Myth-Taken Identity

TWENTY-THREE

Not surprisingly, being carried by eight beings of less than average strength was bumpy at best. They dropped him again and again on the hard tile floor. Chumley would have protested if his mouth had been free, but two of the Klahds—he refused to call them Skeeve even in his thoughts—had wound sticky tape around it.

He struggled to get free, to no avail. How was it that eight puny beings were able to sap his superior strength? He suspected that it was not their doing; these were the worker drones—the queen, or, in this case, the king of the hive had cast an enfeebling spell and interfered with Massha's magik.

A ninth figure caught up with the group and hoisted Chumley's left shoulder. Chumley's heart leaped. At first he thought Aahz had discovered the subterfuge and was about to rescue him, but it was a Pervert—er, Pervect of the female persuasion.

"Zis is not fair! Why can I not match ze ozzers?" the Pervect asked, in a peevish tone.

"Because you lost your Skeeve card," one of the bland Klahdish faces responded. "The Big Cheese doesn't remake them, remember?"

The Pervect grumbled. The group trotted on, rounding corners. Chumley tried to keep track of all the turns they made, but he was not accustomed to watching the ceiling.

"Whoops," the lead impostor gulped. "Patrol on the way! Hey, you, disguise us!"

Chumley caught another glimpse of green out the corner of his eye, this one dark and smooth. The newcomer was Aahz's friend Chloridia.

"Mmm!" Chumley exclaimed, trying to get her attention. Her four eyes never focused on him. Her expression was one of dazed obedience. He was shocked. She must have fallen at last under the spell of Rattila's card theft.

"There you are," the impostor lugging Chumley's left foot grunted. "We can't let go of him. Put a disguise on us."

At the impostor's order, Chloridia began to chant in unknown words. In a moment the Klahds bearing him became a host of meaty Djinns in coveralls. Chumley shuddered to think as what they might have disguised him.

"Good," the leader stated. "Now, go buy something. We'll call you if we need you."

"Mmmmh!" Chumley blurted, frantic to get her attention, but she had already turned and undulated away.

The Klahd-Djinns hoisted his limbs once more and continued their journey.

A good deal of the ceiling went by, with several more changes in direction, until the disguised horde finally carried him over a threshold. The scent around him was somewhat familiar, that of brimstone and sulfur, along with a sharper odor reminiscent of ammonia. Through the shoulders of the illusory Djinns around him, he spotted tall shelves supporting myriad pairs of the blue trousers that had so captivated the Klahds. Therefore, he was in The Volcano. Where, then, were they taking him?

Row after row after row of dressing rooms flashed past him in peripheral vision. Chumley tried to keep count of the doorways. He recalled from their early orientation that The Volcano was extradimensional. It could be the reason they had never managed to discover the whereabouts of Rattila was that it lay not in this dimension but in another.

The answer, which surprised him, was not long in coming. A few hundred doorways had gone by when his escort made a sharp left through a gaudily dyed curtain and into dank, hot darkness. As soon as they were within, the disguise spell dropped away.

His eyes, more sensitive than many other species', adjusted very swiftly. Chumley became aware that the party trod a downward slope. Feeble lights issued from the ceiling, lending the Klahds a leprous cast. A howl sounded from far ahead.

"Uh-huh!" one of the impostors announced. "Sounds like the Big Cheese is home."

"Well, well, what have you brought me?" a squeaky voice asked with eager menace.

The Klahds dropped Chumley on the floor. The landing was not painful, as his fall was cushioned by an uneven pad of some kind.

A black-furred face imposed itself between Chumley and the ceiling. Before the Troll's eyes was one of the largest vermin he had ever beheld. Nearly the size of Eskina, this creature had a narrow, tapered head terminating in a quivering black nose with long, wiry whiskers that quivered when it talked.

"Welcome to my Rat Hole," the vermin chittered, showing sharp, yellow, rectangular teeth, a startling contrast to the ebon fur. "You've met all of my associates? I am Rattila, Lord of The Mall, and soon to be of all Ratislava. What do you think of my domain?"

The tape was ripped away from Chumley's mouth, painfully pulling out a good deal of facial fur. With his feet still bound, he attempted to stand up and banged his head on the ceiling. He toppled onto a heap of, clothes and noticed that all of the garments still had the price tags attached. He wrenched himself into a sitting position. As far as Chumley could see, the sprawling chamber was filled with clothing, jewelry, books, musical instruments, large appliances, rolled-up rugs, and furniture, all in their original bags or containers, and all piled haphazardly, as if the getting was more important than the having.

"It's rather a tip, what?" Chumley blurted, then felt abashed. "I do beg your pardon. What bad manners, making personal comments like that. I believe it's the heat."

Rattila's eyes glowed red. "You are just jealous," he hissed. "You envy my collection. Well, you're a part of it now. You belonged to M.Y.T.H., Inc. So that makes you an absolutely priceless asset that my Skeeves here have acquired."

Rattila sprang away from Chumley, revealing a long, snaky, hairless black tail, which he cracked like a whip. The impostors scattered out of his way. Rattila ascended one of the heaps, this specimen greasier and more well worn than the others. At the top, Chumley beheld a seat of some kind. It appeared to be made out of items made of precious metals, such as watches and tableware, tied together at random. It could not have been comfortable to sit upon, but Rattila lounged upon it as if it was a throne.

That was it, Chumley perceived. This was the mania Eskina feared: Rattila had set up a kingdom right there underneath The Mall itself!

The gigantic black rat plunged his paw into the heaps of spoil underneath his throne. The paw reemerged, wielding a golden rectangle that gleamed as bright as a torch.

"Behold the Master Card!" the black rat announced. "Bring me the power you have gathered for me. All the identities you used!"

As Chumley watched, the impostors dug through their belt pouches. The Pervect female opened her purse. They all produced piles of cards, much thicker than the collection he and the others had confiscated from their erstwhile captive, and thumbed hastily through them. All of the Skeeve imitators came up with the same blue card.

"One Card to Rule The Mall, One Card to Charge It, One Card to cruise The Mall, and in the darkness Lodge It," they chanted.

As soon as the spell cleared, Chumley spotted their erstwhile prisoner, the black-mustachioed mall-rat, as Parvattani had called him. He had been the Pervect. Chumley recalled the complaint that their captive no longer had a Skeeve identity to employ, and that Rattila wouldn't—not couldn't, but wouldn't—restore that power. Chumley was inwardly pleased. At least they had deprived Rattila of one ninth of his ability to drain Skeeve's identity. Yet, as the transformations went on, he made another surprising discovery.

"You're all mall-rats," he observed aloud.

One of them, a brown rat with white paws, jumped up on his chest. He was half Rattila's size, which made him perhaps a twentieth of Chumley's.

"You got a problem with that?" he asked, showing his long, white teeth.

"Why, no," Chumley insisted mildly. It was a game effort to intimidate, and though it was ineffective against his present target, Chumley respected it. "I'm not speciesist—just commenting. My goodness, my manners have just gone out the window today, what?"

"Listen to him talk, dude," a slender, pale-furred specimen remarked. "We sure he's not one of us? He doesn't sound like a Troll."

"Enough, Oive!" Rattila snarled. "Bring me my power!"

Obediently the mall-rat on Chumley's chest hopped down. All nine moved toward Rattila, clusters of cards held up. The black rat gathered them all up and touched them to the gold card.

A flash of light blazed from Rattila's scrawny paws. It enveloped the black rat and made him seem larger. Chumley disapproved.

The light died away, and Rattila flung the lesser cards away from him. "So close," he wailed, clutching the glowing golden card. "It's still not enough! I want to be a magician!" He bounded down from his throne to Chumley.

"You shall give me your identity, too," he slavered, bringing his red eyes close to Chumley's mismatched yellow ones.

"I don't believe so," Chumley replied.

He hadn't much magik of his own, but he had been raised in a magikal household, where Mums and Little Sister were always slinging off spells, and woe betide the unlucky Troll who hadn't at least a shield spell to protect him! He concentrated on raising it, even as the drooling rat laid his mangy paws upon him.

He was shocked to feel that the Ratislavan's magik cut through his defensive enchantment as an axe through tissue paper. Chumley rolled away, trying to keep Rattila from touching him again. Alas, the room was too crowded to allow a meaningful escape. His energetic gyrations brought mountains of boxes cascading down upon him until he was well and truly trapped.

"Resistance is useless," Rattila hissed, drawing magik crackling out of the air.

"Oh, heavens,, no, it's not," Chumley replied weakly. "You know, you can't build a decent circuit without it, what?"

The Troll fought valiantly, but his limbs had been struck powerless. "Oh, how distasteful," he exclaimed, as the black rat laid paws upon him.

"How could we miss someone kidnapping a Troll?" I demanded, pacing around the purple carpet in the ruins of Massha's Secret at about four the next morning. With the help of the entire Mall security force and about half the shopkeepers, we had split up and covered every yard of The Mall we could. My feet were killing me, but guilt drove me. I couldn't stop moving.

"You were concerned about me," Massha pointed out, looking embarrassed. "Who knew they would go after someone else? We all assumed that Rattila was going for the victims with the greatest magikal talent."

"Yes," Cire piped up. "I would have thought I'd be the logical next target."

I snorted. Eskina looked woeful.

"The trails go nowhere!" she reported. "I followed them all, every set of footsteps that led out from the tent, but the tracks are spoiled. Too many scents, then nothing. Chumley's is not there at all. They must have carried him."

"We have no witnesses," Parvattani admitted, wearily. He'd supervised the whole operation on the run at my side. His tall ears were droopy with exhaustion. "I have seen the crystal balls and consulted every lookout. They must have-a disguised themselves as soon as they left the tent. I followed several leads of groups carrying a large burden out of The Mall, but all of them check out. Grotti's Carpets had a special sale today."

"This is terrible," Massha moaned. "Should we go back and try to find Tananda? She could help."

I stopped pacing and rounded on her.

"Are you saying we can't handle this by ourselves?" I roared.

Massha was taken aback. "There's no need to jump down my throat, big guy! I just thought she's got the right to know her brother's been abducted. She might have some, I don't know, Trollish way of finding a family member."

"Not as far as I know," I informed her sulkily. "And I've known the two of them for decades. I'm as worried about him as you are. We've got a pretty good force right here. You've got my experience and brains, your intuition and talent, Cire's ... we've got Cire—"

"Hey!" Cire protested.

"—Eskina, Par, and just about the whole population of The Mall willing to help us. Let's give it one big try. If we don't locate him soon, I promise, I'll go and collect Tananda, Guido, Nunzio and the whole Mormon Tabernacle Choir."

In spite of her exhaustion Massha's big mouth quirked in a half grin. "It's not that I don't believe in you, Aahz, honey. Where my friends are concerned I don't really believe in myself."

"Well, you ought to," I insisted. "I might have been pissed off when Skeeve let go of that cushy job as Court Magician, but I think you bring qualities to it he never did." Massha floated over, threw her arms around me, and gave me a big kiss. "Hey, save it for Hugh!"

"You know, Aahz, you may have the teeth of a land shark," she smiled, "but your bark is a heck of a lot bigger than your bite. Okay. Let's brainstorm. How do we get Chumley back?"

I couldn't look at her for a minute. I turned to our local expert. "What do you think, Eskina?"

"It is not logical," she agreed. "I think it must be a slap in our faces. Rattila has never needed to take his victims away, only their identities. This is directed at us, to show that he can remove our strongest colleague, and there is nothing we can do about it! We cannot even find his hideout, because we cannot trace the scent to where he and his servants go to ground."

"What did you say?" I demanded, ceasing my pacing in midstep.

"I—" she began, looking confused.

"Never mind," I waved it away, feeling like the sorriest neophyte ever to hang out a shingle. "You said trace. Why didn't we think of that before?" I smacked myself in the forehead, hard.

"What?" Massha asked. "What didn't we think of?"

"We've been trying to set traps for them here in The Mall," I explained. "Rattila's just sent us an engraved invitation to carry the fight into his own domain, only he forgot to put a return address on the envelope. We"—I indicated our little party—"are going to phone the reverse directory and get it."

Eskina's eyes widened. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Massha translated, her eyes shining with admiration, "that we're going to plant tracers on Rattila's impostors and get them to show us where he hides out. We tag them, then follow them to their lair. It can't be too far away. They are in and out of here too often. Good thinking, sugar!"

"Could be extradimensional," I reminded her, "but you've got your gizmo. I'm prepared to follow them to hell and back."

"Me, too, Aahz, honey," Massha agreed, patting me on the hand.

"But how are we going to tag them?" Cire asked. "They're not going to sit down obligingly and let us tie GPS transmitters to their collars."

"Oh, yes, they are," I insisted. "In fact, they'll pay for the privilege of having us do it."

"How?" Parvattani demanded impatiently.

I gestured at the room around us. "Massha's Secret is going to open up for one more round of sales: a going-out-of-business sale. We've got to promote the heck out of it. Put up posters, whatever it takes. Go wake up Marco and have him paper The Mall with advertising. We're going to reopen for one day only to let go of a little special merchandise."

"But we don't have any merchandise," Cire pointed out, indicating the bare walls.

"We will," I insisted. "I'm going to go pick it up on Deva. Get this place cleaned up and ready. I'll see you in a few hours." I pulled my D-hopper out of my pocket.

"Good luck, Hot Stuff," Massha wished me, blowing a kiss.