"I don't know why we didn't do this six months ago," Loorna grimaced.
She kicked open the folds of the bag and extracted a metal implement with a rotating wheel and several long, sharp strands of metal. She pointed it at Gubbeen and rotated the little handle that made the tines clash violently against one another. The Wuhs recoiled into his chair, trying to meld with the wooden staveback.
Vergetta recognized the device as a whisk they used to aerate hot drinks. She hadn't seen it for months. It had probably gotten dumped into the hold-all drawer in the kitchen, or shoved into a box in a storage closet. She smiled. Obviously the Wuhs, who had never seen one, was making up his own uses for it in his head, and none of them made him comfortable.
They played with him a while longer, going up the threat scale from kitchen implements to sports equipment, and through to genuine torture devices, but the Wuhs continued to shriek out that he had given them all the information that he had about the missing D-hopper. They had no choice but to believe him. He was so overwrought that Vergetta called a halt to the questioning. Nedira escorted him down to one of the padded cells in the basement to calm down a little bit before they would let him go.
Vergetta waved her arms, bringing Wensley out again.
"We were interrupted, darlink. Your friend wasn't much help. Would you like to cooperate a little?"
"Never," the Wuhs declared. "We will be rid of you and your foul enterprises soon. The Great Skeeve will see to that!"
"What's this?" Vergetta demanded, leaning close to make sure she had heard him correctly. "What about the Great Skeeve?"
"He will defeat you." Wensley made a gesture that included every Pervect present. "All of you!"
"You?" Oshleen asked, narrowing her eyes. "You hired the Klahd wizard?"
"You got us thrown in jail? Fined? You got our merchandise confiscated!" Paldine gritted out crime after crime. She started toward the pale Wuhs with her claws out.
"That's it," Vergetta exclaimed, getting in between them. "You stop," she told the marketing specialist, then turned to point at Wensley. "You get a permanent time-out while I figure out what we are going to do with you."
She waved her hand, and the Wuhs was restored to his spherical prison. "But you heard what he said!" Paldine exclaimed, trying to get around her elder.
"Yes, and what good will it do to tear him to pieces? It won't solve our problem. But now we have at least some of the answers. We've been looking for the cause of our troubles all over the dimensions, and it was right here under our noses. I bet the Great Skeeve got Zol Icty involved, got him to condemn us for a favor."
"If it really was Zol Icty," Oshleen cautioned. "Skeeve's supposed to be such a great wizard it was probably one of his illusions."
"Here's the next one," Niki grunted, hauling in another Wuhs.
"We'll finish with you later," Paldine promised Wensley, gold veins standing out in her yellow eyes. "Count on it."
"Cashel's your name, right?" Tenobia asked, planting a silver spike heeled boot on the Wuhs's knee and sticking her fists into her hips. "I've seen you in the castle a lot lately. But you don't work here, do you? Where do you work?"
"Factory number nine," Niki supplied.
"Right. So what are you doing down in the treasury all the time? You wouldn't be the one who's always extracting money, even though you know that we've got rules about requesting hard currency."
"M ... money, dear ladies?" Cashel gulped, his eyes darting warily to all the various pieces of hardware that Tenobia was idly fondling. "I wouldn't break rules, not at least ones I understood to be absolute strictures against... certain behaviors ..."
"Just what did you think that money was for?"
The Wuhs looked up hopefully. He must have thought he knew the answer to this one. "... Er, buying things?"
"What things?"
"... Uh ... things for you?"
"No, you fool!" Tenobia roared, throwing up her hands in exasperation. "Supplies. Staples. Building materials. Food. Equipment. A consulting contract that your leaders signed willingly two years ago! Things for you! Your spending habits are driving us crazy!"
Cashel looked from one Pervect to another in deep confusion. "Then ... I don't understand, ladies, why you're upset. We're buying things for us. I mean," he added, recoiling at the furious expression on Loorna's face, "whoever's taking the money. It's certainly not me. I'm in favor of public support, really."
Vergetta shook her head. They were getting nowhere. Naturally the ones they interviewed were never the ones who had brought in new merchandise or stolen the money. It was always somebody else.
"Who has the D-hopper?" Tenobia interrupted before the Wuhs could start another string of evasions and lies. "Who had it the last time you saw it? Answer now!"
"Coolea," Cashel sobbed, dropping his face into his hands. "Yesterday. He ought to be back by now. I hope. He really wouldn't listen to the instructions, he was so eager to see other dimensions ..."
Nedira threw a nod to Vergetta, picked one of their invisibility cloaks off a hook on the wall and vanished out of the chamber. It was the closest they'd come to current information, and they wanted to check up on it before it changed hands again.
Cashel was led out, still pleading his innocence but bleating earnestly that he would never again take anything that didn't belong to him. Vergetta popped Wensley out of his spherical prison.
"Honestly, darlink," she told him, "would it be so bad if anyone told us the truth? You have anything else you want to say?"
Wensley pressed his lips together and shook his head.
"Wait a minute," Caitlin spoke up, "Nedira's coming back."
The motherly Pervect was among them a second later. Vergetta had to pop Wensley back into his prison so as not to distract the stable boy, who wore an awestruck expression when he realized he was in the presence of the full force of the Pervect Ten. Shaking her head ruefully, Nedira held up a bag.
"Banana-skin shoes. The Deveel who sold them to him is probably still laughing."
"'Slippers,'" Vergetta groaned. "That's such an old one, honey, it plain amazes me that you fell for it. But you're just a kid. What'd you pay for them? A silver piece? They're not worth more than a copper or two, and usually they come with a free banana inside each one."
"Four gold pieces a pair," the boy managed to get out.
"Aaagggh!" Tenobia shrieked, waving her fists. Coolea fled behind the chair for shelter. She pounded on the table. "Every junk seller in all the dimensions must be looking out for you morons, to unload the most useless trash they've got!" She gestured angrily at the others. "I feel like locking him up and throwing away the key."
"No," Oshleen smirked, grinning widely enough to make the Wuhs sway with fear, "send him back and make him ask for a refund."
"The Deveels?" the boy gasped. "No! No! Oh, please, good dames, spare me! Not a refund!"
"Good idea," Nedira agreed with her allies. She grasped Coolea by the shoulder. The two of them disappeared.
"Slippers!" Tenobia pointed a finger at the glass sphere on the table. "You people make me so furious I could eat you, except your lily livers would give me indigestion! After all we've done for you!"
The little figure in the snow globe on the table looked thoughtful.
"All right," Vergetta grunted. "Let's try and get some business done."
TWENTY-THREE
"It's so good, it practically sells itself!"
-FROM THE PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL
FOR THE EDSEL
A shaggy-coated herdbeast bleated in my ear. We were sitting among them in the shadow of the king's statue in the park at the other end of town from the castle, on the energy line that supplied power to the Pervect's computer. I had disguised the four of us as beasts to blend in.