Myth-Told Tales

She held out her other arm. Her erstwhile partner lay across it. When I let the illusion drop, nothing remained but a few tatters of cloth and some ashes. They crumbled to the floor.

'Thank you for what you did,' she said. 'But I don't think itll be enough to help.'

I glanced over at the judges' table. The brass girl I knew was standing behind the gold judge, pouring molten liquid into a glass. She caught my eye with a sad look and shook her head. Bunny saw it, too.

'I can't win this,' Bunny said. 'I'm ready to give up.'

'No,' I insisted. 'You can win it. There's still tomorrow.'

'And that is what I'd do with the Bub Tube if I am so fortunate to win it,' Bunny said. She put down the parchment on which her speech was written. 'This is awful, Skeeve. It sounds so phony. The Bub Tube won't go to assure world peace, or harmony among the dimensions. I'm not going to be using it, my uncle is. And you know his business.'

I sighed and thrust my hands into my hair. The talent contest had been a disaster. The Pervect had won, with one-fifth of a point more than the Gnome. Bunny was near the bottom of the ranking, about the same as she'd gotten from the beauty parade. This was her last chance to make good.

'This is what you'd do with it if you got it,' I said, hopefully. 'Or you could tell the truth. The honest answer might be such a novelty that it might surprise them into giving you the title.'

'If I got it,' Bunny said. 'This part of the contest is worth fifty percent of the total. At best I'll come in somewhere in the middle.'

I thought hard. 'But you'd move up if your best competition moved down, wouldn't you? It's still possible.'

'It's still possible to win,' Bunny began, 'but they all cheat so much. And they play dirtier than I ever dreamed.' She leaned forward and touched my cheek. 'Does that still hurt?'

'A little,' I admitted, enjoying the play of her gentle fingers. 'What if I could persuade them not to cheat?' Bunny brightened. 'Do you think you can?' 'I'll try,' I said.

'Excuse me,' I said, approaching a cluster of Klahdish women. They were helping one another fasten dresses and tidy their hairstyles. They straightened and eyed me warily. 'Since I come from your dimension I wanted to start with you. Do you think it's fair that everyone has been using magik or technical devices during this contest?'

'Well, no,' said a tall woman with red hair. 'But what about it? If we don't, well lose for certain.'

'My father is a grand wizard in Bream,' said a tiny woman with black hair. 'He wants the Bub Tube, and he gave me plenty of spells to make sure I'll get it'

'I'll get it,' a buxom girl insisted, tossing her long blond tresses over her shoulder, 'if I have to seduce every single judge on the panel.'

'But you're all beautiful, and all intelligent,' I said. 'Why not play it straight and see who wins fairly and squarely?'

'Because we want to win,' they chorused.

'Those Deveels all use magik,' the wizard's daughter said. 'If we didn't cheat, we wouldn't stand a chance.'

'What if I could get them to agree to compete honestly?' I asked.

'Well...' the redhead appeared to consider. 'But everybody would have to do it'

'All right,' I said, overjoyed that my plan was going so well. All my years with Aahz, the master negotiator, were paying off. 'Ill get them to agree.'

But my plan hit a snag in phase two.

'Are you crazy?' the tallest Deveel women asked. 'Honest! You all say that. One of you Klahds asked for a fair fight last time there was a contest on Trofi, and she cheated. We're not going to fall for that again.'

'But the Klahds have given me their word they'll follow the rules,' I said.

Fiery red eyes bored into mine. 'You don't look that stupid. Either you believe them, or you're in on it with them. In any case, get lost!'

She snatched a pot of rouge off the table and threw it at me. Out of reflex I trapped it in mid-air with a tendril of power. The Deveel's eyes widened.

'Who are you?' she hissed.

'Uh, my name's Skeeve,' I said. The way her face closed I knew she had heard of me. I grabbed the jar and set it gently down on the table. 'Look, this is not about me. My friend Bunny ...'

'Forget it!' she said. The others sneered down their long noses at me. 'She has Skeeve the Magnificent working for her? And you want us to give up our advantage? You're insane. We're going to do whatever we have to to win. What are you going to do about that?'

Shoulders sagging, I went back to where Bunny was sitting, reading through her much-revised script. What would I do? What could I do?

The force line under the arena was big enough for me to use if I wanted to enforce honesty in the remaining phase of the competition, but did I have the right to impose my views on the others? If I had no stake in the contest, perhaps, but I was there as a partisan for one contestant who would benefit if everyone stopped interfering with one another.

'How did it go?' Bunny asked, then interrupted me before I could speak. 'Never mind, let me tell you: they all told you to go peddle your papers. But thank you for trying. I'm proud of you for wanting to stay on the straight path. With your powers you could outstrip every one of them. That wouldn't be fair. I've decided I'm going to be honest in my essay, and face the judges on my own merits. Crom knows what they'll do to me— anything is possible, from throwing tomatoes to transformation spells.'

'What's a tomato?' I asked curiously.

'A fruit that's been convinced it's a vegetable,' Bunny said, mysteriously. 'Look, Skeeve, I am sure to lose, but at the very least I can find out who wins the Bub Tube and let Uncle Bruce know whom he has to buy it from. I'm sure he'll be able to make her an offer she can't refuse.'

'What's so important about it?' I pondered, staring up at the rectangular piece of glass on its plinth high above the judges' table. The magik that made it run drew constantly on the force line under the auditorium. Even at this distance I could clearly make out the pictures on its surface. People in brightly colored clothes performed appallingly embarrassing tasks for money. Bad singers that I could just hear over the din in the hall wailed out their tunes, and bad dancers tripped around, all within the confines of the glass box. And over all the noise coming from the Bub Tube was the inexplicable presence of raucous laughter. I hated it, but it was as fascinating to watch as a basilisk, and just as capable of freezing its prey in place. Darkness suddenly enveloped me. 'Hey!' I protested.

'Sorry,' Bunny said, pulling her cloak off my head. 'You fell into its spell.'

'That's dangerous,' I said. 'Is there a way to control it?'

'Yes, there's a guide.' Bunny rose from her seat and went to the foot of the plinth. She came back with a small book featuring an amazingly lifelike illumination on the cover.

I opened it and began to read the instructions. For a magikal item it had amazingly good documentation, down to a listing of the times various images would appear on the surface. 'Wild Kingdom' interested me, 'being the exploits of his noble yet mad majesty King Roscoe the Disturbed, and his Knights of Chaos.'

'Bunny,' I said, an idea dawning on me, 'if it's possible for you to win based on your essay, I'm going to see that you do. And I won't cheat at all.'

The contestants were unusually subdued as they prepared for the essay portion. None of the expected sniping was going on, dropping the sound level so low I could hear the inane chatter from the Bub Tube. Every one of the women were dressed in formal costumes, even the Trollops, for whom formal meant fewer body parts showing than usual. Bunny emerged from her assigned cubicle in a red gown that fit her as if it had been painted on her body. A frown wrinkle was fixed between her eyebrows. I took her hand and swirled her, gracefully for me, around the corner of the room.

'You look wonderful,' I said. 'You're going to be a smash.' Bunny blushed.

I was, unfortunately, more immediately correct than I had anticipated. As soon as Bunny made her appearance, the Deveel women appeared out of nowhere in an angry cloud like sting-wasps.

'Who do you think you are?' they demanded. One of them pushed her back against a mirror. 'Red is our