Myth-Taken Identity

SEVEN

"I'm overwhelmed," Massha admitted, as we left the Mystikal Bar. "This place is too huge! I mean, normally I would be overjoyed to have more stores at my fingertips than I could ever shop in a lifetime, but I'm at a loss. How do we cover them all?"

I had no idea, but as the leader of this expedition, I had to show leadership, and the first key of good leadership is delegation of responsibilities.

"You're the friendly almost-native guide around here," I said to Eskina, who was trotting along a pace ahead of me like a tiny Sherpa. "Where would you start looking for someone?"

"We are going there," the Ratislavan investigator informed me, with an airy wave. "The center of The Mall is the center of the community."

"Community?" Chumley asked.

"But of course! When you work day by day next to someone else, you get to know them, no? It is a neighborhood. Even if you do not sleep there, it is as though you live there. People you see every day, customers who come in all the time, the complainers, the bargain hunters—"

I slapped my forehead. "It's the Bazaar except indoors," I exclaimed, feeling like a dope. "Who's in charge here? A Merchants' Association?"

"The administration," Eskina replied. "The shopkeepers do not have an association, but that is a good idea. I will begin to talk it up with my friends. They have some concerns that the administration does not always address."

I grimaced. If I'd just provided the seeds of subversion, I wasn't going to let it get traced back to me if I could help it. "No, I mean who's really in charge. The administration's in charge of the physical plant, assigning spaces, collecting rent. Who's the mayor of this burb? Who's the goto guy, or the one you really don't want to piss off?"

"Ah!" Eskina nodded. "This is more sense. The Barista, of course. I will take you to the coffee shop."

I began to get a better idea of how The Mall was laid out as we walked. Big stores formed anchor points at intersections, with strings of small, smaller, and downright tiny establishments linking them. According to the map most of them were as modest as they appeared. Not many had taken the transdimensional route as The Volcano had.

The parallels between The Mall and the Bazaar became more obvious the farther we went. I noticed a delicate little Gnome female weighing out gems for a pair of burly horned-and-hooved travelers at the booth of the currency exchange she ran. Behind them, out of their line of vision but fully in sight of the Gnome were a couple of Trolls from the bar next door, each holding a club in case the travelers got rowdy. The transaction came to. an end, the customers thanked her and departed, and the Trolls melted unobtrusively back into their establishment. Eskina was right: neighbors, looking out for one another.

A sign pinned to the wall read "Rub My Belly, two silver pieces." Underneath it, on the floor, a large dog lay on his back, wiggling seductively. He lifted his nose and sniffed, then whined. "Eskina!"

The Ratislavan hurried over to fondle the dog's belly.

"How are you, Radu?" she asked.

"Very well. No sniff of the scent you seek."

"Ah, well." The female sighed. "Thank you for being vigilant."

"How about you?" Radu looked up at us with big brown eyes. "Reduced rates for friends of my friends?"

Massha smiled. "Why not?" She stooped to tickle the dog's hairy stomach. "Reminds me of my Hugh." Radu writhed all over with pleasure. "That reminds me of Hugh, too."

I groaned. "Too much information, Massha." I strode on.

"Hey, friend," a whinnying voice hailed me. I glanced in that direction. A huge, dappled gray horse stood at the door of a well-lit shop with a swinging sign emblazoned shire oat meals hanging horizontally on a pole over his head. Inside I could see a host of customers of several species, including Klahds, standing at a high bar, dining with spoons or eating right out of the dish. He tossed his head, making his long white mane dance. "Come in and try a bowl! Best oatmeal you'll ever taste! Today's special is whole grain cereal, with a bright red pippin on the side."

"No, thanks," I called back. "I like my food a little more active."

"Perverts," whispered his coworker, a smaller black steed.

It was meant to be an aside, but my species has very keen hearing. I don't take that kind of abuse from anybody.

"Do you want to be the main course?" I bellowed.

"Neigh!" she whickered in alarm, backing into the diner with a clatter of hooves.

The gray rider blew out his lips at me. "There's no need to be offensive," he chided.

"Maybe you'll remember next time: it's Pervect!"

"Aahz!" Massha poked me in the head with a finger. She was floating above our heads. "Say, Eskina, is it always this warm in here?" "Not really," Eskina replied. "Normally the climate is very well controlled. The volcano underneath the mall generates geothermal energy to run the technology that .many of the shops are selling. And it keeps us very warm in the winter. But this is summer, and it is much too hot. The building engineer is falling behind in his job. Ah, here he comes! Jack!" She jumped up and down, waving to a fair-haired male in a pointed red cap with a bobble on the end.

I saw him skimming toward us as the crowd parted to let him by. He stood about my height, clad in a red jacket and breeches. Effortlessly, he nipped in and out of clusters of shoppers, gliding smoothly on one foot, then the other.

He didn't have skates on. I realized, as I saw vapor condensing around his body in the hot air, that he had to be a weather wizard or something equally powerful. As he got closer I saw a trail of ice form where his feet touched the floor. With his heels together and feet pointing outward in a straight line from toe to toe, he skimmed around us in ever-decreasing circles until he came to a halt directly in front of the Ratislavan.

"Eskina!" he exclaimed, sweeping her up in his arms. He had the features of a well-fed elf, with light blue eyes and strawberry blond hair framing an agreeably round face, pink on the apples of the cheeks and the tip of his sharp nose, but pale everywhere else. His ears, unlike the locals', had only one point each.

"Put me down," Eskina chided him, tapping him on the chest. "You will freeze me."

"Sorry." He grinned. "I don't know my own BTUs, sometimes."

"Let me present new friends," she offered, introducing us each by name. "You have probably heard of Jack Frost?" she asked me.

I received a solid handshake and drew back a hand chilled to the bone.

"The Jack Frost?" I asked. "The elemental?"

"Yup!" that dignitary replied cheerfully. "Nice to meet you! Are you shopping for something special today?" "No, they are not," Eskina corrected him, before I could speak. "They are going to help me find Rattila."

"Wait a minute, I didn't say that," I argued.

The pale blue eyes met mine sincerely. "That's really good of you. Eskina's kept her nose to the ground, but she's only one person. This is an awfully big place. It's too easy for an interdimensional criminal to hide out here. I'm only a contractor, so Mall administration doesn't listen to me, but things are really heating up around here, and I do not mean the temperature. Speaking of which," he added, raising his nose as though sniffing the air, "it is too warm. Stand back a bit, folks."

Jack inhaled deeply, then blew. His breath shot outward in a white cone, and the whiteness radiated outward to the walls. I prefer a cool room to a hot one, but this was one abrupt change. If there'd been a bag of peas hanging in front of him it would have been flash-frozen. My teeth chattered hard enough to hurt my jaw. Massha pulled her flimsy garments more snugly around her. So did the hundreds of shoppers in the hall. Some of them shot dirty looks at the elemental. Only Chumley and Eskina, clad in their own lush fur, were unaffected.

"Sorry, folks," Jack apologized, after taking a second breath. "It'll even out in a moment. Got to keep on top of things, or it'd be the end of The Mall as we know it!"

"Wait a moment," I exclaimed, as a thought struck me. "You say this place is on top of a live volcano? The steam rising above the mountain outside isn't an effect?"

"Nope! The Volcano, the clothing store, is named for it. You've seen the floor? My work," he announced modestly. "Living art, I call it. Free-flowing lava. Really pretty. You should go and take a look."

"Maybe later," I suggested, promising myself never to set foot in that store again. I remembered the orange-and-black floor, but I thought it was a piece of magik intended to impress the shoppers. A live volcano! These people were definitely crazy.

"So you'll be around for a while?" Jack asked, sticking up a finger to test the atmosphere. The temperature had dropped to a pleasant level. Elemental magik was some of the most powerful around.

"Not one minute more than we have to," Massha answered, cheerfully. "We want to help our friend, then I've got to get back to my job."

"They are staying," Eskina insisted. "They have a friend who is being thieved from. Only if they help me catch Rattila will they solve their friend's problem."

"We'll see about that," I glowered.

"Hey, hey, then, welcome to the neighborhood," Jack Frost boomed. "Gotta go." He offered each of us a hand again, then shot off down the corridor.

"You had to tell him everything?" I asked, moodily.

"Everyone knows everything about each other," Eskina acknowledged. "I have had to become acquainted with so many because the administration is so bad in not helping me. I will introduce you to all my good friends. They are all very nice, giving me food and places to sleep. Some are not so kind, like the proprietor of The Volcano and his cousins. That is why you see me sneaking in and out of there, but I must patrol where my nose leads me." She tapped that small feature. "Come with me! I will take you to die Barista."

Looking around. Now that I was tuned in to it, paid more attention to the blank-eyed shufflers, worrying that Skeeve could become one of them. A haggard female with long, graying black hair and a narrow face caught me regarding her with pity, and snapped, "What are you looking at, scale face?"

So not all of them had been mind-stripped. I stopped thinking that they were all alike and wondered how many of them were just moody.

"Sir!" a perky young female in a green uniform and cap accosted me, thrusting a pen and a clipboard in my face. "Would you care to apply for a Mall card? Unlimited credit, only thirty-five percent interest per annum. Just fill your name in here, put your birth date here, and your shoe size here, and sign!" She pushed the pen into my hand.

I shoved the clipboard aside and stuck the pen in her hat.

"Bug off."

"What about you, madame?" she asked, flying up to meet Massha. "For today only, all purchases will be eight percent off with your new card!"

"Eight?" Massha inquired, showing some interest.

"Just put your name here. And your favorite color. And your favorite season."

She reached for the pen.

"Massha!" I bellowed.

"Oops, no, thanks," my companion informed the Mall clerk.

The young woman showed no disappointment. She beamed brightly as she dropped back into the crowd. "Have a nice day," she wished us.

"Sorry, Aahz," Massha apologized. "But, eight percent!"

I frowned. "You could get twenty off in the Bazaar without having to fill out a form. Fifty off if you really bargain."

"It sounds silly when you put it in perspective." Massha blushed. "I just got caught up in the moment."

"Hi, Esky!" A horn player stopped blatting into his instrument and greeted our guide. The other members of the band surrounded her.

"I talk to them all," Eskina confided. "They are paid a minimal amount. Their original bargain was to include tips, but the management said no, so they don't practice."

"You mean they play like that on purpose?" Massha asked, horrified.

"It is their protest," Eskina shrugged. "Very few people ever notice."

"Eskina!" two female Tigrets cried, running up to her as we rounded the next corner. They were slender catlike females with striped skins and wide green eyes. Each of them was carrying eight or nine shopping bags.

"They are here every day," Eskina explained, as soon as the Tigrets had ducked into the next shop. "They are very wealthy."

"Sweetie!" A very large Bugbear at the door of a bed shop waved at her. "Got new stock. One I think you ought to try out!"

We all stared at her. Her cheeks pinked up. "He is very effusive, but there is nothing between us. He lets me sleep in the storeroom. I cannot afford to stay in the hotel."

I raised an eyebrow. Along the way we came across more friendly musicians, more charitable shop owners, and more of Eskina's friends. I wanted to ask them to keep a lookout for Skeeve, but Eskina kept telling me to save it for the Barista.

"Mmm, smell that!" Massha exclaimed in delight.

"Goo-oood!" Chumley agreed.

My sensitive nose had been picking up the aroma for several blocks. A burst of fragrant steam surrounded us from holes in the floor. I felt an inexorable force pulling me, and everyone around me, inward, toward the small, round, redwood-sided booth at the center of The Mall.

Hot white lights blazed in our faces. I threw up my hands, momentarily blinded. When my vision cleared, I realized that we were approaching moving spotlights, salamander-occupied mirrored cylinders being cranked in spiral patterns by a quartet of Imps in tight, frogged tunics and pillbox hats.

"What is that?" I asked, squinting into the glare.

"That is the Coffee House," Eskina informed us reverently. The others were impressed into awed silence, but I had a feeling I was walking into a familiar place.

As we approached, I noticed a sign high above the shack that said the coffee is the life. Bubbles of golden light welled up to the ceiling from the roof and cascaded down on the surroundings. Most of the crowd lurching forward held out their hands. Bubbles landed on their outstretched palms and burst into decorative china and pottery cups and mugs from which steam rose. Massha tentatively put out her hand. "Espresso!" she crowed, taking a sip from the tiny cup that appeared there.

The bubble that burst on Chumley's broad palm became a huge bowl filled with beige foam. His face split in a broad grin. "Latte."

"Hold out your hands," Eskina instructed me, demonstrating. The bubble that touched her tiny fingers melted into a plain china mug sloshing with dark brown liquid. "You shall receive that which you need most."

"Nah," I replied, peering forward in between the beams of light. I kept my fists balled tight at my sides. "Don't think so."

"Don't refuse the Barista's bounty," Eskina cautioned me, alarmed. "If you do, she might refuse to serve you. People would turn themselves inside out to avoid displeasing the Barista! How can you get started in the morning without the coffee?"

But I was on the scent.

"Only one person I've ever known brews coffee that smells that good," I muttered, striding toward the booth.

And I was right. When we neared the little building, a door in the side burst open, and a large blue-white blur zipped out of it and straight into my arms.

"Aahz, you old deveel!" crowed Sibone. The Cafiend's long, sinuous body wound her way around me, the end of her tail flicking side to side with delight. "My goodness, you're looking handsome."

"Suspicion confirmed." I grinned as I introduced her to my friends.

"You know the Barista?" Eskina asked, astonished and, at last, impressed.

"We're old friends," I announced, my arm around Sibone's waist, or where her waist would be if she wasn't a twelve-foot serpent with arms and living hair. "Chumley, Massha, this is Sibone. She's from Caf." Her hands, as flexible as her body, curled about my ears, tickling places that obviously she hadn't forgotten in all these years. I enjoyed the sensation, then snapped back to the realization that I had a mission. "Hey, we've got an audience," I protested.

"And when did that ever stop you?" Sibone purred. Her hair crawled around the back of my neck and caressed it. But she turned to my companions and threw her arms around them. "Come and let me give you love. Any friend of Aahz is a friend of mine."

"What are you doing here?" Sibone and I asked one another in unison.

"You first." I laughed.

"Oh"—Sibone sighed, fanning her pale cheeks with a twist of paper held in a coil of her tail—"too much pressure." She took a refreshing drink from one of the many cups standing on tiny shelves adorning the walls of the Coffee House, and curled up in her basketlike chair like a big white pearl in a ring. I kicked back with my feet crossed on a chaise longue with gold tassel fringe. Massha lounged easily in a contraption like a padded hammock. Chumley perched uneasily on an ottoman too small for his big Trollish posterior. Eskina huddled against a wall between the ever-filling coffee cups and stared at the Barista in deep awe.

Unlike its simple exterior, the interior of the small booth proved to be much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. A surreptitious glance at the map in my pocket showed no detail about the kiosk at the center of The Mall, but Sibone had clearly gone extradimensional for comfort. The room was an easy thirty feet in diameter. The air was filled with the rich, slightly oily aroma of fresh coffee, which brewed in dozens of gigantic urns that stood in arcs flanking the window and in the crystal decanter that stood on a pedestal in the center of the round, mahogany-tiled room. We could see blank-faced, hopeful customers staggering toward the building, their hands held out in supplication. One of Sibone's bubbles would usually do the trick, one sip of elixir restoring character and energy to the customers' faces. Another coin or two clanked magikally into the overflowing golden crock under the counter. Sibone supervised the process for a moment, then turned back to us.

"Everyone in Caf is frenetic, no problem there. It's always crazy, but a few years ago someone in the government decided that anything that feels as good as coffee must be regulated to the bitter dregs. We need coffee to live, so this was very unfair legislation. I was running a multiregion-distribution business of gourmet goods—only the best, of course."

"Of course," I agreed.

"I oversaw picking and processing personally. It was wonderful. I had a slate of faithful customers, and all of them began to get questionnaires from government regulators. Now, you're like me, you don't like snoops. I started asking questions back. They didn't like the fact that some of my blends are made with beans that come from other dimensions. But you know that Caf explorers seeded those plantations thousands of years ago. Those trees are ours. If you like, I was only importing sunlight and water. But the pests did not see it that way. They started to demand that I justify my extradimensional purchases. And then when they asked for full lists of all my customers, and all of their customers, I realized that someone was getting too hyper."

I nodded. A being like her whose blood is mostly caffeine would know how bad that was. She uncurled her long hands in a gesture of helplessness.

"So I have returned to my roots. I have one outlet, here, which I run myself. It is supplied by one farm, which I own myself. I give the gift of life to all those who come to me. I am appreciated."

"Why here?" I asked. "Why not somewhere like Perv, where you'd be a star?"

Sibone patted my leg with one of her tentacle-like hands. "Perv is too focused on the pursuit of the moment. I wanted to go somewhere I was really needed. Here there was a center with nothing to fill it, where people were looking for direction. I provide them with the strength to do what they choose. In the end it is only people that matter."

"Now, that sounds like the old metaphysical Sibone I used to know," I exclaimed. I reached for a hefty brown mug hanging on the wall. Pervects like their coffee like they like their beer, at optimum temperature and in sufficient quantity to drown their tonsils.

"But what about you? I had last heard you were acting as a balance in a lawless place."

I narrowed an eye. That wasn't the way the Merchants' Association would like to have the Bazaar described, but it pretty much explained M.Y.T.H., Inc.'s job.

"Temporarily retired," I stated shortly, hoping that would do. However much I trusted Sibone to understand all that had happened to me recently, I wasn't going to go into any of it in front of Eskina. "I'm here to help out a friend. Someone in The Mall's been masquerading as him, ripping him and a bunch of merchants off, but Eskina here thinks there's a more sinister purpose."

Eskina launched into her story, aided by the picture of Skeeve I was carrying. About five cups of coffee later she sputtered to an end. Sibone patted her on the back.

"So your good friend is being drained by this evil creature Eskina is seeking," Sibone summed up neatly.

"So she says," I replied. I still wasn't completely convinced. "It explains the mechanism as well as anything else. I'm willing to have help chasing down the SOB."

"Help? You?" Sibone asked, astonished. "Why don't you just reach out and grab him, trounce his sorry behind, and spit on the remains?"

I scowled. "It's not so easy. I've lost my powers."

Sibone put out a sympathetic hand. "I'm very sorry. Oh, but then I have to warn you: Cire is running around here."

"Cire!" I exclaimed. A fellow wizard and a friend, but he had a sense of humor you might call playful if you weren't the brunt of it.

"Yes. He just came off a very lucrative contract, has money to burn. He thought he would blow it at The Mall and spend his afternoons drinking my coffee."

I leered at her. "Well, that's half a good reason to hang out here."

Sibone tapped me playfully. "You! Well, let me see if I can help you." She shook her head at me, then stared off into space over our heads. Cafiends never closed their eyes. Close as I'd been to Sibone, I still wasn't sure if it was because they had no eyelids or from living on a steady diet of coffee. "I see all, in the course of the day: the lonely ones who come here, the unready, the sleepy, the unaware, and those who just need a good jolt of joe. I do not believe I have ever seen this face." She tapped Skeeve's portrait.

"We'll have to get ahold of the other people who've reported having their credit cards ripped off," I suggested. "Parvattani can do that for us. Where do you suppose he is?"

"Oh, that one?" Sibone asked, an annoyed look on her face. "He has been waiting outside the booth for half an hour."