Myth-Chief

TWENTY-FIVE

"What is the matter with you?" I bellowed at the Geek. He retreated to the back room of the tiny office he had rented on the resort's main street and tried to slam the door on me. I threw my whole weight against it and it banged open. The Geek cowered against the rear wall.

"You ... you don't like it?" he said, attempting a shaky smile.

"Like it?" I slammed my hand against my forehead. "What part of 'you only own naming rights' was so hard to understand? What is all that out there?"

"Well, Aahz, you can't blame me for that! I didn't start it. It was my partners."

"What difference does that make?" Matfany asked, looking down at him like a stern professor. His sleek, black fur was amazingly untouched by the rotten-vegetable cascade thrown by the crowd. On the other hand, I was dripping with liquescent salad. "A contract is a contract."

The Geek scowled at us. "Look at it from my point of view. I got a lot of other people ... I mean, my business partners, to put down money. I had to cover my own ... I mean, a lot of expenses, so I made them some unimportant little promises." "Like what?"

"Well, I said they ought to be able to designate their purchases in some way. I mean, it's a lot of money. No Deveel with any pride is going to pay something for nothing. So, I thought maybe a nice small sign with each person's name on it on top of their own peak. Not as big as my sign was going to be, since I'm the senior partner. It kind of... escalated a little."

"A LITTLE?" I bellowed. The Geek recoiled from the gust of wind. "You want to tell me why your name is written in Salamanders covering five or six square miles of terrain?"

"The first guy who arrived to see his mountain, he wasn't happy, but he was okay with the sign. The next few guys didn't like it. They said they wanted something different than the first guy. So I let them design their own signs. Bo-Fort, you know him?"

"Yeah."

"He came to me and said he was going to write his name in Fireflies on the mountain." "That's not in the contract!"

"I know! He said to me, 'Well, how is anyone going to know that I own it?' I said. That's a good point.'"

"You don't own it." I said. "It's named after you. Owning it would cost about ten thousand times more."

"So, what did I buy?" the Geek asked, abandoning his imaginary partner's arguments. "I want my name on it. If I endowed an arena, my name would be right over the door."

I threw up my hands. "All right, we'll discuss it, but you are going to have to turn off the Salamanders!"

"I can't do it right away, Aahz," the Geek whined. "I paid for the first month in advance."

"Too bad. You can go as far as having a tasteful label with your name on it. So can your other suckers."

The Deveel frowned. "I don't want tasteful, I want readable. The range is more than ten miles from town. A tasteful sign isn't even a dot in one of those coin-operated telescopes! Not that there's anyone here to look at it. This place is as deserted as a shop offering free tax audits! We want some satisfaction for helping bail it out."

"Satisfaction! Did you see the protesters out there?" I pointed through the window. The picketers had followed me. They were shaking their fists and pointing. Any minute they were going to start throwing things again. I was pretty sure they were out of vegetables, so they'd have to resort to dead animals and dung.

"I figure that's just their little way of welcoming us to town," the Geek said, hopefully. "I could tone it down a little. Have the Salamanders only operate at night?"

"What about the size of the displays? You could feed a starving country on what you're spending to cover that kind of real estate!"

"I must tell you, Mister Geek, that I am disappointed in your lack of restraint," Matfany said, in a quiet voice that impressed the heck out of the Deveel. "Some of your partners have actually put up signs that are larger than the feature itself that they have named. Is that sponsorship as you know it?"

The Geek rose to the occasion. "Uh, well, I could go down a half."

"You can go down to nothing," I countered.

"Forget it, Aahz! This isn't the deal we agreed to."

"If you read the contract, that is exactly the deal you agreed to."

"Then I want out! I want a refund!"

I felt as if my heart was being torn right out of my body. "You want... a what? No way!"

"That sounds like a reasonable response," Matfany said.

"You can take all that nonsense off our mountain. I will find a means of returning your funds to you at once."

"What?" the Geek asked, off guard. "What about my investment? What about the money I put into that display? What about all the subsidiary rights I sold on the logo? What about the advertising I paid for to get people to come and visit Geek's Peak?"

The prime minister shrugged. "I suppose that we are both going to suffer a loss. That's business. We've been broke before. As you so tactfully point out. We will give him back his money, Mister Aahz."

I was still hyperventilating. "Give ... it... back?" I saw the president's desk gallop away from me on little wooden legs. "I can't do that!"

"Then what's your offer?" the Geek asked.

Matfany peered over his glasses at him. "I want you to lessen your ... logos to something not so intrusive, is what I want."

"Intrusive's the name of the game, pal. Where did subtlety get you? In the hole, that's where. This is the way out."

"I'd rather be in the hole than desecrate our landscape, sir," Matfany said. "I thought you understood the nature of our agreement."

"You wetlanders are all alike," the Geek yelled. "You don't know what civilization's really like."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," I bellowed. I pulled Matfany aside. "What's the harm in letting him have a few little fireworks? When the crisis is over, you can nationalize all the geographical features again. In the meanwhile, it's a way of drawing people back here and getting some serious cash flow going. After all, you are going to have to figure out a way to pay M.Y.T.H., Inc.'s fee, aren't you?"

Matfany's proud shoulders slumped a little.

"Necessity makes traders of us all, Mister Aahz. Very well, then."

After two hours of solid and loud negotiation, Matfany agreed that the Geek and his partners could have a display on each of the items they sponsored, but such displays were to be limited to a standard billboard in size. The Geek's Salamander crew could operate for three hours after sunset every night, no more. Neither side was happy, but at least no refunds had to be issued.

Matfany shook his head when the Geek disappeared to inform his partners of the changes.

"I don't like it, Mister Aahz," he said.

"Don't like what?" I asked, peevishly. This investment was saved, but I was still feeling the sting of losing Dervina. That thousand coins was going to be hard to replace, and I would never get another appointment with the Gnomes over Foxe-Swampburg.

"I must say I doubt that those Deveels are going to stick to the agreement we just made. Just a feeling I have."

"A newborn baby would get that idea from talking to a Deveel," I said. "Look, the Geek agreed to tone down his fancy sign. You'll hardly know it's there."

"I would have preferred to have no lights at all. I understand why we have got to put up with it for the term of the contracts, but it is gonna upset the Old Folks. They like the way things are."

"So what?" I asked. "I can talk to a bunch of senior citizens. Where are they?"

"Well, that's kind of hard to explain. They're just around. They sort of enforce the old ways."

"Are they Swamp Foxes?" I asked.

Matfany nodded. "Yes, sir. Well, they were Swamp Foxes. When they were alive."

I felt the scales at the back of my neck prickle. "They're dead? Are they undead now?"

"No, sir, they're just dead. But they don't go away. Why would they? Foxe-Swampburg is their home. They like it here. And I don't think they're gonna like your changes too much, even if you do think they toned it all down."

"What can a bunch of ghosts do?" I asked, with a laugh. I opened the door. SPLAT!

A long-dead fish hit me in the face.

"Who threw that?" I demanded.

"I beg your pardon, sir," a courteous voice shouted from the middle of the crowd. "I meant to hit that rapscallion next to you. This one's for you!" A hunk of decayed seaweed smacked into me.

I bamfed out. I had had enough of Foxe-Swampburg for one day. I had to locate some more prospects to replace Dervina. At least the investment here was safe.