Myth Alliances

"We want YOU to join the growing army of happy Pervomatic users!"

"It's a recruiting poster," I growled.

Zol's dark eyes went wide. "How could we have missed the clues?" he demanded, shaking his head at his own naivete. "It was there on their desktop: they were looking for a force. But for what purpose?"

I smacked my fist into my hand. "To take over other dimensions. They supply the weapons here on Ronko, then use the Ronkonese as a strike force somewhere else. It's brilliant."

"What are four of us going to do?" Tananda asked.

"Gleep!" protested my pet.

"Sorry, Gleep," Tananda replied, scratching him around the jowls. "Five of us… And if your suggestion is join up, I may love you like a brother, but the answer this time is a flat no."

Having seen how complications can set in even in such a straightforward enterprise as trying to disrupt an army from within (for further information on the last time my companions got involved in an operation like that I draw your attention to the fine book M.Y.T.H. Inc. in Action), I shook my head.

"We're going to shut them down," I informed them.

"How?" asked Bu

"I don't know yet," I admitted. "I'll figure it out on the way there. Bu

"You bet," she answered, pleased to show off her pet's prowess.

"No, wait, Master Skeeve," Zol halted us. "If you will allow a little advice? It is not enough to attack a single outlet, as you saw before. You need to reach as many people as possible." He pointed to a shop window where people were gathered to look at screens similar to computers but somehow not as sophisticated.

"Black and white," Zol explained, "not as advanced as in some dimensions, but all-pervasive here on Ronko. I seem to recall having been interviewed some years ago at a media outlet, though I ca

She touched the tiny keyboard, and an arrow filled the round mirror. Bu

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 Bu

"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 Bu

"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 ca

"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, begi

"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."

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!"