Myth Alliances

We tried soaking the stone in water, wine, oil, and several less savory fluids. We fed it sugar, plant food, even people food, but it continued to sit there. I went back to Klah for the grimoires Garkin had left me. Everything in his books was oriented toward channeling power, not getting rid of it.

"Maybe it's like yeast," I suggested. We broke it up into little pieces. We mixed it with dirt, then gravel, then chunks of rock. We heated it in fire, cooled it in ice, added practically every ingredient I could think of. I surrounded it in a field of magikal energy, then let it dissipate. Nothing happened until we mixed the wall parts with sand. The chunks of rock started making a hissing noise. A lather began to gather on top. I reached out a finger to touch it, but Zol yanked my hand back.

"Don't touch it!" he cautioned me. The sizzling noise got louder. "I believe it's working!"

"But why sand?" I asked, watching as the foam covered the mass and enveloped it in a seething, heaving, glowing lump. Heat blasted outward from it, singeing our eyebrows. We retreated to the far end of the cellar. "Why would that work when rock like the original piece wouldn't?"

"Because of its relative translucency," Zol explained. "I believe that what you have just witnessed is a textbook example of near-clear fizzin'."

I was too fascinated by the process to ask for a clarification. It was working.

It took a few days to produce a couple of buckets full of the anti-magik material. Tananda provided security on the cellar, making sure that no one came down to see what we were doing, although my yell of "Yee-hah!" probably raised a few eyebrows. I emerged from our laboratory, frizzled hair and all.

"Are we ready?" Bunny asked.

"We are," I announced, triumphantly. "The coup will proceed on schedule."

TWENTY-SEVEN

"But that trick never works!"

? SQUIRREL

Niki shouldered into her coverall and gulped down the rest of her coffee.

"Almost whistle time," she told the others, who were in various stages of trying to wake up.

Oshleen peered up from her ledger full of red ink with gold lines showing in the yellows of her eyes. Vergetta threw aside her copy of the Perv News, their sole link with civilization in the dreary Wuhs backwater.

"The new line is running like a top. No trouble from the Wuhses. They went right from Pervomatics to personal reminder pixies. The hypno chamber is really good. Even I almost forget what we're doing when I leave there."

"Should patent it," Caitlin stated, tapping away at her keyboard. "Look at the potential applications for secret installations. There might be government contracts in a device like that."

"Oh, great, that's all we'd need," Charilor groaned. "The government already forgets half the stuff it's doing. Do you really want to add deliberate black holes to that?"

"I guess not," the little Pervect shrugged, not looking up from her screen. "Should patent it anyhow. Won't keep the Deveels from copying it, but at least we'll have a legal reason for ripping their lungs out if we catch them."

"I can't believe that there's been no heroic attempt to rescue you, little guy," Vergetta told the paperweight in the middle of the table. "Nobody throwing themselves on the ramparts, no one scaling the walls, nobody battering down the door. Looks like all your friends are a bunch of Wuhses, eh?" She laughed heartily at her own joke. The Wuhs didn't join in.

"There was a retraction in the Ronko Gazette from the Great Skeeve," Paldine announced. "I saw it when I went to pick up our stock. What I can't figure out is why."

Vergetta looked dubious. "Why which one? Why he got in our way, or why he apologized?"

"The apology is the weird part."

"Looks to me like he backed out of his contract with Shorty over there," Tenobia declared, aiming a manicured thumb at the Wuhs on the table. "Nothing's happened for a week. He probably went back to his batcave with a big fat zero. Probably just figured out he's as likely to get paid as we are."

The can hanging from the wall jangled. Niki frowned at it, then went over to pick it up. She listened, the scowl growing deeper.

"Something's wrong at Factory #9," she told the others as she let the cylinder drop. "The Wuhses are refusing to sign in." The can clattered again. She snatched it up and shouted into it. "I'm coming! What?" She threw it down. "Factory #2. They're protesting for better parking spaces."

"I'll go," Tenobia volunteered. "I'll give them parking spaces!"

"Don't all of them walk to work?" Nedira inquired. "It's probably a notion one of them picked up on another dimension," Tenobia snarled. "Ironic, isn't it? They found something for free that's still a pain in the rump!" She vanished.

The can jangled again. And again. The Pervects grabbed for it, another rushing off to handle each fresh situation.