Myth Alliances

I glanced into the screens as I passed. The images in them didn't look black and white to me, but a spooky gray blue and chalky white that made the beings pictured look otherworldly. But I was the demon here. Maybe that looked good to the denizens of Ronko.

The television station was a building off to itself at the edge of a big park square. It had been built like one of its own screens, a huge box with a glass front. Inside Ronkonese hurried around three-walled rooms with lights, boxes on wheels and hand-sized padded sticks, which they pushed in front of one another's faces.

I told my story to the receptionist. She gestured us to a seat, and we waited. The lobby had a wall of screens, each showing a different activity. On one, a male gestured with both palms at a map. It had a smiley sun face and a frowny rain cloud facing one another over a dashed line that separated rough halves of the geographical area pictured. In another, a cheerful looking female in a frilly apron held up a cylindrical bottle and a sponge. I guessed she was promoting some kind of cleaning product.

In a while, an eager little Ronkonese female came out to meet us. She was dressed a lot like Bunny often did, in a trim skirt suit with a ruffle at the neck.

"I'm Velda Skarrarov," she introduced herself, shaking hands with all of us and ending with a pat on Gleep's head. The fact that we all looked very different from natives of Ronko, or that we had a dragon with us, seemed not to faze her at all. "I'm very interested in your story. Will you come to my studio with me, please?"

We followed her through the chaotic hallways. Velda talked to us over her shoulder as she negotiated her way, striding past busy men in headsets pushing big pieces of equipment. "I'm an investigative reporter," she confided. "They all think I'm insane, a girl trying to make it as a rough-and-tumble journalist, but I know they're wrong."

"They are," Zol replied, keeping up with her effortlessly. "Why, in a few years it will be the norm to see females in your position. Be strong, be intelligent, and when the time comes, be generous to your detractors. They can't see what you do."

"Why, thank you," Velda smiled. "I really appreciate your confidence. Of course I know who you are. I'd like to interview you after I speak to your friend." "With pleasure," Zol assured her.

I didn't like the television station, and I could tell Gleep felt as uncomfortable as I did. A shrill whine permeated every room all of the time. There was no escape from the sound. It made Gleep flatten his ears sideways. I wished mine were as mobile.

"It's the monitors," Velda informed us. "They don't like to work, and they want us to know they're unhappy. They don't like to suffer alone."

"Misery loves company," Zol intoned. Velda regarded him with the same sheeplike expression Bunny did. I could tell she was falling under his spell.

"Can we get back to the reason we're here?" I insisted, with some heat.

"Oh, yes!" Velda exclaimed, gesturing us into an office, once again with only three solid walls. The fourth was a section of the vast window that made up the front of the building. She showed my friends a line of chairs against a wall, and pointed me at a seat in front of a row of hot lights. "Please sit there."

The room was very plain except for a panel behind us that looked like the cityscape we had admired on the way there. Opposite it on the far wall were several big monitor screens, with different scenes on each one.

Two big boxes were wheeled in that looked like siege cannon except that the gun end had a glass lens in it. Each contraption moved on a platform with three or four Ronkonese to steer it. A woman appeared wielding a powder puff and an eyeliner pencil. She applied both to Velda and then to me. Tananda and Bunny, safely out of the way, giggled at my discomfiture.

"Ready?" Velda asked me, as she settled herself in the seat opposite mine in front of the lights. "Tell me your story."

I told her the entire tale, beginning with the arrival of Wensley in my study, going on through his description of the Pervects' domination of the Wuhses, our surveillance of them in their lair, their attempt to take over Scamaroni, and our discovery of the new plot against the Ronkonese.

"Those things that we saw in the poster," I explained. "We think they're weapons. I believe that the Perverts intend to use your people as soldiers, assembling an army that will be under their absolute command."

"But Ronkonese are very independent thinkers," Velda countered. "We wouldn't make a good army to attack anyone else."

"But you wouldn't know you were doing it," I pointed out. "I told you they've also invented these mind-bending spectacles. If you were wearing those you might march on an unsuspecting enemy thinking you were doing no more than, say, cutting up food."