Myth-Chief

A thousand! I tried to keep from whooping out loud.

The prime minister's face cleared. "That would be quite all right, ma'am. I'd be happy to escort you around to the various sites you want to see. May I warn you in advance that there's been some little trouble as of late? You might see things that I hope won't upset you."

"I know all about the pinchbug infestation, Prime Minister," she said.

"Well, it's not exactly THAT," Matfany said, with a significant look at me. I could see more discussion coming my way, but I had no idea why. "Ah, but if you please, your time is valuable." He pulled back her chair and stuck out his elbow. "This way, ma'am. Sir."

I trailed along behind him. The heralds at the door raised long trumpets and blew a fanfare, and the guards threw open the big main doors as we approached them. Matfany marched proudly out with Dervina on his arm. I followed, and stopped short.

When I saw what he called "some little trouble." I had to hand it to him for understatement.

"What the hell is this?" I asked.

"Clearly, you did not come in this way," Matfany said.

I whistled. "No kidding."

The courtyard wasn't distinct in any way from thousands of enclosed spaces of fortified houses and citadels across the dimensions, except in its present population density, which had to comprise a good quarter of the Swamp Foxes in Foxe-Swampburg. As soon as they saw Matfany, they raised protest signs over their heads and shook their fists at him. The signs were badly lettered, but I could read most of them.

"Bring Back Hermalaya!" and "We Want Our Princess!" was the gist of the majority, but "Keep Foxe-Swampburg Beautiful!" was on a good third of the placards out there. Other gripes filled the rest, but I got the point. They surged up the stairs and surrounded us. Dervina cringed.

"Get back!" I roared. The Foxes crowding me recoiled slightly, but kept pressing in. The next one that

touched me, I heaved into the air and flung. He landed on six or eight of his fellows. I lunged for the next one, but he dodged out of reach. I grabbed two more and banged them together. They fell down. The Foxes behind them tripped over the bodies and whacked each other with their signs.

The prime minister maintained a dignified mien down the long staircase, Dervina on his arm. A group of Vixens came ru

"Bring back the princess!" they cried.

Matfany flung up a hand. They barreled to a stop. He lowered his head so he was looking over his glasses at them. He dropped his fingers and flicked them twice. The females scrambled backward, retreating into the crowd. He started walking forward. A path cleared before him. The protesters started shouting again, but they never got closer than arm's length. It only took a glare to make them back off. If I could have bottled that look, I would have been the wealthiest merchant in the Bazaar.

"When did this start?" I shouted at Matfany.

"Not long after I saw her highness in your office, sir," he said. "But it has gotten considerably worse after those started appearing." He pointed toward a distraught vixen who waved a copy of The Princess's Diary at him. "Is this the work of your rival? Is he trying to destroy what is left of our fair country?"

"I'm taking care of it," I promised him. "What's the deal with the others?" I aimed a thumb toward the "Keep Foxe-Swampburg Beautiful" contingent. "You will see, sir." Matfany assured me.

I did.

From the castle gates, which overlooked the resort and the seaside, I could see the range of mountains that the Geek had put his name on.

"It wasn't supposed to be literal," I said.

"It seems as though your friend misinterpreted that concept," Matfany said.

The whole range looked as though it had been hit by a squad of giant, hyperactive subway taggers. From one end to the other, the sixteen peaks were covered with brilliant designs in colors that gave me a headache, even at that distance. In the middle of the largest and most prominent peak, the words "The Geek" flashed on and off in a blaze of orange light. I gawked.

"Oh." Dervina said. "I thought this was a quiet beauty spot."

"It was, ma'am," Matfany said. He glared at me, "And it will be again. Mister Aahz, I believe that's your problem."

"Down with the outsiders!" someone bellowed.

That's when the tomatoes started flying. The last I saw of Dervina, she vanished before the first one splatted just where she had been standing. I groaned.

There went my thousand gold coins.

TWENTY-FIVE

"What is the matter with you?" I bellowed at the Geek. He retreated to the back room of the tiny office he had rented on the resort's main street and tried to slam the door on me. I threw my whole weight against it and it banged open. The Geek cowered against the rear wall.

"You ... you don't like it?" he said, attempting a shaky smile.

"Like it?" I slammed my hand against my forehead. "What part of 'you only own naming rights' was so hard to understand? What is all that out there?"

"Well, Aahz, you can't blame me for that! I didn't start it. It was my partners."

"What difference does that make?" Matfany asked, looking down at him like a stern professor. His sleek, black fur was amazingly untouched by the rotten-vegetable cascade thrown by the crowd. On the other hand, I was dripping with liquescent salad. "A contract is a contract."

The Geek scowled at us. "Look at it from my point of view. I got a lot of other people ... I mean, my business partners, to put down money. I had to cover my own ... I mean, a lot of expenses, so I made them some unimportant little promises." "Like what?"

"Well, I said they ought to be able to designate their purchases in some way. I mean, it's a lot of money. No Deveel with any pride is going to pay something for nothing. So, I thought maybe a nice small sign with each person's name on it on top of their own peak. Not as big as my sign was going to be, since I'm the senior partner. It kind of... escalated a little."

"A LITTLE?" I bellowed. The Geek recoiled from the gust of wind. "You want to tell me why your name is written in Salamanders covering five or six square miles of terrain?"

"The first guy who arrived to see his mountain, he wasn't happy, but he was okay with the sign. The next few guys didn't like it. They said they wanted something different than the first guy. So I let them design their own signs. Bo-Fort, you know him?"

"Yeah."

"He came to me and said he was going to write his name in Fireflies on the mountain." "That's not in the contract!"

"I know! He said to me, 'Well, how is anyone going to know that I own it?' I said. That's a good point.'"

"You don't own it." I said. "It's named after you. Owning it would cost about ten thousand times more."

"So, what did I buy?" the Geek asked, abandoning his imaginary partner's arguments. "I want my name on it. If I endowed an arena, my name would be right over the door."

I threw up my hands. "All right, we'll discuss it, but you are going to have to turn off the Salamanders!"

"I can't do it right away, Aahz," the Geek whined. "I paid for the first month in advance."

"Too bad. You can go as far as having a tasteful label with your name on it. So can your other suckers."

The Deveel frowned. "I don't want tasteful, I want readable. The range is more than ten miles from town. A tasteful sign isn't even a dot in one of those coin-operated telescopes! Not that there's anyone here to look at it. This place is as deserted as a shop offering free tax audits! We want some satisfaction for helping bail it out."

"Satisfaction! Did you see the protesters out there?" I pointed through the window. The picketers had followed me. They were shaking their fists and pointing. Any minute they were going to start throwing things again. I was pretty sure they were out of vegetables, so they'd have to resort to dead animals and dung.