Myth 13 - Myth Alliances by Asprin, Robert (ebook reader online free .txt) 📕

I hope you still consider our problem worthy of your attention. Please, don't abandon us. What would we do?”

Why couldn't I come up with retorts like Tananda's? I wondered. I glanced over at her. She threw me a broad wink.

“Of course I'll help you,” I confirmed. “It's just gotten more complicated than it started out being.”

“I understand, I understand,” Wensley babbled grate?fully. “Forgive me for not comprehending the time in?volved in a comprehensive plan such as the one that I know you have formulated.”

I wish I had his faith. I was saved from having to come up with one by a glad cry from outside.

“Results!” Zol announced, coming down the path wav?ing his notebook. Bunny came in behind him, her eyes shining. “The very place! I am sure that this must be the solution to the enigma. The map matched the terrain within 89 percent plotted points of similarity, and the spectacles would fit the inhabitants.” He flung open his book to show us the name. “Scamaroni!”

My eyebrows lifted. I should have realized when I had first examined the list of dimensions whose denizens met our criteria that the Pervects would have homed in on that one. Even in the Bazaar the name had become a byword for easy marks. To have been “Scammed” was to have fallen for a great selling job, such as the Deveels were masters of.

But plenty of other demons and merchants had made their way to Scamaroni over the centuries. Unlike the Wuhses, who realized they had gotten in over their heads and asked for help, the Scammies never seemed to learn. It sounded like the Pervect Ten had lit upon Scamaroni as the next link in their chain of conquest.

Just to make sure we landed in the right dimension, we diverted back through Wuh. As soon as the pigeon-​bearing statue under the familiar gray-​blue sky appeared Wensley bolted. Tananda, Bunny and I looked at one another.

“Gleep, fetch!” I shouted, pointing in the direction of the fleeing Wuhs. The ground thundered as my pet set off in pursuit. I ran after them, but Wensley outdistanced me, dodging around a corner in the middle of town. With an uneasy look over my shoulder at the castle looming over me, I sprinted down the narrow lane. The sounds of bleat?ing and whimpering let me know which alleyway to turn into. Wensley lay on his back as Gleep dragged him by one leg back in the direction they had come.

“Oh, please, Master Skeeve!” he begged, as soon as he saw me. “Please, please don't make me come with you. I'm not good in fights. I'm not clever enough to figure out how to liberate a dimension.” Gleep hauled him to my feet and let the leg drop. He sat up on his haunches and begged for a reward. I felt in my belt pouch for a packet of crisps and flipped it to him. He caught it and gulped it down, lick?ing his chops. The Wuhs scrambled to his knees and tugged on my tunic hem. “Let me stay here. I'll gather in?formation for you. I'll conduct interviews. I'll do analysis. I'll scrub lavatories. Just don't make me go with you.” He burst into tears and blew his nose on my sleeve.

“I don't understand,” I remarked, as Tananda, Zol and Bunny came running up behind us. “You didn't mind trav?eling by D-​hopper to Klah or Deva.”

'That was shopping,“ Wensley sobbed. ”This might be confrontation."

“Please consider it, Master Skeeve,” Zol suggested.

“Wuhses aren't very assertive. Pushing him into difficult circumstances won't help break him of his fears. He might collapse when you need him most.”

That could be disastrous for us. I looked at the others, but Tananda and Bunny waited for me to make the final de?cision. I wished, not for the first time, that Aahz was here, either to pick the sorry Wuhs up by his shirt front and shake him or to let him crawl away and hide.

“All right,” I agreed at last. 'Try and find out where the spectacles are being made, and if your friends know any?thing else. We'll be back as soon as we can." Wensley was blubberingly grateful.

“You are as wise as you are mighty,” he gasped out. I stepped back and wrung out my soggy shirt. By the dis?gusted look on her face, Tananda wasn't going to snuggle up to him any time in the future.

“Very well,” Zol stated. “We have the coordinates. Will you do the honors, or should I?”

“Allow me,” I said, reaching into my belt pouch for a pinch of magikal flash powder to cover up the fact that I was going to use our D-​hopper. Wensley clambered to his feet, staying far enough away that we would have had to lunge to get him into the sphere of the device's influence. He waved a brief farewell, then took to his heels again with the expression of a deermoose surprised by lightning. The light blazed up, imprinting an image on my retinas of the Wuhs with the expression of a deermoose surprised by lightning.

“Sad,” Tananda tsked, as we gathered around the D-​hopper. “I thought we were getting somewhere with him.”

Bunny fondled Bytina, who now rode in a color-​coordinated pouch on her belt. “Maybe he needs a com?puter.”

“Maybe he needs a personality transplant,” Tananda suggested, dryly.

“Those can have some nasty side-​effects,” Zol frowned. I looked from one to the other, wondering how one went

about transplanting