I called time, they staggered up the hill to where I was waiting. They looked tired and dejected.
"Let's get the camp set up for the night," I said. "I've got three tents here. The big one is for you ladies. The men and I will share the other two. When they're up, we'll make dinner."
"Stay in a tent?" Jinetta asked disdainfully. "Why not go back to the inn?"
"Because," I explained patiently, yet once again, "this is a test of your practical skills. You may never sleep outside again, but you're going to try it for one night."
"But it's inconvenient," Freezia said.
"Yes, it is," I said cheerfully. "Well, the tents won't put themselves up!"
"Sure they will," Melvine said. He aimed a thumb at the nearest bundle of canvas and string. The stiff arrangement of sheets animated, billowing out to the correct shape. Pleased with himself, Melvine relaxed his spell. The tent promptly collapsed.
"I'll help you," Corporal Bee said, starting toward the puzzled Cupy. "You forgot to put up the tent poles—"
I put a hand in his chest and pushed him back.
"Let him solve the problem," I said. "You can help me get the campfire going."
"Yes, sir, I mean, Skeeve."
"I know how to do it," Pologne said. "I reached the rank of Tracker in the Perv Scouts." She marched over to the next folded tent and started to take it apart. Melvine pretended not to care, but I could see him shooting furtive glances in her direction to see how she did it.
"What do we do about…?" Jinetta whispered in her friend's ear.
Pologne turned to me. "I don't suppose you have a shovel, do you?"
Jinetta immediately added two and two together.
"You're kidding," she exclaimed.
"Nope," I said. "No chamber pots out here. No flush toilets. Just the basics: you and a hole in the ground."
Freezia wore a meditative expression. "I suppose we could blink the you-know-what away."
"Don't waste power," I said firmly. "It won't kill you to use primitive means for one night."
"Yes," Pologne said. "I have done it."
"Me, too," Bee put in.
"Who cares about you?" Jinetta said, rolling her eyes.
In spite of the Pervects' disdain, Bee generously lent the camping equipment in his gigantic field pack for the others to use. Jinetta and Freezia disappeared over the ridge of the hill, and returned looking relieved but chagrined.
"That was disgusting" Jinetta was saying. "This had better help us a lot."
Fortunately, Jinetta's pack contained enough camp rations for all three Pervects. I had to grin at the expressions on the faces of the other three students as she ripped open a packet and dumped purple and brown lumps into a big dish.
"Are they dead?" Pologne asked, prodding the lumps disdainfully.
"No, just stunned," Jinetta assured her. As she spoke, the mess began to stir.
"It's alive!" Tolk barked.
"Of course it's alive, you silly canid," Freezia said. "Pervects don't eat dead food. Did you bring anything to put on them?"
"No," Jinetta sighed. "They were out of sweet and sour sauce at the camping store."
"Oh, Crom," Pologne said. "We have to eat them with no sauce?"
They divided up the dish and began to pick at their shares without enthusiasm.
Bee produced hard bacon and biscuit from the depths of his pack and set them simmering over the fire. I had a crock of stew that Bunny had cooked for us. I took the preservative spell off it and set it to heat up. Tolk tried bites of each. I thought it smelled pretty good, but he was unimpressed.
"No flavor," he said. "I mean, maybe it's nourishing, but bland!"
Melvine wouldn't eat anything at all. "I can't believe you didn't bring any mush for me," he said. "That's all right! First you try to drown me, and now you starve me! What's that?"
A fly the size of my fingertip zipped past the campfire. A few more circled around, and zoomed out of the light.
"Bugs!" he wailed. "I hate bugs!" He pointed a finger at them.
"Melvine, no!"
"Why," I asked again, as we sheltered underneath a rocky overhang with a huge dung fire going at the entrance to our makeshift cave, clutching our food to us in the tight quarters, "why didn't you just use a repelling spell? Why did you try to blow them up?"
"You have to admit, he succeeded," Tolk said, with a touch of humor. "He blew them up, all right."
Beyond the fire we could see and hear the giant stinging wasps buzzing furiously as they tried to get in at us. I strengthened the repellent spell I had placed on the cave mouth. I had conserved most of my power, knowing I would need it for many minor emergencies. Like this one.
"And our dinner burned because we had to get away from the killer bugs he created," Bee added.
"You're eating it anyway. The smell is making us sick," Pologne said. Again.
I shook my head. I knew that Pervects could eat anything, but these three had never been exposed to other kinds of food. They were very young.
"It's cold," Jinetta said. "How is it that it was so hot all day, and now it is freezing?" She huddled as near the fire as she dared, shivering in her thin clothes. I cast a light warming spell in the cave. Everyone relaxed visibly and finished their dinner without too many more complaints.
"Look," I said, after Bee had shown the rest of the group how to scrub the dishes out with sand in lieu of a handy water supply. "You didn't do too well today. You only managed to secure three items off the list. You forgot everything I told you, and you let your tempers get in the way of being effective in the field. It is not that hard to deal with the natives. I told you what is important to them. None of you exploited those traits at all. You've already found out that brute force doesn't get you anywhere. When you found yourself with two courses of action you could take, you usually fell back on the one that related to you personally, not to the mission at hand. I wanted you to operate in a practical and simple fashion, and all of you got fancy. You didn't have to."
"What has chasing red dots around the landscape got to do with anything practical and simple?" Pologne asked.
"Well, what do you think I meant you to learn in today's exercise?" I countered.
"I don't know."
"Not to waste power?"
"That's one of the lessons I hope you absorbed," I said. "What else?"
"How to get ripped off by little monsters who sneak up when you're not looking?" Freezia asked.
"It's to teach you to make quick decisions," I said. "The right decisions. When you're faced with a dangerous situation, the last thing you can do is waste time, or I guarantee it will be. the last thing you do."
"We'll be working in offices in six months," Jinetta said. "Making a slow and carefully considered decision is hardly going to prove fatal."
"You'll be at the top of your game if you can assess a situation coolly and take action before anyone else does," I countered. "Believe me, I've spent plenty of time in my office, talking to potential clients. The best solution is usually the one I hit on first. Let me tell you how well that's worked out for me: I don't need your tuition to get by. It's a lot of money, but it's bupkis" I used a term I'd heard Aahz use once—I assumed it was Pervish, "to what I saved from my share of M.Y.T.H., Inc.'s take, and I had a LOT of partners. I'm on hiatus for as long as I want to be, and if I felt like doing my research in the middle of the biggest city in the busiest dimension you could think of with room service, gold-plated doorknobs and hot-and-cold running entertainment, I could afford to do it. Sorry," I said to the others. "I don't like to brag about wealth, but if that's the only thing you understand, then I've got to do it. I want you to understand."
Looking thoughtful, they huddled together to go to sleep.
"So, what was it Skeeve said about the natives?" Tolk asked, in his friendly way, while the students were clearing up from br
eakfast. The flies had gone. Melvine looked relieved. As a means of atonement I made him take down all three tents. He was much better at striking them than erecting them.
"Too bad you weren't paying attention," Pologne said, holding up her research globe.
Melvine brightened. "You took notes!" He stuck out a hand, and the globe went flying to him.
"Give that back!"
"How does it work?" Melvine asked. He invoked the orb, and high-pitched babbling issued from it. "There."
My voice rang out tinnily. "…They prize shade and water above anything else."
"Trying to keep information for yourself?" Tolk asked suspiciously.
Pologne looked sulky. "I'm the only one who went to the trouble of taking notes. Why should you get the benefit of my work?"
"Teamwork," I said. "You'll get this done much faster if you work together."
None of them paid attention. They went off in six different directions, each with his or her eyes on the ground.
"Got one!" Tolk yelped.
He had spotted a long purple pole. Red spots began to bubble up out of the earth, preparing to drag it under. Tolk turned and lifted a leg over a piece of dry ground. The dots converged upon the area he had watered and began to burrow into it with a pleased noise. Happily, Tolk picked up the pole in his teeth and trotted down the hill toward the headland.
"Did you see what he just did?" Pologne asked Jinetta in horror.
"Well, I'm certainly not going to—you know."
"No," Pologne said thoughtfully. "But we have a canteen."
I leaned back against my tree and smiled.
Chapter Eight
"Where's the instruction manual?"
T. Edison
By midmorning, all twelve of the objects lay on the spit of land overlooking the sea. The students looked at me expectantly. I gave them a smile of approval.
"Congratulations," I said. "You finished with over an hour to spare. Now, all you have to do is assemble this gizmo. It's pretty straightforward. The pieces slot together. Be careful. It opens outward under its own power."
Class Dis-M.Y.T.H.ed Page 6
