Myth 13 - Myth Alliances, Asprin, Robert [microsoft ebook reader TXT] 📗

Bunny smiled. I'd said the right thing.

“Surveillance,” Tananda mused. “Where are they based, Wensley?”

“Oh, in the castle,” the Wuhs informed her. “The prince wasn't using it. He prefers to live in the suburbs, and it's just too centrally located. It's very sturdy, he said. Stone walls and tiled ceilings with big heavy beams. Very protec?tive. We Wuhses like protective buildings.”

“Good,” stated Tananda.

“Good?” I echoed. “It's not like they're out in a field somewhere, where it would be easy to hear what they're saying.”

She gave me an amused look. “That would make it im?possible to eavesdrop on them. Have you ever tried to sneak up on someone in the middle of a field?”

“Of course not,” I replied indignantly. “They'd see you coming for miles ... oh.”

“Exactly, exactly,” Zol beamed. “See? You're already building on one another's strengths. So the Pervect Ten feel very secure and certain no one will sneak up on them. It should be a simple matter to find a good listening post and learn all.”

Myth 13 - Myth Alliances

FOUR

“One's biggest problems are almost always of one's own making.”

V. FRANKENSTEIN, MD

“Run those figures again for me, Caitlin, darling,” asked the elderly Pervect in the flowered dress. She tapped the side of the console with her cane.

“Don't do that, Vergetta,” snapped the very young fe?male at the keyboard. She turned deepset amber eyes at her senior. “It upsets the gremlins in the motherboard.”

“Well, they need waking up, if those are the answers you're giving to me,” Vergetta remarked peevishly. “They shouldn't talk this way to anyone's mother. This is a wrong answer. It has to be.”

“I think she's right,” declared Oshleen, a tall, willowy Pervect, sashaying into the room with a slighter, shorter compatriot in her wake. She waited for the skirts of her floor-​length silk gown to settle around her manicured feet. “I've done the calculations myself, and Tenobia has checked the store rooms. About ten percent of the treasury is gone.”

“Again?” Vergetta roared. She slammed a hand down on the console, earning a glare from Caitlin. “What is it with these Wuhses?”

“I told you you ought to let me confiscate that D-​hopper,” sneered the narrow-​eyed Pervect in black, who was filing her claws to razor points in the corner of the room.

Vergetta turned to her patiently. “It's a toy, Loorna. It gives them pleasure.”

Loorna sprang up, her long yellow fangs bared. “Every time they use that toy they end up spending money! Money they don't have! Money we don't have. They're such idiots.”

“They're Wuhses, what do you expect? They're going to pull business acumen out of the ground?”

“If they'd dig up some self-​control, then I'd set every one of them up with shovels and tell them to get to it. As it is, if you yell at one of them, he folds up and points at everybody but himself.”

“If I could get my hands on the Deveel who sold them that D-​hopper I'd park it under his pointed tail,” Tenobia growled. "I've tried to get them to put it back in the treasu?ry and sign it out when they want to use it, but no. They don't want to let us hold it for them. We might not give it back, and that's 'uncooperative and unfriendly'. So it gets passed secretly from hand to hand, never in the same place for five minutes. If we don't control it, we can't tell them where they can and can't go. And they do: they flit off to any dimension that takes their fancy. And every time they go off they come back with a souvenir. Every single time. So suddenly everyone has to have one of the new gizmos, and we have a flood of imports. Then, because this stuff isn't free, they raid the treasury to pay for it. No one ever asks Ñthey're not assertive enough for that. So they sneak it out. Every single one of them feels entitled to spend some of the money. No one has ever had the backbone to

take all of it, but they might as well. The trouble is that they don't check, in case someone says no. Like us."

“We made a mistake telling them we were close to solv?ing their problem,” Oshleen sighed, polishing her nails on her sleeve. 'They think the money shortage is over."

“It's not over!” Caitlin snapped. “I keep a spreadsheet going of input and output.”

“I know that,” Oshleen retorted. “I recalculate the bal?ances every day, too, you know.”

“On paper!”

“And if your gremlins stop working, what record do you have? Nothing!”

“Girls, girls,” Vergetta chided them. “Enough!”

“It's natural to be interested in new things,” Nedira in?terjected, soothingly. “They're curious. They like toys.”

“It's not the toys that are the problem,” Tenobia insisted. “It's paying for them. They don't sell their used toys when the novelty's worn off. They just accumulate them, and think that the money's going to fall out off a tree.”

Paldine drummed her fingertips on her lip. “If we could only head off the trend before it catches on kingdomwide, we could control the flow and make a percentage on the value. Not to mention making sure they're not being cheated. As it is, they always pay too much, then they can't admit it. Sooner or later one of them sneaks in with the jan?itors and abstracts the coins when we're not looking. I told you we should have