"Ready!" chorused the contestants.
"This way, servers! Follow the sound of my voice."
"This is the best elimination round I've ever come up with," the Geek confided as the bubble rose out of reach of the contestants.
"Sucker bet," I growled.
"Not always," the Geek said. "You won't believe how some of the players manage! A little old lady in the Imper contest won this round. Turns out she just couldn't taste anything, so it didn't bother her."
Below, the white-coated waiters made it to the table. They deposited covered dishes in front of each contestant then pulled back as the covers lifted off all by themselves. The audience let out an "Ooooooh."
I winced. All of the dishes looked sickening, but to my horror Bee had received a bowl of purple pseudopods that were all too familiar. Pervish cooking! I glared at the Geek.
"I told you, the All-Pervects were favored to win," he admitted sheepishly. "If they happened to get some home cooking, well—"
"So you cheat."
"Balance, Aahz, balance! Anyway, it doesn't matter. Crasmer got, hmm, let's see: stone chips in sulphur gravy. Look, the Gargoyle's eyeing that. It's a delicacy where she comes from!"
Schlein appeared beside them holding an old fashioned dinner bell. He tinkled it.
"Soup's on!"
Bee looked as terrified as I felt. I was sorry for him. It shouldn't befall a decent Klahd like him to have to face Pervish food twice in a lifetime, let alone twice in a month. The animate goo writhing in the dish started to feel its way toward the rim. Bee halfheartedly shoved them back. His companions shouted encouragement from the sidelines.
I felt like adding my voice to theirs. I wanted to shout down to him that he'd done this successfully once before. He could do it again! But I also knew that he dreaded putting any of those things in his mouth. My own stomach heaved as I remembered the flavor and texture, not to mention the MOTION.
The Troll stared at his bowl full of live spiders and scorpions. Could that be fear on his face? I had never known a Troll to blanch at any physical contest, no matter how difficult. It took him a moment to overcome the revulsion. Resolutely, he reached out a hairy paw, seized a wriggling tarantula, put it in his mouth and crunched it.
In moments, his face began to swell up.
"What's the matter?" Schlein asked.
"I'b allerjhic to sbiders," the Troll said. "Gotta—"
He got up and staggered toward the wings. The medics followed him, clutching their black bags.
Schlein turned to the rest of the team, waiting anxiously in the wings. "Sorry about that, Dragonettes! You're out!"
"Come on, Bee! Come on!" the rest of the Sorcerer's Apprentices chanted. "Eat it eat it eat it eat it!"
Though his face was pale, Bee shot his comrades a hearty thumb's up. He took his spoon and resolutely thunked one of the pseudopods. It stiffened then went limp. With a visible gulp of nervousness, Bee scooped it into the spoon and brought it to his lips. The crowd fell silent.
Face wrinkled, he stuffed the mouthful in, and swallowed it.
The crowd went wild.
Next to him, Crasmer hunched over the plate of mashed stone, spooning it up as fast as he could, but each mouthful seemed to take an eternity to chew. I cringed at the cracking, crunching sounds, wondering if the teeth were grinding the rocks, or vice versa.
The Shock Jahk sat transfixed, staring at her entree, which consisted of one single, round, white object twice the size of my fist that sat in the middle of her plate. The entree stared back. It was an eyeball, garnished with a sprig of parsley.
"What about you, Meghan?" Schlein prompted.
"I—I—I can't do it!" The Jahk sprang up from her place and fled to the waiting arms of her teammates. The Shock Jahks all looked, well, shocked.
A Sittacomedian female with a microphone was in time to pick up the comment from the team captain, who was comforting his weeping teammate. "I didn't realize that when you said you were holding the contest on Perv that the contest would BE Perverted!"
The Gargoyle shoved away her empty bowl and rose to her feet with her hands clasped in victory.
The female commentator flew to her side and held out the microphone.
"Congratulations, Nita, and with five minutes to go!"
"Thanks," the Gargoyle said, winking at her companions. "And I just want to say—ulp."
"You want to say ulp?" the Sittacomedian asked, with a puzzled glance she shared with the audience.
"I mean—urp!"
"And what does that mean?"
The meaning became evident a moment later. Nita the Gargoyle dashed for the nearest receptacle and rejected the vile green and yellow mess that she had eaten.
"Too bad!" Schlein boomed, sympathetically. "Only two contestants left. Will they make it?"
I crossed my fingers. Bee was doing well. Except to stun his food long enough to eat it, he didn't look at it. Each bite went down very, very carefully, and he waited in between each to make sure it wasn't going to come up.
Crasmer was following a similar pattern. The Pervect challenger looked nauseated. There weren't many things one of his kind couldn't eat, in spite of the difficulty I'd had convincing my students of that, but unrefined minerals had to be on the short list. Scoop, crunch, gulp. Scoop, crunch, gulp.
Slam, scoop, gulp.
Scoop, crunch, gulp.
It was neck-and-neck to see who would finish first. Two more bites to go. One more—!
"That was it!" Schlein announced. "And here's the bell! We have two winners! Step up, kids. And how was it?"
"Awful," Bee said. "Worse than army food."
"Ha-ha," Schlein said. "How about you, Crasmer?"
"What he said," Crasmer agreed.
"Well, there you have it, folks! Going to the final round are the Sorcerer's Apprentices and the All-Pervects, your Perv home team!"
The audience didn't need the fireflies to go completely insane with joy. Bunny and I danced around the Geek's little office. On the ampitheater floor, the teams ran out to congratulate their champions. Both contestants waved bravely to the audiences.
"Stay tuned for the Monster Monster Challenge. And now, a word from our sponsor, Blix Restaurants. If you want the finest in Pervish cooking, or the best sausages, cabbage or stuffed peppers from any dimension, eat at Blix!"
At the very mention of food, Bee turned green. Crasmer turned greener. In unison, as if they had rehearsed it, they were violently sick. Stagehands rushed in with wands to clean up.
As soon as the lights went down, I saw Bee and Crasmer being sick. It didn't matter—the lights had already gone down. They had succeeded, and without any interference from the Geek's tweaking the odds.
"Who woulda known that the Troll was allergic to spiders?" he asked innocently.
Well, almost no interference.
"What happens now?" I demanded.
"Well," Bunny began animatedly, "the remaining teams have to make it through a maze. In the maze is a fearsome monster. The one you face is chosen at random depending on the color of the marble you pick out of the lottery box—Oh, I'm so sorry, Geek! You tell it."
The Geek sat back with a big smile on his face. "It's okay, honey. I don't mind a bit. You just proved you're a fan. Wouldja like to make a commercial for me? With those gorgeous looks of yours, I know I could get some more viewers."
"Well," Bunny was flattered, "I'll think about it."
"How about the Great Skeeve? Is he a fan, too?"
"He doesn't watch game shows," I said flatly.
"Too bad. An endorsement like his would be worth a fortune." The Geek sighed. "Let's go congratulate the winners."