Myth Alliances

This was the main support of the Wuhs economy? If I hadn't already known that the Pervects had another concern going somewhere, I would have thought they were insane relying upon what Aahz called "tchotchkes" and "schmattes" to provide a livelihood for thousands of families, not to mention turning a profit for the Ten.

Row after row of workers, stitching by hand or ru

We looked in every door and under every single thing in all of the rooms we visited, but there was no sign of Wensley. Many of the people knew him, but no one had seen him since the day of the riot. Everyone was convinced he was dead. I didn't want to believe it.

Some of the goods the Wuhses made were for sale in the cafeteria. Bu

"So what do you do?" I asked for the forty-third time, no longer caring if I got an answer.

"I tat lace table ru

"Thanks," I smiled, trying to sound appreciative, though lace table ru

"How about you?" I inquired of a blunt-faced male with a pot belly. He took in a breath suddenly, as though my question had called his mind back from far away.

"What?"

"What do you do here?" I inquired.

"I embroider tea towels," the Wuhs intoned dully. "I sew daisies and jonquils. I like yellow."

His hands started to go through the inevitable display of his art. I watched curiously, as instead of the motions of drawing a needle up and down, he seemed to be stacking various items on top of one another, stretching overhead and dragging down a pencil-like device to touch the items then letting it go. Next, both hands reached to his left and came back holding an invisible cylinder which he set down over the parts already before him, screwing it down and finally hitting an unseen plunger a couple of times with the palm of his hand.

"What kind of tea towel is that?" I asked Zol.

"I like purple," uttered the Wuhs next to him, mechanically. "I do very fine lilacs and lavender sprays." But the motions he went through were the same as the blunt-faced male.

"Do you know, Master Skeeve," Zol replied, after a few moments study, "it's no kind I've ever seen before."

"I sew roses," a third Wuhs began.

"I make leaf motifs."

"We missed something," I muttered to Zol. "We have to go back in there and find out what is going on."

Tananda leaned over my shoulder at that moment. She had an armful of linens, and pretended to display one for me.

"The spy-eyes are all turning this way, handsome. Should we do something about them?" I started to turn to look, but she gripped my shoulder with iron fingers. "Don't look this way. Not with your own face on."

I felt icy fingers ru

She put her hands to her cheeks and felt them. "Oh, my! My illusion spell wore off! I've got to go now."

She hurried to our table and handed me her purchases. "Shall we go now?" she urged pointedly.

Zol and I were already standing. The Wuhses who were still "assembling" tea towels that weren't tea towels paid no attention, but the keen-eyed old female watched us with interest. We started edging toward the door.

When my hand touched the knob, a klaxon began to blare out. "Intruder alert! Intruder alert! No one is to leave the building. Repeat: no one is to leave the building."

I heard a rumbling noise, and felt a drain on the energy line below my feet. One of the Perverts must be in the factory.

"How do we get out of here?" Bu

"Not easily," Tananda asserted. "This place seals up tighter than a drum."

I glanced around. "Just start walking toward the exit."

As I said that, sheets of metal slid down and sealed off the doors and windows of the cafeteria. I reached for the D-hopper. "Where shall we meet? If there's any possibility they can zero in on where we've gone I don't want them following me home. K—I mean, my dimension can't handle it."

"Kobol," Zol suggested promptly. "Meet you there."

The little gray man vanished. The Wuhses broke into shrieks and cries of alarm. They immediately stampeded toward the metal-covered door and started pounding on it.

"So much for an unobtrusive departure," I mourned, and started to dial the D-hopper. At that moment the wall behind the sales kiosk opened up, and a stocky Pervert female in a coverall stamped through. She made straight for us.

"You!" she shouted, pointing at us. "Come here! I want to talk to you!"

Without hesitation, I grabbed Tananda's and Bu

I felt a touch of power on the back of my neck like a clamp attached to a derrick. The Pervert was trying to pull me towards her! Knowing how much her species hated fire, I flung a ball of crackling heat over my shoulder at her. She ducked, swearing, as a hundred tea cozies shaped like sunflowers burst into flames. Her spell let go.

As soon as I was free I burrowed deeply into the crowd. I noted as many of the faces as I could then, in my mind, I erased the Wuhs features we had just assumed, and exchanged them for new ones. The Pervert could not easily identify us now. She would have to grab everyone, and by then, I intended to be long gone.

"Skeeve!" Tananda hissed, looking about her for me.

When I put a disguise spell on others, they see themselves with their new faces, but I still see them as they really are. I set the D-hopper for Kobol, threw one arm around Bu

Niki grabbed a can hanging from a string on the wall and shouted into it.

"We've had a security breach! Spies! Two Klahds, a Trollop and an I don't know what it was! I think we've found our magician."

In a moment a voice crackled in her ear. "Did you catch them?"

"No, they boogied out of here. Someone or something must have tipped them off." She glared around the room at the Wuhses, now all plastered against the far wall in terror. "I'm going to find out who."

"We're already working on it," Caitlin replied. "Over and out."

"Who were they?" Loorna roared at the Wuhs.

After they had hung up with Niki, the Ten had opened the snow globe prison on their table and restored the Wuhs inside it to full size. The rabblerouser who had actually invaded the castle and led a thousand of his countrymen into the Pervect Ten's very own headquarters didn't look like such a hero now. His vest and trousers were torn, his pale hair and face dirty, and his white shirt showed the effects of having been lived in for a week straight. Vergetta's keen nose wrinkled at the smell he emitted. She snaked up a cluster of power and threw it at him. There. Dry-cleaned, no charge. Loorna tossed her a grouchy look, but Vergetta ignored it. Why should they all suffer for the length of time it took to wring information out of the Wuhs?