Myth Alliances

- Velda nodded sagely. "I thought those Pervomatics sounded too good to be true," she said. "I thought they were just food choppers, like the ads say."

But I wasn't listening. My attention had been drawn to a Ronkonese female on one of the blue-white screens.

'Today on the Happy Homemaker," the cheerful female chirped, "we're pleased to introduce you to the greatest new labor-saving device of the age, the Pervomatic. Just put all your ingredients here on the worktable," she narrated, piling hunks of meat and vegetables together, "place the Pervomatic over them, pound on the plunger, and before you know it, you have a hot and tasty Pervert patty, every time! Your family will love them!"

"Food chopper," I repeated faintly.

"Yes," Velda said. "That's what they've been selling them as. But if, as you say, they have the potential to be weapons, then that's a big story! Tell me more. It'll be all over the evening news! You've made my reputation, Mr. Skeeve!"

"I'm sorry," I blurted, getting to my feet, as the whole reality of my error slapped me in the face. "There's been a terrible mistake. Never mind. Um. I'm sorry. It's actually a really neat item. You ought to buy it. Uh, goodbye. Please don't run this story." Velda looked shocked. "But I have to," she insisted. "It's news. It's big news."

"No. I... you can't. It's wrong. I was wrong!"

"I must speak for my young friend," Zol interjected, stepping in between me and the glass-eyed cannon. "This interview is at an end."

Velda glared at him. "But we haven't gotten into all the details yet!"

I didn't wait to hear any more. I had to get a breath of fresh air. I rushed out of the studio and into the street. I had to get away. I looked around me wildly, hoping I could remember how to steer the D-hopper to get me home.

But a firm hand closed around my upper arm, and a familiar shape looped around my legs.

"Gleep!" chirped the latter.

"Hold on there, handsome," insisted Tananda, the proprietor of the aforementioned hand. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Anywhere," I replied desperately. "Away. Out of here!"

"All right, then," Tananda agreed, with a glance at Bunny and Zol.

The landscape around us vanished.

TWENTY-FIVE

"If you don't want egg on your face, don't make omelets."

—B. CROCKER

"I feel really stupid," I exclaimed, as we arrived back on Wuh. I didn't want to endanger any of the locals, so we landed behind the statue in the park instead of at Montgomery's inn.

"I saw what you saw on that screen," Zol informed me gently. "It would appear that we have erred in our judgment. I did try to talk Velda out of running the story, but I doubt I have dissuaded her. Ronkonese believe strongly in word-of-mouth communications."

"I ought to go back there and try and straighten it out," I declared, wishing not as much that I could get away from my friends as that I wanted to get away from myself. "I have been a complete idiot. I'm supposed to be a hotshot, experienced magician, but I have made every single rookie mistake that Aahz was always pounding me over the head for. I made all those assumptions about the Pervects' plans, but I never looked at one of those things up close. A food processor!" I clutched my head. A gigantic ache was hammering in between my eyes like a troll with a mattock. It wanted out if it killed me, and I almost wished that it could.

"Don't," Zol replied softly. "It's a mistake anyone could have made."

I groaned again. Not anyone. Just the Great Skeeve. Just a guy who had had too much success too soon in the last few years, knocked his own supports out from underneath his own feet and tried to jump right back in the first time someone asked him for help without using any of the experience that he had supposedly gained. I made a decision there and then. I turned to the little gray man and put out my hand.

"Zol, I want to thank you for all of your help. It's been a privilege meeting you. I know you were going to stick around, but after today there's going to be nothing left to see."

Zol's thin black eyebrow went up his gray forehead. "Why the farewell?"

"Because I'm going to resign," I informed him. "I've made a total mess of this whole mission. Those things we thought were weapons were labor-saving gadgets. The Pervects were just trying to sell them. The same probably went for those spectacles. All I've done is make a fool of myself and of all of you. I'm going to find Gubbeen. He seems to be the ranking Wuhs around here. I'll tell him I'm sorry, but I can't do what he wants. It may be too late, but I'm going to take Aahz's advice. This mission was too much for me. I'm willing to admit it."

"Oh, Skeeve, that's not true," Bunny cooed, winding herself into my arm. "You can't quit now."

"I'd better," I told them, "because I've made nothing but bad decisions all the way through this."