MA05 Myth-ing Persons

by Robert Asprin

  Luanna nodded slowly without raising her eyes.

  “That’s what we do. Matt and me. That and running, even though I think sometimes we’re better at running than working scams. Maybe if we were better at conning people, we wouldn’t get so much practice at running.”

  Her words thudded at me like a padded hammer. I had wanted very badly to hear that she was innocent and that it had all been a mistake. I mean, she was so pretty, so sweet, I would have bet my life that she was innocent, yet here she was openly admitting her guilt to me.

  “But why?” I managed at last. “I mean, how did you get involved in swindling people to begin with?”

  Her soft shoulders rose and fell in a helpless shrug.

  “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea when Matt first explained it to me. I was dying to get away from the farm, but I didn’t know how to do anything but farm work for a living ... until Matt explained to me how easy it was to get money away from people by playing on their greed.

  “’Promise them something for nothing,” he said, “or for so little that they think they’re swindling you.’ When he put it that way, it didn’t seem so bad. It was more a matter of being smart enough to trick people who thought they were taking advantage of you.”

  “... by selling them magical items that weren’t.” I finished for her. “Tell me, why didn’t you just go into the magic trade for real?”

  Her head came up, and I caught a quick Hash of fire in her sad blue eyes.

  “We didn’t know any magic, so we had to fake it. You probably can’t understand that, since you’re the real McCoy. I knew that the first time I saw you at Possiltum. We were going to try to fake our way into the Court Magician spot until you showed up and flashed a bit of real magic at the crown. “Even Matt had to admit that we were outclassed, and we kind of faded back before anyone asked us to show what we could do. I think it was then that I ...”

  She broke off, giving me a startled, guilty look as if she had been about to say something she shouldn’t. “Go on,” I urged, my curiosity piqued.

  “It’s nothing, really,” she said hastily. “Now it’s your turn. Since I’ve told you my story, maybe you won’t mind me asking how you got started as a magician.”

  That set me back a bit. Like her, I had been raised on a farm. I had run away, though, planning to seek my fortune as a master thief, and it was only my chance meeting with my old teacher Garkin and eventually Aahz that had diverted my career goals toward magic. In hindsight, my motives were not discernibly better than hers, but I didn’t want to admit it just now. I kind of liked the way she looked at me while laboring under the illusion that I was someone noble and special.

  “That’s too long a tale to go into just now,” I said brusquely. “There are still a few more answers I’d like from you. How come you used our place as a getaway route from Deva?”

  “Oh, that was Vic’s idea. We teamed up with him just before we started working our con at the Bazaar. When it looked like the scam was starting to turn sour, he said he knew a way-off dimension that no one would be watching. Matt and I didn’t even know it was your place until your doorman asked if we were there to see you. Matt was so scared about having to tangle with you that he wanted to forget the whole thing and find another way out, but Vic showed us the door and it looked so easy we just went along with him.”

  “Of course, it never occurred to you that we’d get stuck with the job of trying to bring you back.”

  “You better believe it occurred to us. I mean, we didn’t think you’d have to do it. We expected you’d be mad at us for getting you involved and come after us yourself. Vic kept saying that we shouldn’t worry, that if you found us here in Limbo that he could fix it so you wouldn’t be able to take us back. I didn’t know he was thinking about setting up a frame until he sprang it on your partner.”

  I tried to let this console me, but it didn’t work.

  “I notice that once you found out that Aahz was being framed, you still went along with it.”

  “Well ... I didn’t want to, but Vic kept saying that if you two were as good as everyone said, that your partner could get out of jail by himself. We figured that he’d escape before the execution, but with the whole dimension hunting him as a fugitive that he’d be too busy running for home to bother about catching us.”

  I was starting to get real anxious to meet this guy Vic. It also occurred to me that of all the potential problems our growing reputation could bring down on us, this was one we had never expected.

  “And you believed him?”

  Luanna made a face, and then shrugged.

  “Well ... you’re supposed to be able to do some pretty incredible things, and I don’t want you to think I don’t believe in your abilities, but I was worried enough that I sneaked back to let you know what was going on ... just in case.”

  It was almost funny that she was apologizing for giving us the warning. Almost, but not quite. My mind kept running over what might have happened if she had believed in me completely.

  “I guess my only other question is who is this citizen that Aahz is supposed to have killed?”

  “Didn’t anybody tell you?” she blinked. “It’s Vic. He’s from this dimension ... you know, a vampire. Anyway, he’s hiding out until the whole thing’s resolved one way or another. I don’t think even Matt knows where he is. Vampires are normally suspicious, and after I sneaked out the first time, he’s even gotten cagey around us. He just drops in from time to time to see how we’re doing.”

  Now I knew I wanted to meet friend Vic. If I was lucky, I’d meet him before Aahz did.

  “Well, I do appreciate you filling me in on the problem. Now, if you’ll just come back to Blut with us and explain things to the authorities, my gratitude will be complete.”

  Luanna started as if I had stuck her with a pin.

  “Hold on a minute! Who said anything about going to the authorities? I can’t do that! That would be double-crossing my partners. I don’t want to see you or your friends get hurt, but I can’t sacrifice my own to save them.”

  An honest crook is both incongruous and infuriating. Aahz had often pointed this out to me when some point in my ethic kept me from going along with one of his schemes, and now I was starting to understand what he was talking about.

  “But then why are you here?”

  “I wanted to warn you. Vic has been thinking that you might come into Limbo after your partner, and he’s setting up some kind of trap if you did. If he was right, I thought you should know that you’re walking into trouble. I figured that if you came, you’d look up the Dispatcher, so I waited there and followed you when you showed up. I just wanted to warn you is all. That and ...”

  She dropped her eyes again and lowered her voice until I could hardly hear her.

  “... I wanted to see you again. I know it’s silly, but ...”

  As flattering as it was, this time I was unimpressed.

  “Yeah, sure.” I interrupted. “You’re so interested in me you’re willing to let my partner sit on a murder rap just so you can watch me go through my paces.”

  “I already explained about that,” she said fiercely, stepping forward to lay a hand on my arm.

  I stared at it pointedly until she removed it.

  “Well,” she said in a small voice. “I can see that there’s nothing more I can say. But, Skeeve? Promise me that you won’t follow me when I leave? You or your friends? I took a big risk finding you. Please don’t make me regret it.”

  I stared at her for a long moment, and then looked away and nodded.

  “I know you’re disappointed in me, Skeeve,” came her voice, “but I can’t go against my partners. Haven’t you ever had to do something you didn’t want to do to support your partner?”

  That hit home ... painfully.

  “Yes, I have,” I said, drawing a ragged bre
ath. “I’m sorry, Luanna. I’m just worried about Aahz, that’s all. Tell you what. Just to show there’re no hard feelings, can I have a token or something? Something to remember you by until I see you again?”

  She hesitated, then pulled a gossamer-thin scarf from somewhere inside her outfit. Stepping close, she tucked it into my tunic, then rose on her tiptoes and kissed me softly.

  “It’s nice of you to ask,” she said. “Even if I don’t mean anything to you at all, it’s nice of you to ask.”

  With that, she turned and sprinted off down the road into the darkness.

  I stared after her.

  “You’re letting her go!?”

  Suddenly Massha was at my side, flanked by Guido. “C’mon, Boss. We gotta catch her. She’s your partner’s ticket off death row. Where’s she goin’?”

  “To meet up with her partners in crime,” I said. “Including a surprisingly lively guy named Vic ... surprising since he’s the one that Aahz is supposed to have killed.”

  “So we can catch ‘em all together. Nice work, Hot Stuff. Okay, let’s follow her and ...”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I promised her.”

  There was a deathly silence as my assistants digested this information.

  “So she walks and Green and Scaly dies, is that it?”

  “You’re sellin’ out your partner for a skirt? That musta been some kiss.”

  I slowly turned to face them, and, mad as they were, they fell silent. “Now listen close,” I said quietly, “because I’m not going to go over it again. If we tried to follow her back to their hideout, and she spotted us, she’d lead us on a wild goose chase and we’d never catch up with them ... and we need that so-called corpse. I don’t think her testimony alone will swing the verdict.”

  “But Boss, if we let her get away ...”

  “We’ll find them,” I said. “Without us dogging her footsteps, she’ll head right back to her partners.”

  “But how will we ...”

  In answer, I pulled Luanna’s scarf from my tunic. “Fortunately, she was kind enough to provide us with a means to track her, once we recruit the necessary werewolf.”

  Guido gave my back a slap that almost staggered me.

  “Way to go, Boss,” he crowed. “You really had me goin’ for a minute. I thought that chickie had really snowed you.”

  I looked up to find Massha eyeing me suspiciously.

  “That was quite a kiss, Hot Stuff,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that young lady is more than a little stuck on you ... and you just took advantage of it.”

  I averted my eyes, and found myself staring down the road again.

  “As a wise woman once told me,” I said, “sometimes you have to do things you don’t like to support your partner ... Now, let’s go find these Woof Writers.”

  THE WOOF WRITERS turned out to be much more pleasant than I had dared hope, which was fortunate as my werewolf disguises were some of the shakiest I’d ever done. Guido was indeed allergic to werewolves as feared (he started sneezing a hundred yards from their house) and was waiting outside, but even trying to maintain two disguises was proving to be a strain on my powers m this magic-poor dimension. I attempted to lessen the drain by keeping the changes minimal, but only succeeded in making them incredibly unconvincing even though my assistants assured me they were fine. No matter what anyone tells you, believe, me, pointy ears alone do not a wolf make.

  You might wonder why I bothered with disguises at all. Well, frankly, we were getting a little nervous. Everyone we had talked to or been referred to m this dimension was so nice! We kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. All of our talks and discussions of possible traps had made us so skittish that we were now convinced that there was going to be a double-cross somewhere along the way. The only question in our minds was when and by whom.

  With that in mind, we decided it would be best to try to pass ourselves off as werewolves until we knew for sure the Woof Writers were as well-disposed toward humans as Vilhelm said they were. The theory was that if they weren’t, the disguises might give us a chance to get out again before our true nature was exposed. The only difficulty With that plan was that I had never seen a werewolf in my life, so not only was I working With a shortage of energy, I was unsure as to what the final result should look like. As it turned out, despite their knowledgeable advice, my staff didn’t know either.

  While we’re answering questions from the audience, you might ask, if neither I nor my assistants knew what a werewolf looked like, how I knew the disguises were inadequate? Simple. I deduced the fact after one look at real werewolves. That and the Woof Writers told me so. Didn’t I tell you they were great folks? Of course, they let us sweat for a while before admitting that they knew we were poorly disguised humans all along, but I myself tend to credit that to their dubious sense of humor. It’s Massha who insists it was blatant sadism. Of course, she was the one who had to eat a bone before they acknowledged the joke.

  Anyway, I was talking about the Woof Writers. It was interesting in that I had never had much opportunity to watch a husband-wife team in action before (my parents don’t count). The closest thing to the phenomenon I had witnessed was the brother-sister team of Tananda and Chumley, but they spent most of their conversational time trying to “one-down” each other. The Woof Writers, in contrast, seemed to take turns playing “crazy partner/sane partner.” They never asked my opinion, but I felt that she was much better at playing the crazy than he. He was so good at playing the straight that when he did slip into crazy mode, it always came as a surprise.

  “Really, dear,” Idnew was saying to Massha “wouldn’t you like to slip out of that ridiculous disguise into something more comfortable? A werewolf with only two breasts looks so silly.”

  “Idnew,” her husband said sternly, “you’re making our guests uncomfortable. Not everyone feels as easy about discussing their bodies as you do.”

  “It’s the artist in me,” she returned. “And besides, Drahcir, who was it that set her up to eat a bone?—and an old one at that. If you were a little more conscientious when you did the shopping instead of stocking up on junk food ...”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, Hairy and Handsome,” Massha interceded smoothly, dropping into her vamp role. “I’ve got no problems discussing my body, as long as we get equal time to talk about yours. I’ve always liked my men with a lot of facial hair, if you get my drift.”

  I noticed Idnew’s ears flatten for a moment before returning to their normal upright position. While it may have been nothing more than a nervous twitch, it occurred to me that if we were going to solicit help from these two, it might not be wise to fan any embers of jealousy that might be lying about.

  “Tell me,” I said hastily, eager to get the subject away from Massha’s obvious admiration of Drahcir, “What got you started campaigning for better relationships between humans and werewolves?”

  “Well, there were many factors involved,” Drahcir explained, dropping into the lecturer mode I had grown to know so well in such a short time. “I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that the bad reputation humans have is vastly overrated. There is actually very little documented evidence to support the legends of human misconduct. For the most part, werewolves tend to forget that, under the proper conditions, we turn into humans. Most of them are afraid or embarrassed and hide themselves away until it passes, but Idnew and I don’t. If anything, we generally seize the opportunity to go out and about and get the public used to seeing harmless humans in their midst. Just between us, though, I think Idnew here likes to do it because it scares the hell out of folks to be suddenly confronted by a human when they aren’t expecting it. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a strong exhibitionist streak in my wife. For myself, it’s simply a worthy cause that’s been neglected for far too long.”


  “The other factor, which my husband has neglected to mention,” Idnew put in impishly, “is that there’s a lot of money in it.”

  “There is?” I asked.

  My work with Aahz had trained me to spot profit opportunities where others saw none, but this time the specific angle had eluded me.

  “There ... umm ... are certain revenues to be gleaned from our campaign,” Drahcir said uneasily, shooting a dark glance at his wife. “T-shirts, bumper stickers, lead miniatures, fan club dues, greeting cards, and calendars, just to name a few. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. Lest my wife leave you with the wrong impression of me, however, let me point out that I’m supporting this particular cause because I really believe in it. There are lots of ways to make money.”

  “... and he knows them all, don’t you dear?” Idnew said with a smile.

  “Really?” I interrupted eagerly. “Would you mind running over a few? Could I take notes?”

  “Before you get carried away, High Roller,” Massha warned, “remember why we came here originally.”

  “Oh! Right! Thanks, Massha. For a minute there I ... Right!”

  It took me a few seconds to rechannel my thoughts. While Aahz’s training has gotten me out of a lot of tight spots and generally improved my standard of living, there are some unfortunate side effects.

  Once I got my mind back on the right track, I quickly filled the werewolves in on our current problem. I kept the details sketchy, both because I was getting tired of going back and forth over the same beginning, and to keep from having to elaborate on Luanna’s part in causing our dilemma. Still, the Woof Writers seemed quite enthralled by the tale, and listened attentively until I was done.

  “Gee, you’re really in a spot,” Idnew said when I finally ground to a halt. “If there’s anything we can do to help ...”

  “We can’t,” Drahcir told us firmly. “You’re behind on your deadlines, Idnew, and I’ve got three more appearances this month ... not to mention answering the mail that’s piled up the last two weekends I’ve been gone.”