Myth-Told Tales m-13

by Robert Asprin

  The judges were as stone-faced a group as I'd ever met on the other side of a card table, or, I ought to say, metal-faced. Trofians resembled Klahds but with shiny skin in metallic hues. A copper man, a bronze woman, a silver man, and a platinum woman flanked a slender gold-skinned female who was the chief adjudicator. When a question arose, the four all deferred to her. Ushers and assistants of every metal I'd ever seen ran back and forth to the dais with scoring sheets, beverages, and messages. A brassy young female seemed to have taken a shine to me, and winked a gleaming eyelid every time she went by our seats.

  This competition wasn't free of sorcerous interference, either. Just as the Imper woman reached her high note, she developed a cough, and the orchestra had to finish the maudlin tune without her. She looked furious as she stalked off the stage. The gold judge shook her head and made a mark on her sheet. The silver man and platinum woman exchanged glances and entered their own scores. The next act went on.

  Bunny clutched my hand. I held it tightly while watching the next act. The Klahd female who tripped up onstage kept on going, tripping over her feet with a wild yell and sliding face first all the way across into the opposite wings. She never reappeared. I sensed at least six spells that pushed her over. The pent-up force of so many enchantments was what drove her so far. A Deveelish dancer appeared next in a tiered lace dress, hard metal plates bolted to the bottom of her hooves. The tapping as she stepped rhythmically grew louder and louder until the judges themselves called a halt to her performance. She stomped deafeningly off stage, snarling at her fellow contestants.

  Bad will escalated from there. The next Imper woman attempted to draw caricatures of the judges. First her paintbrushes caught fire, then the lines she produced with a charcoal pencil rearranged themselves into such scurrilously rude drawings that the judges' faces glowed with embarrassment. So did the contestant's. She burst into tears and fled off stage. She was succeeded by a multi-limbed creature with a small dummy that she set on one of her many knees and tried to throw her voice. By the look on her face, the things it said were not in the script. A tiny Salamander girl writing poetry in flames on the air was extinguished by the sudden descent from the catwalk of the fire bucket and its contents. It hissed its way off stage while the judges scribbled their notes down.

  Bunny was next. She'd rehearsed her act with me in my room at the inn the night before, and if nothing went wrong she'd knock the judges off her feet. I'd never known she was so talented. She danced with a partner who was no more than a broomstick in men's clothes. The bristly end was the figure's head, gloves were attached to the end of the tunic's sleeves, and shoes were sewn onto the bottom of the hose. And as they danced, they sang a duet. Bunny did both parts, singing in her normal tone for her lines, and pitching her voice down low for her partner's.

  “It was the closest to boys we had at Madam Beezel's Academy for Girls,” she said apologetically. “My parents were very strict.” I thought it was a terrific act, and I told her so. She squeezed my arm for good luck before the host called her name.

  She swirled out onto the stage with her partner in her arms, and the music began.

  “We two,” Bunny sang. “We two are like one / When we're on the dance floor / Out on the town having fun / You are me and I am you / Whenever we are close I see you and me / we two, we two are like one …”

  I enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of what Aahz called “vawdvil.” I even saw one or two of the judges moving their heads in time with the music.

  It took a little while for the others to catch on to what her act was about, but when they did, the attacks came from every direction. Gusts of wind blew her long skirt up over her head, showing tiny blue unmentionables underneath. Her feet slipped on invisible oil slicks or white patches of ice that appeared on the stage floor, then vanished without a trace. I threw defensive spell after defensive spell around her. They were bombarded by hostile magik. A few spells slipped through my protection. Bunny's “partner” grew extra arms and legs. Its face changed into a hideous mask and started to sing.

  “Boo hoo, you hopeless dum-dum! / You dance with a pushbroom / we all assume you're insane / *&%$ you …” Bunny flagged, not knowing what to do next.

  This I could help with. I tore energy from every force line I could reach, and covered the horrible face with a handsome male visage, and filled in the raucous noise with my own voice. Suddenly, instead of dancing with a broom, Bunny seemed to be in the arms of a handsome man.

  “Do you mind if I cut in? / Go on with your song / you're beautiful…”

  Over its shoulder she shot me a look of such gratitude I could feel my ears burning. I let her go on singing. Now the contestants turned their attention to me, but I was ready for them. I'd had to concentrate on doing spells while a baby dragon licked my face or while an angry Pervect yelled or while armies of heavily armed men and horses charged straight at me. What had I to fear from a thousand angry women?

  Plenty, it turned out. Since I wasn't onstage, out of reach, they mobbed me, scratching, kicking, and even punching. A swipe from a felinoid female drew blood from my cheek. The Salamander burned through my boot top and singed my feet. The Perv woman cocked her arm back to throw an uppercut. I dodged her fist, and tumbled straight into the claws of the Deveel contingent, who got in a few licks of their own. Floor stewards came hurrying over to see what was the matter, but they were thrown back across the room. I hunched over in a tight ball, protecting my eyes with my arms. Whatever else happened, I couldn't let the illusion drop. Bunny's score, and her mission, depended on it.

  “All right, enough!” a man's voice over my head shouted. “Ladies, back to your places or you'll be disqualified!”

  The feet kicking my back withdrew, and I uncurled. A hand grabbed my arm and helped me get to my feet.

  “You're not the only one who can throw your voice,” Bunny said. Faces glared at me over Bunny's shoulder, but hers was the only one I cared about. She looked tired.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  She held out her other arm. Her erstwhile partner lay across it. When I let the illusion drop, nothing remained but a few tatters of cloth and some ashes. They crumbled to the floor.

  “Thank you for what you did,” she said. “But I don't think itll be enough to help.”

  I glanced over at the judges' table. The brass girl I knew was standing behind the gold judge, pouring molten liquid into a glass. She caught my eye with a sad look and shook her head. Bunny saw it, too.

  “I can't win this,” Bunny said. “I'm ready to give up.”

  “No,” I insisted. “You can win it. There's still tomorrow.”

  “And that is what I'd do with the Bub Tube if I am so fortunate to win it,” Bunny said. She put down the parchment on which her speech was written. “This is awful, Skeeve. It sounds so phony. The Bub Tube won't go to assure world peace, or harmony among the dimensions. I'm not going to be using it, my uncle is. And you know his business.”

  I sighed and thrust my hands into my hair. The talent contest had been a disaster. The Pervect had won, with one-fifth of a point more than the Gnome. Bunny was near the bottom of the ranking, about the same as she'd gotten from the beauty parade. This was her last chance to make good.

  “This is what you'd do with it if you got it,” I said, hopefully. “Or you could tell the truth. The honest answer might be such a novelty that it might surprise them into giving you the title.”

  “If I got it,” Bunny said. “This part of the contest is worth fifty percent of the total. At best I'll come in somewhere in the middle.”

  I thought hard. “But you'd move up if your best competition moved down, wouldn't you? It's still possible.”

  “It's still possible to win,” Bunny began, “but they all cheat so much. And they play dirtier than I ever dreamed.” She leaned forward and touched my cheek. “Does that still hurt?”

  “A little,” I admitted, enjoying the play of her gentle fingers. “What if I could persuade them not to
cheat?” Bunny brightened. “Do you think you can?” “I'll try,” I said.

  “Excuse me,” I said, approaching a cluster of Klahdish women. They were helping one another fasten dresses and tidy their hairstyles. They straightened and eyed me warily. “Since I come from your dimension I wanted to start with you. Do you think it's fair that everyone has been using magik or technical devices during this contest?”

  “Well, no,” said a tall woman with red hair. “But what about it? If we don't, well lose for certain.”

  “My father is a grand wizard in Bream,” said a tiny woman with black hair. “He wants the Bub Tube, and he gave me plenty of spells to make sure I'll get it”

  “I'll get it,” a buxom girl insisted, tossing her long blond tresses over her shoulder, “if I have to seduce every single judge on the panel.”

  “But you're all beautiful, and all intelligent,” I said. “Why not play it straight and see who wins fairly and squarely?”

  “Because we want to win,” they chorused.

  “Those Deveels all use magik,” the wizard's daughter said. “If we didn't cheat, we wouldn't stand a chance.”

  “What if I could get them to agree to compete honestly?” I asked.

  “Well…” the redhead appeared to consider. “But everybody would have to do it”

  “All right,” I said, overjoyed that my plan was going so well. All my years with Aahz, the master negotiator, were paying off. “Ill get them to agree.”

  But my plan hit a snag in phase two.

  “Are you crazy?” the tallest Deveel women asked. “Honest! You all say that. One of you Klahds asked for a fair fight last time there was a contest on Trofi, and she cheated. We're not going to fall for that again.”

  “But the Klahds have given me their word they'll follow the rules,” I said.

  Fiery red eyes bored into mine. “You don't look that stupid. Either you believe them, or you're in on it with them. In any case, get lost!”

  She snatched a pot of rouge off the table and threw it at me. Out of reflex I trapped it in mid-air with a tendril of power. The Deveel's eyes widened.

  “Who are you?” she hissed.

  “Uh, my name's Skeeve,” I said. The way her face closed I knew she had heard of me. I grabbed the jar and set it gently down on the table. “Look, this is not about me. My friend Bunny …”

  “Forget it!” she said. The others sneered down their long noses at me. “She has Skeeve the Magnificent working for her? And you want us to give up our advantage? You're insane. We're going to do whatever we have to to win. What are you going to do about that?”

  Shoulders sagging, I went back to where Bunny was sitting, reading through her much-revised script. What would I do? What could I do?

  The force line under the arena was big enough for me to use if I wanted to enforce honesty in the remaining phase of the competition, but did I have the right to impose my views on the others? If I had no stake in the contest, perhaps, but I was there as a partisan for one contestant who would benefit if everyone stopped interfering with one another.

  “How did it go?” Bunny asked, then interrupted me before I could speak. “Never mind, let me tell you: they all told you to go peddle your papers. But thank you for trying. I'm proud of you for wanting to stay on the straight path. With your powers you could outstrip every one of them. That wouldn't be fair. I've decided I'm going to be honest in my essay, and face the judges on my own merits. Crom knows what they'll do to me — anything is possible, from throwing tomatoes to transformation spells.”

  “What's a tomato?” I asked curiously.

  “A fruit that's been convinced it's a vegetable,” Bunny said, mysteriously. “Look, Skeeve, I am sure to lose, but at the very least I can find out who wins the Bub Tube and let Uncle Bruce know whom he has to buy it from. I'm sure he'll be able to make her an offer she can't refuse.”

  “What's so important about it?” I pondered, staring up at the rectangular piece of glass on its plinth high above the judges' table. The magik that made it run drew constantly on the force line under the auditorium. Even at this distance I could clearly make out the pictures on its surface. People in brightly colored clothes performed appallingly embarrassing tasks for money. Bad singers that I could just hear over the din in the hall wailed out their tunes, and bad dancers tripped around, all within the confines of the glass box. And over all the noise coming from the Bub Tube was the inexplicable presence of raucous laughter. I hated it, but it was as fascinating to watch as a basilisk, and just as capable of freezing its prey in place. Darkness suddenly enveloped me. “Hey!” I protested.

  “Sorry,” Bunny said, pulling her cloak off my head. “You fell into its spell.”

  “That's dangerous,” I said. “Is there a way to control it?”

  “Yes, there's a guide.” Bunny rose from her seat and went to the foot of the plinth. She came back with a small book featuring an amazingly lifelike illumination on the cover.

  I opened it and began to read the instructions. For a magikal item it had amazingly good documentation, down to a listing of the times various images would appear on the surface. “Wild Kingdom” interested me, “being the exploits of his noble yet mad majesty King Roscoe the Disturbed, and his Knights of Chaos.”

  “Bunny,” I said, an idea dawning on me, “if it's possible for you to win based on your essay, I'm going to see that you do. And I won't cheat at all.”

  The contestants were unusually subdued as they prepared for the essay portion. None of the expected sniping was going on, dropping the sound level so low I could hear the inane chatter from the Bub Tube. Every one of the women were dressed in formal costumes, even the Trollops, for whom formal meant fewer body parts showing than usual. Bunny emerged from her assigned cubicle in a red gown that fit her as if it had been painted on her body. A frown wrinkle was fixed between her eyebrows. I took her hand and swirled her, gracefully for me, around the corner of the room.

  “You look wonderful,” I said. “You're going to be a smash.” Bunny blushed.

  I was, unfortunately, more immediately correct than I had anticipated. As soon as Bunny made her appearance, the Deveel women appeared out of nowhere in an angry cloud like sting-wasps.

  “Who do you think you are?” they demanded. One of them pushed her back against a mirror. “Red is our color! Klahds like you get blue!”

  “I'm not a Klahd,” Bunny said, standing her ground. “I'm half Fairy!”

  “Then violet!” the chief Deveel woman said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

  “No, green!” shouted another.

  “Yellow! Yellow's for the Fay!”

  The room stewards arrived, shouting to everyone to break it up. By the time I caught sight of her again, Bunny's dress was a rainbow of anything but red, and her face had been dyed in stripes to match. I enveloped her with a web of power and pulled her out through the crowd, which disbursed with angry looks at me. Bunny's spine was straight as a tree. If the Deveels had intended to shake her confidence, they'd failed. She was more determined than ever to get through the contest honestly. I used a little power to dispel the color in her face, but a pink flush remained in her cheeks. She flatly refused to let me change her dress back.

  That was the last attack, magikal or otherwise, until the essay portion began. The first woman on stage was a Klahd.

  “Good evening,” she said, curtsying to the judges. “If crowned the winner of this marvelous contest, I will use the Bub Tube for the benefit of all beings …”

  Out of nowhere a red sphere came hurtling, and splatted in the contestant's face.

  “That's a tomato,” Bunny pointed out.

  It was a free-for-all. The poor Klahd hopped all over the stage, avoiding hot feet, kicking at snake-spiders that suddenly appeared and tried to crawl up her legs, shouting to be heard over booing from the audience, flushing sounds and greatly amplified intestinal noises. Swarms of sting-wasps buzzed around her, zooming for her face, her hands, any exposed fles
h. The judges sat at their table, calmly marking score sheets and sipping tea poured for them by their attendants. They didn't move a finger to prevent the humiliation of the first contestant. Or the second. Or the third. The fifth essayist, the Gnome, simply wasn't there when rotten fruit came flying her way, but her continual disappearing and reappearing interfered with the delivery of her speech.

  “… A benefit to all beings … used only for good … personally promise to dedicate the device …”

  Except for the direction the missiles were coming from, stature and skin color of the victim, er, participant, the speech, the ducking, and the humiliation of each woman was nearly identical. I began to feel sorry for the contestants. It would have tried even a seasoned politician to survive a pelting like that. I glanced at Bunny. Her face was set.

  An Imper woman slunk off the stage, covered with yellow paint that had sloshed down on her from a bucket that clanged to the floor after depositing its contents on her head. The Pervect woman shoved past her, speech clutched in one scaly hand. She strode to the center of the stage, showed all her teeth and stuck a clawed finger out in the direction of her fellow contestants.

  “If one single rotten vegetable,” she roared, “one bucket of anything or one spell comes my way until I have finished reading this speech, every single one of you is going to be sorry!”

  My ears rang with the sound of her voice, but she'd made her point. Except for resentful muttering, it was quiet in the auditorium. She showed all of her long teeth in a feral smile. I felt her build up a spell and cast it upon herself. It didn't feel like a charm of protection, rather one to aid eloquence.

  “Now. Good evening, honored Trofi judges. I'm proud to be allowed to tell you my plans for the Bub Tube. In the interest of universal peace and the benefit of all living beings …”