Zol gave me a luminous smile of approval. "Precisely, Master Skeeve! I never ceased to be amazed by your capacity for comprehension."
I smiled back, a little uneasily. Not that I didn't enjoy basking in the little gray man's fulsome praise, but after having to pry compliments out of my former associates with a crowbar I mistrusted someone who threw off accolades whenever… he felt I'd earned one. He seemed just a little too easy to please. He didn't seem to notice my discomfort.
"Now, by looking at the active components, the open books on the desktop, so to speak, we can see what they have been doing today. Hmm… they have a weather-prediction program… that one they are using hasn't got the latest updates. The prognostication section has a flaw. It foretells firestorms when it means light rain. It's given rise to panic in some dimensions, as you might guess. Yes, see here?" he pointed at the center of the mirror. " 'Partly sunny, with widespread devastation toward evening.' There's a partial letter home… and the operator has played over five hundred games of solitaire, with a 7:1 win-lose ratio." "Whew!" I whistled. "I'd have liked to hire her as a dealer for the casino our partnership once owned. She must have very fast fingers."
"Oh, they aren't physical cards, Master Skeeve; they're magikal projections. You can play hundreds of different card games on a magik mirror like this. Unfortunately, in everything but solitaire, your virtual opponents tend to cheat."
"Just like real players," I nodded.
"But among all of this detritus they are working on plans," Zol said, his huge dark eyes reflecting the light coming from the small square mirror. "We are in the enviable position of being able to monitor their every move. See this? Men, machinery, logistics, principles of generalship… They must be out for empire-building. This is bigger than I ever dreamed possible. Marvelous!"
"Marvelous?" I echoed.
Zol beamed at me. "Yes, seeing how the minds of Pervects work. Released from the ease of their own dimension's comforts, they set their sights on spreading then-influence across the multiverse. What an opportunity to observe! Untrammeled ambition! How the two halves of their nature intersect! They seek to Pervert the course of the future in these places, to Pervect their vision."
"Well, it won't do," I snapped. "This isn't an experiment, it's all these people's lives. Their real lives. It cost our friend Wensley his life, in case you have forgotten."
"I'd forgotten how straightforward you Klahds are," Zol offered sincerely. "Please accept my apologies. I became too enthusiastic a scholar, and forgot to be a loving, caring being. I am so sorry." The big dark eyes turned sad.
"He's not upset, Zol," Bunny hurried to assure the author. "Are you, Skeevie?"
I winced. She knew how much I hated to be called Skeevie, so she must be trying to make a point. "But what do we do?"
"You must use that Klahdish sensibility," Zol told me. "Confront them. Head them off and prevent them from achieving their latest objective."
I peered over his shoulder. "Can we tell where they're going this time?"
"Yes, indeed," Zol replied, enlarging a map so I could easily read the name in the center. "Ronko."
"It slices. It dices. It cooks. It even cleans itself if you dunk it in water," Paldine expounded to a roomful of potential distributors.
Ronko ought to be the ideal dimension, she had argued to her companions; they loved gadgets of all kinds, putting even Perv in the shade when it came to techie-toys. She leaned over the Formica podium with one of Niki's inventions in her hand. The development of the dimension was at about the era of early sitcoms, perfect for a gadget like hers.
"It has only one moving part. You push it down. When it pops up, you push it again. When your food looks the way you want it to, you stop. It's so easy an animal can use it." She didn't add, "like you." She might have thought it, but she would never say it.
"That's not in the sales brochure," complained one of the Ronkonese in the front row.
She knew he was going to be trouble from the beginning. His tanned face was wrinkled and lined as if he had spent too many an afternoon out with his pocket fisherman, obviously a veteran of thousands of intense sales pitches.
"Well, you can confide that to a buyer when you're trying to sell him one," Paldine countered, getting exasperated. "Exclusive information they can only get from you!"
"Is it safe?" asked a Ronkonese female, raising a pencil in the front row next to Paldine's "problem child."
"Of course it's safe. You think I could have gotten an import license from your government if it hadn't passed a dozen tests first?"
Paldine turned the business end down onto her palm and pounded the plunger up and down a few times. Then she displayed her unmarked hand to the audience.
"If it's not food, it won't cut. In other words, don't try to use it to shred those confidential documents, folks; it won't work." An appreciative chuckle ran through the room.
She went through flip charts showing sales projections, giving them every wrinkle she had worked out to attract the attention of the average and below-average buyer. They might be scared witless of her looks, and they were wise to pay heed to that discomfort, but no one listening could deny that she knew what she was talking about.
If her master's program in marketing at the Perv Academy of Design hadn't been enough to teach her her business, a full century at Bushwah Tomkins and Azer had certainly cemented her reputation as an innovative sales thinker. She had won the coveted Euphem Ism Queen title twelve years running. Since the Pervect Ten usually undertook accounting and refinancing contracts she hardly ever got to stretch her advertising muscles, and she was enjoying it.
The first two posters on her flip pad were okay, and she knew it, but the third one was the big bombshell, the sell-all ad. When she revealed it the room burst into applause. She built on it by going from there to newspaper ads, sponsorships at halftime shows, sandwich boards, and direct mail. A pleased murmur ran through the room, as she showed them the potential profit per type of ad purchased. Paldine built upon the growing enthusiasm.
"But nothing works like word of mouth. Stress convenience! Stress price!" she urged them.
"Are you trying to tell us how to do our job?" the pain in the butt in the front row asked, raising his voice so all of his fellow pitchmen and women could hear him. Paldine had had enough. She bared all her fangs and walked right up to him. When she was an inch from his face she whispered, "No." The Ronkonese recoiled, then looked puzzled. "I'm telling you how to sell our item," Paldine roared. The force of her voice pushed the troublemaker back into his chair, his fluffy hair plastered backwards on his head. "If you don't think I'm an expert on a product that we invented, that we put all the features into, step right up here and explain it to me."
For a moment the sales force looked as nervous as Wuhses. Paldine was satisfied. She had gotten her point across and without bloodshed. It didn't hurt that some Pervects in the past had paved the way for her by proving that they were not demons to be trifled with. In fact, the point had been proved so well that most of the Ronkonese were crowded against the back wall trying to edge warily toward the door.
"All right," she rallied them. "Then get out there and make us some money!"
TWENTY-FOUR
"Interesting place. Wonder what they sell here?"
It was a good thing that we had such an experienced dimensional traveler as Zol with us. Even Tananda had never visited Ronko. The route from Wuh had taken us through three intermediate hops, each into dimensions less than friendly to Klahd metabolism. I would never have tried such a transit on my own.