Myth-Taken Identity

EIGHT

The Mall guard captain had a fixed look of distaste on his face when Chumley brought him inside.

"Sorry, pal," I offered sheepishly. "I forgot you didn't know where we were."

"Oh, I knew where you had gone," Parvattani corrected me, holding up a small orb like a miniature crystal ball. "We have eyes all over this facility. I could not enter this building."

"And why should you just be able to sashay in and out?" Sibone demanded. "This is not a police state, however you believe it should be?"

"Now, see here, madame, we are the security of this Mall, and as such ought to have access in the event..."

Uh-oh. Two of my allies shared some past history, and it sounded like it wasn't resolved yet. I flung up my hands.

"Hold it!" I shouted, over the growing argument. "We're all working together!"

"You are right," Sibone admitted. "Forgive my lack of manners, Captain. Would you like some coffee?" "Not while on duty," Par emitted shortly. I could tell he was still smarting for having to stand outside like a sentry.

Massha came to the rescue. She floated up from her cushy hammock and alighted beside Par, cuddling close and insinuating her arm into his.

"Hey, big guy, don't be upset! We couldn't let the grass grow under our feet. We were just following up a lead or two. You understand that. Your boss hired us for our expertise. We're just using it."

"Yes, of course, but I wanted to observe—" Parvattani shot a yearning look at me, and I realized what we were dealing with was a bad case of hero worship. I ignored the twinge of nostalgia that awoke in me.

"Well, you can observe now," Massha promised, with a tight hug that nearly pulled the guard captain off his feet. "And we're counting on your help. You were going to cut off the fake Skeeve's credit line. How did you do that?"

Par responded instantly to a call to show off his competence. He held up the little globe.

"With this," he explained. "All of my guards have one. If you cannot find me, you can stop any one of them and have them contact me. With it I can speak to one or all of the security force. It is also hooked into the eyes all over The Mall. If the eye of a statue or a painting look-a like it follows you, it's probably one of ours. I can also talk to the shop owners who are on-a the system. Not everyone can afford a globe."

"Ah, but everybody knows somebody who's got one," Eskina put in.

"Yes," Parvattani snapped tersely, not liking his thunder stolen. "So word will get around. I have issued a bulletin not to permit 'Skeeve' to make a purchase anyplace, not-a even a newspaper or a doughnut. They are also requested to summon the guard if he comes into their shops. I cannot ask them to apprehend him; that is our job, not theirs. Now we will be notified directly if anyone sees the Skeeve."

"Good enough." I sighed. "Pretty soon the thief will have to abandon the disguise." "So, if you'll just wait a minute," the Djinnie salesclerk suggested, with a perky smile at the tall, thin Klahd, "I'll run in the back and see why your receipt hasn't materialized yet."

Wassup knew he wasn't the brightest candle on the mantelpiece, but he knew the signs of a clerk about to call a security guard.

"I'll just wait out in the hall," he offered, edging swiftly backward, away from the counter. He shot a final, regretful glance at the crystal chandelier. Too bad. It would have been really pretty hanging in the Rat Hole.

"Oh, no, sir, it'll just be a moment!" The Djinnie fluttered after him, trying vainly to catch his hand, the one holding the Skeeve credit card. Once Wassup was over the threshold she had to abandon the chase. Those were the rules, written and unwritten. He hadn't taken the merchandise with him, and he was outside the store, so he was no longer the clerk's problem. He strode away as fast as his long shanks would carry him. Being a Klahd was like trying to balance a bag of groceries on stilts. Mall-rats were much more aerodynamic in shape, being low to the ground, but he had to admit this body had a pretty decent turn of speed.

"What's wrong?" a low voice hailed him.

Wassup's ears perked up. "Hey, Oive," he chirped. Mall-rats recognized one another no matter what faces they were wearing. His fellow thief had on a teenage Dragonet body, a power shopper she particularly liked impersonating. Her arms were full of bags. "Man, I am bummed. That was the fifth place in a row where they tried to bust me for being this guy."

"Bummer," Oive agreed. "Hey, want some of this stuff?"

"What have you got?" Wassup asked.

"I dunno. I just look at the price tags. Let's see: high- heeled boots, a power saw, an enameled altar set, and a commemorative plate for the Diamond Jubilee of King Horace of Mindlesburonia."

"Where's that?" Wassup asked.

"Never heard of it. But it's pretty."

"Good stuff, man," Wassup praised her. Oive preened.

"And it only took me an hour! Hey, there's Garn."

"Word up," Wassup hailed him, or rather her, since Garn was in the shape of a young and attractive Flibberite Mall employee.

"Hail to thee," Garn replied.

"Where'd you get the cool phrase?" Oive demanded, admiringly.

"Like, there was this guy, you know, actually reading out loud to an audience?" Garn related, his eyes wide with disbelief. "I mean, words off a page! They sounded neat, like music without a tune."

"How come you went into a bookstore, man?" Wassup asked, curiously.

Garn shrugged. "They were playing The Mall's sales music. Had to go, man. Had to be there."

"Cool," Oive and Wassup breathed in unison.

"I liked it. Otherwise, the day's been dry, dry, dry. I was following the visitors, like the Big Cheese told me? You know? I was trying to get facts about them so Ratso could make a card out of them? I'd like to be the green guy. He's as strong as a horse, man. But no-ooo-oo. They wouldn't give me names, or anything."

"Tough nuts," Oive offered, sympathetically.

"They're totally nuts, man," Wassup complained. "Hey, you hear? Like, they cut off my Skeeve account!"

"What?" Garn exclaimed, outraged.

"I know." Wassup sighed. "The Big Cheese isn't going to like it. But I better tell him before he picks it out of my mind. He's going to have to come up with something else." The Deveel spa owner picked up a hank of Massha's hair and examined it critically.

"Darling, you're overprocessing this poor stuff just hideously," he proclaimed. "You need a hot oil treatment." He aimed a casual hand toward the sinks, where an Imp was boiling a barrelful over a salamander-controlled flame. "You, too, tall, dark, and hairy," the Deveel informed Chumley, walking around him. He tilted an avid glance up and down the Troll's huge body, to Chumley's embarrassment. "You're just letting yourself go to pieces. I hate to see a big, good-looking Troll like you neglecting that pelt. Come in in the morning when I give this little girl her treatment, and I'll condition the both of you. Friend-of-the-family rates."

"Thanks," Chumley grunted out.

"Sorry I couldn't help you find this fellow," the Deveel added, tapping the portrait of Skeeve with a long, pointed fingernail. "I certainly never did his hair, because if I did, he wouldn't be wearing his hair like that. Cute, though."

"What's wrong with my friend's hair?" I demanded. Chumley put an arm around my shoulders and hauled me out into the corridor.

Eskina tittered. "Broscoe is very scathing about anyone's talent but his. I thought it was very funny when he wanted to give Aahz a facial right there."

"Like he'd understand about Pervects and being stylishly scaly," I grumbled.

"If we have a moment, I might let him do my hair," Massha mused. "To be honest, Queen Hemlock's too cheap to attract really first-class stylists to the capital."

"I will, too," Chumley confided. "Can't get back to my barber for ages. May as well take advantage of the local talent."

Eskina's eyes flew wide open. "Did you just say all that?"

"Please, keep your voice down," Chumley whispered. "As long as we are to be allies, we must lay all our cards upon the table." "One thing I would have thought you'd have figured out," I added, "is that not everything is always as it seems." Eskina regarded us all with respect. "I see," she said.

Eskina was a pretty quick learner. I began to feel a lot of respect for the intrepid little investigator. She'd put up with a lot of hardship in pursuit of her case. I could tell from Par's nonstop gibes as she led us from one establishment to another that Mall security had not given her any kind of a hand, but she'd pretty much made her own way, making friends with most of the longtime owners. Besides the Deveel barber who let her use his spa every morning, the Djinni cousins furnished her with clothing samples, cast-off books, shoes, and other merchandise they claimed that otherwise they "couldn't sell." The Shire horses who'd given me a hard time let her cadge free meals once in a while. So did most of the other restauranteurs. Out of admiration for her devotion to her mission, which incidentally would help keep them in business, they kept her housed, fed, and groomed. I was impressed; I'd before never seen a Deveel part with anything for which he wasn't well paid. Either he was soft, which I doubted, or she made him and the others feel safer than Mall security did. Par didn't like that aspect a whole bunch. He had to stand back and let the Ratislavan look like a hero or diminish his own status in their eyes by making a fuss about it.

"Let us go on," Eskina proclaimed, leaping up as soon as she had finished a snack furnished by the owner of the Jolly Dragon pub on the corner across from Troll Music, a huge bardic emporium which sold little magikal boxes that played dozens, even hundreds of songs when opened. I hadn't finished the rest of my fifth beer, but I was glad to get away from the racket pouring out the door across from us. The way the cacophony blended or, rather, failed to blend with the bands within earshot made me lose my appetite. Not that a ham, a dozen-egg omelette, and a broiled half pineapple was more than a light snack.

"You don't sit down long," I observed, as we strode out again. The innkeeper had promised to keep a discreet eye out for the fake Skeeve. "This must be an exciting new case for you."

"No," she contradicted me. "I have been on this assignment five years. We of the Ratislavan Intelligence are nothing if not... dogged." She grinned, showing her sharp little incisors. "I pursue Rattila, and I will continue until I have arrested him and brought him back to face Ratislavan justice. Many leads have come and gone, but I am sure mine is right, and I shall be vindicated. That is what gives me energy."

"Mmmph," Parvattani grunted, skeptically. But no matter what he thought, most of the denizens of The Mall were on his rival's side.

"Any friend of Eskina's a friend of mine," was a litany we heard over and over again. And we heard plenty of stories about how the shapechangers had ripped them off. If they'd been in the Bazaar, the Merchants' Association would have caught up with the thieves and traced them back to their master in nothing flat, with none of this five-year delay because of a mental turf war.

"There are procedures," Parvattani argued, as we left another stall.

"Tell me," I confronted Par, "if you'd figured out yourself there was a foreign master criminal running a crime syndicate in your Mall, you'd go after him mach schnell, wouldn't you?"

"Maybe," Par admitted. "But then I would be approaching it with evidence. She has never produced anything that I can call evidence. Show me, and I'll believe!"

"Bah." Eskina waved a dismissive hand. "This is the closest he has ever come to showing me professional courtesy, by listening, and it is all because of you."

They marched ahead of us. Par strode rapidly, covering a lot of distance with each pace, but Eskina stayed abreast of him, trotting on her little legs. I grinned. The rivalry between them disguised the fact that they had a lot in common. I thought they even admired each other a little, but they would rather have had the floor open up, swallow them, and burp before they'd admit it. But they went on trying to impress us with their knowledge, all the time pretending they didn't care if they impressed the other.

"That is Banlofts," Eskina explained, nodding toward a two-headed Gorgon trying on a pair of hats at a stall. "They're a personal shopper on Gor. Very popular in The Mall. Very good taste, too."

"Always pays cash," Parvattani added. "No problem with theft, either, since they can shop and keep an eye on their purse at the same time."

"Their business flourishes because they always compare their impressions before they buy."

"So two heads are better than one," I chortled. "But in the case of a tie you have to let the right prevail, huh?" Chumley and Massha shot me pained looks. "What?"

"Arrest her," Eskina whispered suddenly, pointing to a long, skinny Wisil sauntering toward us. She was dressed in a fancy blue satin dress and a picture hat and carrying a big handbag studded with jeweled beads.

"Why?" Par demanded.

"She has stolen that purse! It is from Kovatis's shop."

"How do you know she didn't buy it?" I asked.

"Because Kovatis only works to order," Eskina hissed urgently. "And I was in the store with the Klahd lady who ordered it."

"Do you see, Master Aahz?" Par asked, furiously. "This is the kind of nonsense she has been treating us to for years!"

I might have agreed with him, but something about the Wisil's too-careful walk pushed my alarm buttons, too. "Get her," I instructed Chumley.

"Right ho," he agreed. He stuck out a large hand, raised the Wisil by her shiny satin scruff, hauled her over until MYTH-TAKEN IDENTITY 95

she was eye to eye with him, and boomed out, "Give purse back."

"Oh! Oh!" the Wisil screeched, twisting this way and that to escape. "Don't hurt me! I—I just wanted to take it for a test walk to see if I wanted to buy it! Here, here!" Hastily, she shoved the jeweled bag into my hands,

Parvattani hadn't hesitated once he'd realized he was wrong. A quick word into his long-distance orb brought a pair of uniformed guards running. They took the Wisil and the bag into custody.

We started walking again. Palpable in the air between Eskina and Par was the phrase "I told you so." Again, I had to give the little raterrier credit: she didn't say it, but boy, could Par hear it. After another block or two, he cleared his throat.

"Good call," he murmured.

Eskina's head turned slightly toward him, then away to scan the shops on her left. I could see that she was smiling.

"Aren't they adorable?" Massha sighed. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear the two of them were a little sweet on each other. I love a budding romance. It reminds me of me and Hugh."

"For pity's sake, don't say anything like that where they can hear you," Chumley warned her. "That would surely nip it in the bud, so to speak."

"I'm with him," I added, although in a million years I would never have seen a comparison between the wall-pounding lust fest that she and Hugh had indulged in before they got married and a couple of shy kids who happened to be rivals in the same profession. "Let them discover it."

"Oh, well." Massha shrugged, but she agreed. "It'll be hard not to say anything. They make a cute couple."

"Give 'em time," I advised. "If they don't figure it out before we leave, you can play matchmaker then."

Since I had a chance to watch die goings-on in The Mall, I realized that the gestalt was very much like that in 96 Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye the Bazaar. It wasn't long before I could tell a denizen from an occasional customer. The people who frequented The Mall, both employees and visitors, were a lot classier in demeanor and dress, but the merchants had the same summing eye to decide whether the warm bodies walking in had money or not.

Just like in the Bazaar magik served as a deterrent here. I watched a party of rowdy young werewolves push their way into a store selling personal music boxes. In no time they materialized out in the corridor in front of us, shaking their heads, not sure how that had happened. I grinned as they marched back in again. And got beamed out. They tried again. On the third trip out, Eskina strode up to them and took them each by an ear.

"Now, they told you to go away, yes?" she asked. The teenage werewolves grimaced but remained silent. She tightened her grip. "Yes?"

"Yes," they grunted at last.

'Then come back when you wish to buy something. You can listen to music free in the dance halls and clubs, no?" She let go of her grip. The boys shook free, then retreated a few paces. With my keen hearing I overheard them agreeing with her suggestion, but they would rather be shaved bald than tell her so. "They ought to pay you to patrol this place," I suggested. Parvattani looked offended.

"I have my mission," she replied simply.

So did we. I kept my eyes open, and Massha read her magik detector as we watched the crowd. I really hoped the fake Skeeve would show his face again. The longer this investigation took, the more I really wanted to get my hands on him.

A loud buzzing sound erupted from Par's pocket. He brought out the orb.

"We have a situation," he informed me. "I think we have your Klahd."