Her eyes widened, and she threw up her hands to ward it off. She was pretty good, I had to admit. The dirt hit an invisible shield, similar to the way I had protected myself, and exploded off in all directions but toward her. Well, if this had been going on for five years, the combatants had to have developed some quick moves, both defensive and offensive.
The latter came into play immediately. Mrs. Weavil hauled a substantial handful of power out of the force line above her and wove it into a blob of mud the size of a bucket. It hurtled in my direction. I ducked. The mud stopped short before it sailed over my head into the office.
As I had surmised, the newspaper was protected from attack. Mrs. Weavil’s missile had vanished without a dribble. I started to gather more to make my own blob, then hesitated. I’d made my point. I let my hands drop.
“Okay, folks,” I called out, smiling. “That’s enough. Go on with your rally.”
Letting my guard down was a mistake. The crowd wasn’t ready to let the fight die. Before I could think of resurrecting my defense, I was pounded not only by the assailants on whom I had returned fire, but half of the remaining crowd as well. My clothes, hair, and face were covered with cold, wet, gray goo. I recycled the mud that had been thrown at me and flung it back. I wished, like Mrs. Weavil, I could create brand-new slime, conjured from the plentiful magikal force above and below me, but that was still beyond my half-trained abilities. Still, there was no shortage of material. I scooped and threw, scooped and threw. I intended only to return fire at those who had attacked me, but constantly having to wipe my eyes meant I wasn’t sure where the mud that hit me was coming from.
“Get him!”
I cleared my vision in time to realize that I had moved out of the shelter of the newspaper office. Some of the Tipps I targeted banded together and rushed toward me. I dodged back and forth, not wanting to get trapped in the office or against the cliff wall. With my long legs, I could outdistance them easily if I ran—but why run?
Pushing off against the ground with my mind, I soared into the air. The crowd squawked its protest. I grinned. I was soon out of range of all their mudballs and jeers. Mrs. Weavil shook her fist at me. All of the Tipps on the ground were as thoroughly splashed with adhesive gray and smears of vegetable matter as I was. In fact, I noticed, I smelled terrible, as if I had gone more than a week without a bath. Bunny would understand if I just popped back to Deva and got cleaned up.
WHIFF!
The sound of something rushing through the air was my only clue that someone was in the air near me before I found myself struggling against tangles of rope. I had been netted!
“Awright, mister,” a stern-looking Tipp in a dark brown uniform growled at me. He floated in the air about twenty feet off the edge of the nearest street cut into the cliff face. The fur on his face was heavy around his muzzle and chin, giving him the look of a heavy beard. He pushed the cap on his head back between his ears and fixed me with a couple of stern brown eyes under thick brows. “And what do you think you are doing?”
“Well, officer,” I said, “I got involved with a little altercation down there on the ground.” I gave him a sheepish grin, but the officer didn’t return it. “I tried to calm everyone down, but no one would listen to me, so I thought it would be a good idea to get out of the way.”
“You were participating in that mayhem down there?” the officer asked, aiming a thumb at the crowd, which had melded into one chaotic group. Some of the green supporters and purple fans were wrestling on the ground. Mrs. Weavil, still recognizable in spite of the mud, was pounding one of them on the back with her handbag.
“Well, not exactly participating,” I began. It was hard to look harmless and convincing while I was wrapped in a net. “It was kind of accidental. Well, not really. A few of them threw things at me, so I . . . sent them back again.”
“So you were slinging mud and vegetables?” the officer pressed.
“Just a little mud,” I said. “Those people did it first. I just returned it.”
“And shouting? You were shouting slogans?”
“Not slogans,” I said. “I was trying to get everyone to stop yelling.”
“What for?”
“So they could have a peaceful rally,” I said. “I assume that’s why they gathered.”
“So, let me get this straight,” the officer said, peering more closely at me. “You were shouting and throwing things. Were you calling names?”
“Uh, no. I don’t know anyone there. Er, except two members of the press,” I added hopefully. He remained stern.
“Are you a registered member of either political party?”
“No. I’m an independent contractor. I come from Deva.”
“Uh-huh,” the officer said. “You are under arrest. Malarkey!”
An eager-faced young Tipp zipped over and saluted.
“Yes, Sergeant Boxty!”
“Take him in and book him!”
“Yes, sergeant!” Malarkey said. He grabbed hold of me.
“Wait a minute!” I shouted. “Why? Because I’m from Deva?”
“No, sir. We in Tipicanoo never discriminate on the basis of dimensional origin.”
“Then why?” I demanded. “What did I do? Everyone else was throwing dirtballs and shouting.”
Sergeant Boxty shook his head seriously. “Sir, the activities in which you confess you were involved are reserved for card-carrying political agitators only. If you’d only troubled to peruse the island bylaws, you would have found that out. Take him away!”
In spite of my protests, I was hauled toward the street, where a beast-drawn wagon waited. Officer Malarkey threw me into the rear. I had the presence of mind to soften my landing with a little magik, but I didn’t have to worry. The wagon was well padded.
I had to get out of there. I thrust against the bed of the paddy wagon with all the force I could summon up, but I couldn’t move. They were used to dealing with magikal miscreants. I let myself go limp and hoped that Bunny or Ecstra had seen what had happened to me and would come bail me out.
CHAPTER FIVE
“But that was off the record!”
—J. BIDEN
“Skeeve!”
I looked up. The jailer’s voice cut through the mood of gloom in which I had sat on the bench in my cell all night and the following morning. I didn’t get up for a moment. I was immured in a mire of regret, embarrassment, and shame. The heavy steel door creaked open in the stone wall of the cell. I found myself blinking in the feeble light of a square glass lantern. My fellow prisoners, hearing a release in progress, started banging on their own doors and shouting. I had gotten to know all of their voices during the night. Three drunks were in the cell to my left. They had gotten into a brawl at a local tavern and had been hauled in during the night. In the cell across from me was a very angry female who had apparently attacked her husband with a flower vase. He had had her arrested, and she yelled threats against him all night long. The weeping from the cell immediately to my right was a traveling preacher who had attempted to bilk his ad hoc congregation out of their hard-earned gold. Along with the usual muggers, thieves, prostitutes, and other scum of the earth, there was me. I was in for rioting and causing an affray.
My arrest was my own fault. I had lost my temper. I got involved in a local dispute that I should only have observed. I had made a fool of myself in front of hundreds of people and caused trouble that would impact negatively on our clients. Besides, I was keenly aware that the other witnesses included members of the press. I had publicly disgraced M.Y.T.H., Inc. It hadn’t been that long since the others had let me rejoin the company that I had founded. I did not feel I was entitled to any special ego trips or temper tantrums. I was ashamed of myself. All night long those images had raced through my mind. I could feel the mud in my hands. I had let irritation wipe out my common sense.
The dirt wasn’t there anymore, of course. When I had arrived at the jail, the officer on duty, staying at a reasonable distance, t
hrew me a tiny packet. I had examined it dubiously, since my clothes and skin were encrusted an inch deep with stiffened grime. To my surprise, the little square unfolded into a gigantic, damp white cloth. I tried it on my arm. The dirt vanished into it without a trace. I applied it to the rest of my body. The cloth sucked all the mud but stayed pristine white.
My impromptu bath replaced the stench of mud and rotten vegetation with an aggressively perky perfume halfway between pine and a wildflower meadow. It wiped away all traces of my misadventure, except the memory. What an idiot I had been. It was lucky nothing worse had happened to me, or Bunny.
I hadn’t forgotten about Bunny, whom I had left taking cover behind a table. I was sure she was furious with me. Why else would I have had to spend the night in jail? She was good at working systems. The delay had to be to teach me a lesson, and boy, had I learned one. I vowed to keep a closer watch on my reactions. It wouldn’t be easy; I had always had a volatile temper. I thought I had learned to keep it in check, but events had just proved it could be triggered under provocation as easily as it always could. I knew better. I just hadn’t acted better.
The smell of the white-cloth disinfectant made the people in the waiting room shy away from me. I wished I could turn off my own nose.
“Skeeve?” inquired the uniformed female Tipp. She was stocky with a jaw you could have used as a doorstop. On the battered table before her was a small pile of gold coins next to a small document with a fancy red seal affixed to its bottom.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Your bail’s been paid. Out that way.” She pointed the feather end of a quill pen toward the door through which I had entered many hours before.
I made my way out with alacrity, in case the police changed their minds. That had happened before. But I digress.
In the waiting room, among a crowd of crying Tipp mothers and irate Tipp attorneys, was Aahz. When he saw me, his lips drew back from his gigantic pointed teeth in a grin. He gestured to me.
“C’mon, kid,” he said. He turned and walked out.
I ran to catch up with him. He strode along the street. Aahz is shorter than I am, but he can move faster than I can. We walked in silence, dodging the crowds of Tipps going about their daily business. A beast-drawn cart got between us at a corner. When it moved, Aahz was on the opposite side still waiting for me. He gave me a chance to catch up and kept walking. I thought from the direction, we must be going toward the newspaper office.
After a while, my nerves were shredded raw. I couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
“Aren’t you going to rub it in?” I blurted out.
Aahz gave me a wink and a grin.
“Nope,” he said. “You’ve probably obsessed over everything that happened and berated yourself plenty. I doubt anything I say is going to sound new after that. Do you need something to eat?”
“No, they gave me breakfast,” I said. “The food was pretty good.” I had had much worse in jail—during the times of incarceration that I had been fed. In fact, I couldn’t complain about my treatment, except for the unfairness of being jailed in the first place.
“Good. Hurry up. We’ve got a meeting.”
Our destination was the Morning Gossip. The office was bustling with activity. Tipps hurried back and forth with purposeful expressions, carrying stacks of papers, writing on pads, or talking into devices of every size and shape that I assumed were magikal analogues to Bunny’s Perfectly Darling Assistant, Bytina. Stacks of newspapers bound with string flew out the door past me like bats on the wing and zipped off in all directions. I tried to get a glimpse at the headlines, but they were moving too fast. Aahz grabbed me by the shoulder and marched me inside.
I had barely gone through the glass doors when Bunny flew into my arms and enveloped me in a rib-cracking hug.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” I assured her.
“Good.” She let me go and handed me a clipboard from a nearby table. “We have a meeting with the campaign organizers from both sides in an hour. We need to go over our strategy. Tolomi is letting us go through the archives for information on the issues we need to cover and what we need to look out for. Mich is getting them for us.” She pointed toward a high wall of file cabinets. Drawers flew open and files came swirling out of them to form a stack on the desk of a skinny bored-looking male with patchy fur on his face. If he had been a Klahd, I would have said he had acne. He checked off another entry on a list before him, then flicked a finger up toward another cabinet. “Start reading through them. I want to have all the objections covered before we meet with them.”
No lecture from her, either. I was surprised. No one was going to berate or scold me.
Well, I reasoned, as Aahz had said, I had already done that. None of my colleagues was going to treat me like a child, in spite of my childish behavior. They knew my behavior was temporary and I knew better. All of them had to deal with their own issues. I felt a rush of affection for them. They trusted me to know what was right even when I didn’t do it. I would give my life for any of them. I had never felt like that about anyone, even my family. Now they were my family, my primary social group, my support, and my teachers. How did I ever think I was worthy to lead them? It was much better to have Bunny in charge. I had more to learn by working for her. Everything was going to be all right.
Then I got a good look at a copy of that day’s paper.
Klahd in Disorderly Conduct Scandal! A close-up picture of me hanging in the police net was below, between two columns of type in all capital letters. I grabbed the news sheet off the table and scanned the article. It made me sound like a complete idiot.
“Skeeve!” Ecstra’s voice made me jump. She appeared at my side, with pencil poised above pad and an expression of intent interest. “Tell me, how does it feel to be arrested on your first day in Tipicanoo?”
The astonishment on my face probably mirrored the one in the article, but I remembered Aahz’s instructions.
“No comment,” I said.
“I want to know for the sake of our readers who have never run afoul of the law,” she said. “And for my own information. I’ve never spent the night in jail. What was it like?”
“No comment,” I said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do right now.”
“I can help with that,” Ecstra offered promptly. “I was an eyewitness to plenty of the candidates’ antics. Most of what you folks are reading is from news reports I wrote. I could give you details that didn’t make it into the paper.”
“Great!” I said. “Thanks, Ecstra! That would save us a lot of time. When did the mudslinging start?”
“. . . But first you have to give me an exclusive interview on your experiences in the Bokromi lockup,” Ecstra finished. I groaned. She went down a checklist on the page. “How about the booking? Would you say you were treated unfairly by the police? Deprived of your rights? Humiliated in any way?” She looked up at me, her pencil poised.
I glanced at Aahz for a suggestion. He raised his eyebrows, telling me that I had better be careful.
I recited the bare events of my incarceration, careful not to make personal comments or identify anyone whose name I had heard. I could see my colleagues stifling smiles. Ecstra looked disappointed. She frowned and pointed the quill end of her pen at me.
“So you are not ashamed of your actions yesterday, Skeeve?”
That caught me off guard. There was no good way to answer that question. “I . . . of course I am! I mean, I am ashamed of my actions. But I don’t understand why I was the only one arrested!”
“The police checked everyone’s cards once they took you in. They were all paid-up political party members. Mrs. Weavil gave me a personal statement. She thought you were a natural. She’d love to have you join Emo’s party.” She flipped back through her notebook a couple of pages and read, “‘. . . if only to keep him from targeting a helpless old woman who just wants to defend her son from malicious slander.’”
I groaned. Mich stifled a snort in a thick file folder.
“Don’t feel bad about her,” Ecstra said. “Mrs. Weavil’s tough. I’ve seen her take on the whole Weavil-Scuttil faction by herself when a late ferry delayed her supporters from showing up to a rally on time. You ought to be proud. An endorsement like that doesn’t come along every day.”
“Why didn’t you tell me it was against the law for outsiders to riot?” I asked, knowing how foolish I sounded even asking the question. “You could have stopped me from getting in trouble.”
Ecstra shrugged. “We only report the news. We don’t make it. We aren’t supposed to get involved. The only reason Tolomi said to help you in your fact-finding mission is that you’re impartial contractors. As long as you stay that way, we’re glad to assist.” She took her notebook to the editor. Tolomi had his feet on his desk and a cigar clenched in the corner of his mouth. He went over the notes and chortled.
“This is gonna make a great article tomorrow,” he crowed. “I could run a dozen follow-ups. Great personal-interest story.”
“That is just what we didn’t want to have happen,” Bunny said in a small voice that I thought only I could hear, but I’d forgotten Ecstra’s talent at reading expressions.
“Sorry,” she said. “No hard feelings, but that’s our job, and that’s news. In fact, this is going to be the best new story we’ve had in years.”
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” Aahz said, waving away our objections with a sweep of his hand. “We could cause a hundred riots. It would just improve our standing in this backwater.” He brandished a handful of articles at us. “Tolomi, I gotta give your people credit. You have found a thousand different ways to say that nothing’s happening on this island and make it sound interesting. I’d be bored to death if I lived here. I can see why you had to jump on my friend’s unfortunate propensity for getting involved in civic activities.”
Robert Asprin's Myth-Quoted Page 4
