"They're really good," I responded without thinking.
The factory manager's mouth opened in shock. "It's very kind of you to be so extravagant in your praise," he began. "You know, the art is taught to all Wuhses equally."
I glanced at Zol, who was giving me one of those "use your compassion" expressions. "I'm sure everyone's equally good," I corrected myself.
He relaxed, and the seamstresses went back to then-work. I kept looking around. So far, I had spotted nothing suspicious or even out of place for a firm that made simple fabric handcrafts. Why was there so much security equipment here?
Niki rolled the dolly out from underneath the stamping machine and stood up. She wiped oil off her hands with a rag and threw a nod to one of the Wuhses who ran the press. Obediently, the Wuhs ran to the switch on the wall and threw it. The pistons started slowly, then increased then-tempo until they were threshing deafeningly up and down. Niki put the rag in the pocket of her coveralls and watched the process with a critical eye. The steel in this dimension was brittle and inferior, but they had to rely upon it until they could afford to bring in good ore from Dwarrow. Not that these pathetic rats deserved it. They treated her like a prison guard, jumping in fear every time she opened her mouth. Could she help it if most dimensions suffered from inadequate dentition?
Come to think of it, Wuhses didn't really need decent teeth: most of what they ate you could suck through a straw. Natural predators had been bored out of existence long ago.
Niki wasn't far away from a demise from ennui herself. She longed to get back to her own string of manufacturing plants on Perv. They could probably use an overhaul. If she had been corning up with innovations to make machines run faster and better on a miserable backwater like Wuh, then they had to be light-years ahead at home.
"All right, all of you," she barked. "Back to work."
She pointed at their work stations where the conveyor belt passed, bringing parts of the food choppers to them to assemble. One by one they started jumping over the bar at the back of their seats. "Cut that out, dammit! You'll make me fall asleep! Walk around like civilized creatures. What would your mothers say?"
"Madam!" Curdy, her squeaky-voiced office assistant came running. The plump little lambkin had soft white hair and big round eyes like a stuffed toy. Niki turned to her, bored.
"What's your problem?"
"Strangers in the factory."
"What?" she barked. Curdy gestured and started running back toward the office. Strangers? They had had a security breach in the castle, for all that Monishone had denied there was anything wrong with a room-sized spell going for a walk on its own. It must be the same intruders. Who else would want to get a look at a warehouse full of doilies? "This section is on lockdown! Don't let anyone in here but me! Got that?"
TWENTY-ONE
"Espionage and information gathering is a time honored method to prepare for a conflict."
-N. HALE
"Levitate, Master Skeeve," Zol whispered urgently. "I have never seen you so agitated."
I took his advice. The tray of refreshments in my hand, full of precious china set on delicate crocheted circles alongside crisp napkins that were obviously produce of this facility, immediately stopped rattling. The thread of magik literally lifted it out of my hands and moved it easily from the serving area of the cafeteria toward a table with available seats.
"Sorry," I offered sheepishly. "For a moment I was brought back to my childhood. My aunts and grandmothers always had things like this. They made me carry it, to show what a good little boy I was, then yelled at me when I broke something."
'There is no harm in giving you a standard to which they wish you to live up," Zol lectured, sternly, "but it is never fair to exceed the physical abilities of the person one is teaching." "They meant well," I defended them faintly, but to be honest I was thinking not just of my female relatives, but of my friend, mentor, teacher and partner Aahz.
He always pushed me to the levels that he knew I could reach, even though at the time I was certain he must be wrong. He had tried to dissuade me from undertaking this mission, and I had ignored his advice. Had he known that I was overstretching myself? I hoped not. I found myself both missing his company and dreading our next meeting at the same time.
After some urging Parrano had taken us on a tour through the shop floor section of the factory. My first view of a thousand Wuhses embroidering was nearly enough to make me turn tail and run back to Klah. It was the most spectacularly boring enterprise I had ever seen. The hands holding the needles rose and fell, rose and fell in a spiky tidal motion. You could literally hear a pin drop as occasionally one of the sewers dropped a fastener on the ground.
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 running a length of cloth through a pixie-powered machine, turned out pile after pile of white, cream, pink and yellow tea towels. I didn't think there was that much tea served anywhere in all the dimensions.
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. Bunny and Tananda went eagerly to look over the offerings while Zol and I got some refreshments. We sat down at a table full of Wuhses, and I tried to draw them into conversation.
"So what do you do?" I asked for the forty-third time, no longer caring if I got an answer.
"I tat lace table runners," twinkled a little white-haired granny, her hands going together and moving as if she was holding a shuttle and spool. I always noticed that when you asked someone how they did something, they would tell you verbally and describe it through body language. She bit off an invisible knot, then her horizontal-slitted eyes peered at me sharply. "You look like you could use some decent table linens, visitor. Look for my name on the tags, and you'll be sure of the most basic quality."
"Thanks," I smiled, trying to sound appreciative, though lace table runners would be as useful to me as water-soluble handkerchiefs.
"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.