Myth Alliances

That was why I had partners. At the moment I was in the "back-watching" position, and Zol was gathering the information we needed.

Zol gave me a luminous smile of approval. "Precisely, Master Skeeve! I never ceased to be amazed by your capacity for comprehension."

I smiled back, a little uneasily. Not that I didn't enjoy basking in the little gray man's fulsome praise, but after having to pry compliments out of my former associates with a crowbar I mistrusted someone who threw off accolades whenever ... he felt I'd earned one. He seemed just a little too easy to please. He didn't seem to notice my discomfort.

"Now, by looking at the active components, the open books on the desktop, so to speak, we can see what they have been doing today. Hmm ... they have a weather-prediction program ... that one they are using hasn't got the latest updates. The prognostication section has a flaw. It foretells firestorms when it means light rain. It's given rise to panic in some dimensions, as you might guess. Yes, see here?" he pointed at the center of the mirror. " 'Partly sunny, with widespread devastation toward evening.' There's a partial letter home... and the operator has played over five hundred games of solitaire, with a 7:1 win-lose ratio." "Whew!" I whistled. "I'd have liked to hire her as a dealer for the casino our partnership once owned. She must have very fast fingers."

"Oh, they aren't physical cards, Master Skeeve; they're magikal projections. You can play hundreds of different card games on a magik mirror like this. Unfortunately, in everything but solitaire, your virtual opponents tend to cheat."

"Just like real players," I nodded.

"But among all of this detritus they are working on plans," Zol said, his huge dark eyes reflecting the light coming from the small square mirror. "We are in the enviable position of being able to monitor their every move. See this? Men, machinery, logistics, principles of generalship ... They must be out for empire-building. This is bigger than I ever dreamed possible. Marvelous!"

"Marvelous?" I echoed.

Zol beamed at me. "Yes, seeing how the minds of Pervects work. Released from the ease of their own dimension's comforts, they set their sights on spreading then-influence across the multiverse. What an opportunity to observe! Untrammeled ambition! How the two halves of their nature intersect! They seek to Pervert the course of the future in these places, to Pervect their vision."

"Well, it won't do," I snapped. "This isn't an experiment, it's all these people's lives. Their real lives. It cost our friend Wensley his life, in case you have forgotten."

"I'd forgotten how straightforward you Klahds are," Zol offered sincerely. "Please accept my apologies. I became too enthusiastic a scholar, and forgot to be a loving, caring being. I am so sorry." The big dark eyes turned sad.

"He's not upset, Zol," Bunny hurried to assure the author. "Are you, Skeevie?"

I winced. She knew how much I hated to be called Skeevie, so she must be trying to make a point. "But what do we do?"

"You must use that Klahdish sensibility," Zol told me. "Confront them. Head them off and prevent them from achieving their latest objective."

I peered over his shoulder. "Can we tell where they're going this time?"

"Yes, indeed," Zol replied, enlarging a map so I could easily read the name in the center. "Ronko."

"It slices. It dices. It cooks. It even cleans itself if you dunk it in water," Paldine expounded to a roomful of potential distributors.

Ronko ought to be the ideal dimension, she had argued to her companions; they loved gadgets of all kinds, putting even Perv in the shade when it came to techie-toys. She leaned over the Formica podium with one of Niki's inventions in her hand. The development of the dimension was at about the era of early sitcoms, perfect for a gadget like hers.

"It has only one moving part. You push it down. When it pops up, you push it again. When your food looks the way you want it to, you stop. It's so easy an animal can use it." She didn't add, "like you." She might have thought it, but she would never say it.

"That's not in the sales brochure," complained one of the Ronkonese in the front row.

She knew he was going to be trouble from the beginning. His tanned face was wrinkled and lined as if he had spent too many an afternoon out with his pocket fisherman, obviously a veteran of thousands of intense sales pitches.

"Well, you can confide that to a buyer when you're trying to sell him one," Paldine countered, getting exasperated. "Exclusive information they can only get from you!"

"Is it safe?" asked a Ronkonese female, raising a pencil in the front row next to Paldine's "problem child."

"Of course it's safe. You think I could have gotten an import license from your government if it hadn't passed a dozen tests first?"