Myth-Fortunes

Chapter 8

"Hand me volume three of lies and deception, willya, kid?" Aahz said, holding out a hand.

I ran my finger down the pile of ledgers sticking out of the mouth of the gigantic Crocofile and found the one he wanted. I passed it to him. He flipped it open and looked from the papyrus sheet he was reading to the book and back again.

He shook his head. "I don't think I'd ever want to go into a fifty-fifty partnership with this guy. I'd end up owning his underwear."

"Why?" I asked. The Crocofile yawned. I patted its nose. Samwise kept his books protected by the ultimate security system, a toothy beast the size of a house. When its jaws closed, nothing could get at what was inside. "Has he cooked the books that much?"

"No," Aahz said, with disgust evident. He sat back on the stone seat that served as an office chair in this dimension. "In fact, they are not as crooked as I thought they would be. He must be too dumb to cheat. There's the usual amount of larceny and bribes, but that's just the cost of doing business. He's using a magikal accounting system that automatically reconciles input and outgo. As far as I can tell, he didn't work in any fancy wrinkles to hide money. Well, figuring out the cost overruns just got that much easier. Want some beer?" He held up a sloshing stone pitcher. The gray-skinned secretary spent a lot of time running back and forth between the reception desk and our office three doors down the hall to refill it. I think she liked waiting on Aahz, and he certainly looked as if he appreciated her.

"No, thanks." I held up a mug of ice-cold fruit juice. The beer was as good as Samwise had promised, but I watched my alcohol intake. I'd made too many mistakes when I thought I was still sober, and it had cost me.

Aahz had turned up in the company tent later the previous evening. He'd had time to mellow out once the wine had been bespelled from his tunic. By tacit agreement, we hadn't mentioned anything. A stain here or there was not a significant event between two people who had saved each other's lives several times. He was more irate about the destruction of his favorite wine cup. The next morning, before we departed for Ghordon, we went looking for the silversmith who had made it. Practical jokes and delayed-reaction spells were big business in the Bazaar (considering the tremendous success of Genuine Fake Doggie Doodle with Genuine Odor That Really Sticks to Your Hands) and it wasn't beyond reasonable thought that someone had decided Aahz deserved the dimension's biggest dribble glass. The silversmith pleaded innocence and offered to repair the cup for a fee that amounted to half of its value. A loud screaming match, uh, bargaining session later, Aahz had strutted out, with me in his wake, leaving the silversmith to undertake the repair for a much more reasonable price.

As promised, Samwise had provided us with an office and beer. We were on our own for everything else, but that was pretty much what we expected.

A loud rumbling shook me out of my studies about midmorning. Aahz patted his belly. "Sorry about that. We cut out of Deva before I could eat a decent breakfast. I smell food out there. You want to see what you can turn up?"

"Sure," I said, putting aside the ledgers. Bookkeeping was my second least favorite duty when I was management.

After talking with Guido and Nunzio after the staff meeting, I was worried about Aahz's health. If he was suffering from some kind of fatal condition, I intended to do what I could to help him live a healthier life. Who knew? If the condition didn't progress too fast, a magikal cure could be found. In the meanwhile, I'd find something healthy for him to eat.

As I left the office, I was nearly hit in the nose by a small chunk of stone whizzing by. It zipped into the hands of one of the clerks working at a desk behind me. I glanced back and the Ghord with the sheep's face looked, well, sheepishly at me. I had become used to Ghords constantly sending glyphs back and forth to one another all day long. With the easy availability of power in all the force lines, it was no trouble for Ghords to drop notes to one another, chiseled on a small piece of stone or scribed on a scrap of papyrus. Scarabs carried a few of them, but they mostly went by magik. I picked up from my brief examination of the glossary the fact that the open mouth meant O My Ghordess. It began many of the short glyphs from young workers to one another. But I also noticed some glyphs incised on the big blocks of stone in place of the pictographs that they were supposed to be carving. Chief scribes, wearing sour expressions, had to check the work of some of their employees to make certain that they were chiseling what the customer wanted, not some remark about a hot date or a cute guy. The glyphs also talked about the frequent accidents. I would speak to some of the stonemasons later on to get full details.

I headed out in search of a snack. Naturally, wherever people work, a support system grows up around them, offering services that busy workers don't have time to do for themselves. Near the rear of the pyramid's base, a long walk from the office at the front of the site, snake-faced laundresses knelt over wash tubs. Dozens of dripping kilts hung on lines. They wouldn't take long to dry in the parched air. Barbers wielding long shears gave haircuts to Ghords sitting on backless stools with their headcloths wrapped around their necks like towels. A slick-looking individual in expensive and brassy robes oversaw a trio of gambling tables where bored stonemasons might try their luck at dice or cards. Nearby, curvaceous lovelies beckoned to passersby, inviting them to try for a different kind of luck. Prosperous women in aprons poured beer at a semi-permanent bar counter mounted on two carved pillars. I recognized the seal on their barrels as the same one on the excellent beer Aahz was being supplied. I gave them a friendly wave and followed my nose to the food sellers.

The variety of edibles in the makeshift cookshops told me that Ghordon was used to dimensional travelers. Next to staples like mixed beans and sausages, Imperial specialties were plentiful and, judging by the crowds, popular. I walked past vendors shouting the virtues of their fried bread, oiled meat with greasy sauces, thick stews, and pastries dripping with honey, all of which smelled delicious. Ghords crowded around, clamoring for service. Shopkeepers bantered with their customers as they hurried to fill clay bowls with orders. I stopped at the booth of a forlorn female with a short-beaked face who had plain, baked crispbreads for sale. Knowing Aahz had a substantial appetite, I bought a basketful for a few coppers. I left her shouting blessings after me.

A few tables down, I was able to get a large selection of sliced vegetables and a quantity of smooth dipping sauce made of ground legumes, the kind of thing Bunny had always been trying to get me to eat instead of roast meats and cream sauces.

I brought my offerings back to Aahz.

"What's this?" Aahz demanded.

"A snack," I said. "Look. This bread was baked fresh this morning. And these vegetables were all home grown."

Aahz looked at me as if I had gone out of my mind. "You call this food? If I eat this wallpaper paste and rabbit food I'll die of boredom! You could use these crackers for roofing tiles! What made you buy them?"

This wasn't working out the way I had hoped. "Well, you seemed as if you weren't . . . feeling well," I began. "I didn't want to bring you anything that would upset your stomach." Even as I said it, I knew how foolish it sounded. I wasn't supposed to know anything was the matter.

Aahz blew a raspberry. "That was nothing, kid. I was ticked off at an incompetent craftsman, that's all. I'm fine. In fact, blowing off steam made me feel pretty good. I'll pop back to Deva and stop in at the Pervish restaurant near the dump."

I brightened. If he felt he was up to his native cuisine, then he couldn't be very ill, not yet. No weakling ever attempted to eat Pervish food. Half the time you had to wrestle it back in the bowl before it escaped.

"No, don't bother," I said hastily, heading for the door. "I'll get something better."

Samwise's books didn't take much longer to review. That left the main puzzle to investigate: the accidents. The first variable to consider was the people involved. Aahz and I split up to interview the workforce.

The workers on site were generally cheerful. Many had come directly out of school. I had seen the ads for Glyph Art College ("If you can carve Ra-nem-het, you could be an artist!") in the local daily papyrus left around the necessary. They were overseen by long-time veterans of projects around the dimensions, including Deva and a few other places I had visited. Even the team of professional mourners were upbeat people. They only sounded sad when they were rehearsing.

Except for the accidents, they felt Samwise's pyramid wasn't that bad a place to work. I got some of the stonecarvers talking over the communal water jug about where they came from and what they thought. It was a convivial location, presided over by a shrine dedicated to the Ghord of the water cooler, Hapi-Ar, He Who Makes Others Merry Through Drink.

Very casually, I introduced the idea that the accidents and mishaps might be deliberately caused.

"Oh, no, Skeeve, no," Ba-Boon, a monkey-faced Ghord assured me. He bared his teeth. "Saboteurs? No, not at all. We are proud to be part of this operation. It is not every day you work on something that will become part of history."

I recognized some of Samwise's pep talk and grinned.

"Does everyone feel like that?" I asked.

"I am not so sure about the commitment of the Scarabs," sniffed Pe-Kid, a male who resembled a Klahd except that his skin was dark green. "You notice that none of them ever seem to get hurt."

"O My Ghordess, but that is not true," piped up Lol-Kit, a kitten-faced young female. "I was on the second mastaba when those four stones fell all at once from above. Many Scarabs were killed, and all of them were destined to be buried here!"

"I forgot about that," said the green Ghord. "But, when you are working with heavy stone, some mishaps are to be expected. It is the will of the Ancients. They must not have placated the sacred ones in the correct manner."

"You believe that's the reason?" I asked.

"Sincerely," said Pe-Kid. "The Ancients control every aspect of our life. Who is to say they are not responsible for the departure from it?"

"How can that be?" I asked. "I mean, they're not around anymore."

"Did not your parents not order your comings and goings when you were a child?" Lol-Kit asked.

"I guess so." I thought of how it was before I left home. I defied a number of rules my parents laid down, but I was always aware of them. And I was punished when they caught me.

"Think, then, of the power that your fiftieth-times great grandfather will have over you, then. That is why we pay attention to their will and desires."

That the Ghords did their best to obey those desires I knew to be the truth. Shrines abounded on every level and in the most unexpected places of the construction site. All the Ghords performed little rituals prized by whichever ancestor they wished to honor or placate, such as blowing a whistle, ringing a bell, tossing a pinch of tiny leaves in the air, turning in a circle, waving an incense stick, or saying a word like lboo.' They performed these ceremonies upon clocking in every morning. Aahz refused to do it, calling it nonsense, as did Samwise. Those weren't their ancestors, after all. Still, I felt a little guilty about not participating. When in Zyx, as Aahz might have told me, do as a Zyxian.

"Oh, yes," added a baritone Mourner, Bah-So. "Nonli lost his favorite chisel between two blocks and nearly was squashed between them before the Scarabs noticed him. It took several offerings of beer to placate the Ancients."

"You don't think it could just have been bad luck, do you?" I asked.

"Oh, no!" the Ghords agreed. "We don't believe in superstition!"

A loud blatting interrupted our conversation. The overseers of the carvers, master scribes, came to urge their workers back to their stations.

I was impressed by the workers' eagerness to get the job done. Samwise was in a hurry for his investment to pay off, and his people reflected that sense of urgency. It didn't mean they were cutting corners, though. I had never seen such fine stonework.

Throughout the day, I noticed strangers climbing the invisible ramps overhead. Most of the time they were accompanied by Ghord salespeople, but often they were following someone from a different race altogether. I guessed those were customers who had the same deal as Aahz; they wanted to reduce their own payments through commissions, but by their gestures I could see their enthusiasm for the project itself. I'd done some listening around the Bazaar. No one had ever proposed such an undertaking before. Many of the Deveel merchants thought Samwise was crazy, but I think they were just jealous. One look at Diksen's structure across the way, and it was hard not to want a piece of that.

Samwise was right about Beltasar, too. Several times during the day, the voluble Scarab came flitting after the Imp, with a high-pitched complaint about something. I tried to tune her out, but her voice carried. I could hear her almost anywhere on the site.

In spite of my efforts to steer Aahz to healthier food, he invited me to join him for lunch on the far side of the pyramid at Fat Ombur's, an open-air cookshop run by a Ghord with a bird's face but a corpulent body. ("I get this way from eating my own cooking!" he assured us. We both considered it a good sign. Aahz's motto never to trust a skinny cook almost always held true.)

Like everything else we had seen in Ghordon so far, the tables and stools were made of chunks of stone. I perched at the edge of a squared-off piece that seemed to have been a practice sheet for some pretty complicated runes. My rump was going to have reverse impressions of goats, birds, shepherd's crooks, and open eyes by the time we finished eating.

Fat Ombur did good business, for good reason. The thick, flavorful stew, which we ate with our fingers or with torn pieces of fluffy flatbread, was delicious. Even Aahz went for the grilled vegetables, snatched off a low burner heated by a tiny snoring Salamander.

"Here, my good gentlemen," Ombur said. "Eat up!" He beamed proudly.

The strips were too hot for me to eat, so I chilled them with a touch of magik. Aahz, impervious to most temperatures, grinned as he ate them by the handful. As we chewed, I listened to the mourners keening on the level above us.

"Not my idea of dinner music, but it adds to the local color," Aahz commented.

"They're actually pretty good," I said. The ululations combined in six-part harmony. Then a shrill buzzing audible over the wailing and moaning made my ears contract. I winced. "There she goes again."

I turned toward the painful sound. Samwise picked his way through the tables, his eyebrows drawn down, as Beltasar harangued him from the air.

"... And there will be five further fines for the interruption by Deveel visitors. They prevented us from seating a cornerstone. That will cost you also a secondary penalty. ..."

"Hey, Sam!" Aahz called, waving to him. "Come and join us. Leave the bug."

Samwise hurried over. "Would that I could, Aahz," he said, aiming a thumb at the Scarab. "We'll talk later," he told her.

"We will talk now!" Beltasar shrieked. "The safety of my workers is paramount."

"What about the job?" Aahz asked.

"What?" the Scarab demanded.

"Is the job less important than your workers?"

"N-no," Beltasar said, hesitating briefly. "We wish the work to be done, but in a safe fashion!"

"Then why are you constantly leaving your own work station to harass Samwise here?" Aahz asked. "If there's no active danger, then you're pestering him unnecessarily. If there is a safety problem, then you're leaving your people in harm's way by tracking him down. That doesn't make sense to me."

"That is the way USHEBTI works! We must notify the management of violations at the time of occurrence!" "Not cost effective," Aahz said bluntly. "But it is the way we do things."

"That's a great reason," Aahz said, with a smirk.

"Are you telling us how to do our job?"

"Not how. Just when. Like now. If you're not stopping for lunch or a beer break, then you're goofing off. You just cover it by following Samwise around and haranguing him."

The Scarab blew up in outrage. "How dare you? Nine hundred generations of my family have been involved in construction. You walk in, and in one day you claim to be an expert? You must be as stupid as you are ugly!"

"Sticks and stones," Aahz said, dismissively. "I'm saying that you're wasting your employer's money. I'm limiting access to him from now on. You can say 'hello' to him in the morning, 'how was your lunch?' after the noon break, and 'goodbye' when you leave the site. Everything else will have to be a real matter of life and death."

"You're interfering with a union official!" she shrilled.

"Now, Aahz," I said, raising my hands to placate the combatants. "You can't stop her from conferring with him when she really needs to. Beltasar here is an experienced manager."

"That's right, I am!" she exclaimed, then looked puzzled. "You're defending what she's doing?" Aahz looked dubious.

"I'm saying she's doing it for a good reason. The fines are just a way of reminding Samwise they're serious. Right?" I turned the Scarab.

"Uh, right."

"So, how can she let Sam here know what she needs him to?"

Beltasar's head went back and forth between us. "Yes! How can we?"

"Well, if was me," Aahz said in his most reasonable voice, "I'd save up all the problems and report them to him at the end of the day. I'd hit him up for all the fees then. That'll give him a chance to institute better safety measures overnight. Bel here can pass out the new policies every morning to the workforce. What about that?"

"I think that sounds like a good idea. Doesn't it, Beltasar?" I asked her.

"Yes, er, no. No!" The Scarab finally realized she was being double-teamed. She beat one tiny fist against her undercarapace. "We decide how we institute new orders. We do! Otherwise, And Company faces strike action!"

Aahz shook his head. "I'm the paid representative of your employer. If you'd rather shut him down than cooperate and get the job done that you're being paid to do, be my guest."

The Scarab's bright blue eyes turned red with fury. "Perhaps we will! You will see the might of the USHEBTIS!"

"Yeah, yeah," Aahz said, waving a hand. "You and what army? Throwing your weight around?"

As if on cue, I saw a shadow appear and grow larger and larger until it covered all of us. Just in time I used all the magik force I had inside me to push Aahz back. I fell backwards on top of Samwise and Fat Ombur, who was just bringing a steaming dish to us.

A Titan guard in loincloth and headwrap crashed down on the table, splattering food in every direction. He lay moaning until Aahz helped him up.

"What happened to you?" Samwise asked.

"Scarabs," the blue-faced male puffed, pointing upward. "Under my foot. I think they did it on purpose!"

Could the green-faced Ghord have been right about the Scarabs wanting Samwise to fail?

"Impossible!" cried Beltasar indignantly. "You impugn

us!

"You tried to kill me!" the Titan bellowed, making fists. "I'll squash you like the bug you are!"

"Just you try it, big boy!" Beltasar fumed, curling her tiny forelegs into balls. I could picture steam coming out of her ear holes.

Tan-ta-ra! Tan-tan-tan! Ta-ra!

A flourish of horns drowned out the argument. A booming male voice echoed across the valley. "Make way for the Queen!"

"Oh, no!" Samwise exclaimed. "You must not tell her what just happened! Everybody to their places! Hurry!"

All the Ghords ran out of the cookshop. They bumped into one another, running around the corners of the pyramid.

"What's going on?" Aahz asked.

"The queen! The Pharaoh Suzal. She didn't tell me she was coming. Hurry up. Follow me!"

Samwise leaped onto the ramps and flew over the top of the uppermost layer of the pyramid. Aahz shrugged. I furnished us with magik, and we took to the air after him.