Phebene grinned demurely. «Deviance can be fun,» she whispered in his ear. «You should try it sometime.» The Greatkin of Imagination grunted. «Who do you think Trickster gets his ideas from?» he scolded. «Then hush, dearest bother, and let's see what Trickster had in mind.» Jinndaven crossed his arms over his chest and turned his scowling attention back to Rimble. «As I was saying,» continued the little Greatkin. «If you should find yourselves boxed in someday—stuck with only one identity as it were—then I suggest you provide yourselves with a way out of this difficulty. Me. Some body has to embody the Primordial Multiple Personality. For Presence sake,» he added coquettishly. Then looking insufferably pleased with himself, Trickster added, «Oh come on, you guys—you've got to admit, I'm a great loophole. And Presence knows,» he said pointedly to the Greatkin of Red-Tape, «every system needs a loophole.» Sathmadd looked dubious. «And how do you propose to do this?» Rimble grinned broadly and played his trump. «By retaining my changeable form, of course. By being the exception to the rule,» he added while doing a small contrariwise turn. «By creating the First Loophole in the First System!» Then he began laughing uproariously. «Hoo-hoo!» he chortled. «Gotcha!» There was a stunned silence. Rimble's logic was brilliant. The Greatkin groaned, swore, and conceded. In this way did Greatkin Rimble retain his changeable guise (and create the First Loophole in the First System). From that day forth, no one—neither Greatkin nor mortal alike—could ever predict Trickster's next form. He might appear as a crooked stile, a dance of autumn leaves, or the sensual smile on a stranger's face across the room. Trickster could be anything and anywhere at anytime. Take this morning for instance: this morning Greatkin Rimble was busy impersonating a small rock on the side of the mountain path that led to their ancestral home, Eranossa. Rimble literally sat in plain view, but everyone at Eranossa was so accustomed to Trickster's subtlety that no one could find him when it came time to call everyone for the great potluck feast of the Greatkin, the Panthe'kinarok. Themyth, the Greatkin of Civilization and the Greatkin who presided at the Panthe'kinarok, sent Jinndaven after Rimble. She reasoned that only the Greatkin of Imagination would come up with the creativity to locate the little rogue. And she was right.
After an hour's fruitless search for Trickster, it finally occurred to Jinndaven to try the obvious. So he looked right in front of his nose. Not ten feet from him sat Rimble. «There you are!» cried the Greatkin of Imagination in an exasperated, out-of-breath voice. Dressed formally for the upcoming Panthe'kinarok dinner, Jinndaven wore a filmy robe of lavenders riddled with small round mirrors. The bells on the tips of his silver slippers jingled as he trudged through the fresh fall of snow on the mountain's trail. As Rimble did not appear to have heard him, Jinndaven knelt beside the small, asymmetrical rock and whispered, «I see you.» Rimble immediately changed into two-legged form. Like Jinndaven, Trickster wore his best clothes for the great meet of his ragtag family, that once-an-age council they called the Panthe'kinarok. However, Trickster's version of Best Clothes was a little different from Jinndaven's—or that of anyone else in the family. To begin with, nothing matched. Furthermore, each article of clothing on Trickster's person hailed from cultures representing every corner of the known universes. The effect was Positively Ubiquitous—and just slightly unnerving. Naturally, thought Jinndaven as he eyed his bagman brother with a patient expression. He sighed, wiping the sweat of the mountain climb off his brow with a silk handkerchief, thinking that sometimes even the Greatkin of Imagination had trouble keeping up with Trickster. Jinndaven studied the lower half of Rimble's harlequin costume then pulled back warily. «What's that big bulge under your—» «Shhh!» said Rimble, waving Jinndaven silent with a sharp gesture of his small hand. Everything on Rimble was small— except that bulge, thought Jinndaven. Rimble now pointed to a thick tangle of black briars growing a few feet off the snowy mountain trail. Jinndaven stared at the dark briars in silence, wondering what Trickster was seeing that he wasn't. Jinndaven cleared his throat uneasily. «Uh, what exactly are we doing?» Trickster grinned. «We're considering ecstasy.» «We're considering what?» Jinndaven asked, staring even harder at the thorny labyrinth of brambles in front of him. «Ecstasy,» repeated Trickster. «Only I'm renaming it Contrarywise—that's with a 'y' not an 'i.' One of my Improoovements, you know.» Jinndaven looked unimpressed. «Changing the spelling of a word hardly merits the term 'improvement,' Rimble. I mean, how strictly small-time.» «Ha,» replied Trickster with a meaningful shrug. «That's all you know, big brother. That's all you know.» Jinndaven, who was generally fond of Rimble for the most part, gave his sibling a withering smile. Rimble could be so arrogant at times. «I suppose you plan to explain the meaning behind your cryptic remarks?» said Jinndaven. «In due time,» replied Trickster. Jinndaven's eyes narrowed. «Not even a hint?» Trickster pursed his lips. «All right, a hint. Contrariwise with an 'i' is a direction, is it not? The opposite way of things, yes?» «Yes,» agreed Jinndaven. «Utterly contrary.» «Well,» said Trickster rubbing his hands with glee, «Contrarywise with a 'y' is a direction, too. Transposably speaking, of course.» There was a short pause. «That's it!» asked Jinndaven with irritation. «That's the hint?» Rimble rolled his pied eyes. «You're not trying.» «That's because I'm hungry,» said Jinndaven starting to get to his feet. «Which is what I came to tell you: Dinner's almost on.» Rimble grabbed Jinndaven's arm and pulled him back to his previous squatting posture in the snow. «Okay,» said Trickster. «I'll give you a bigger hint.» «Oh, Rimble—I'm hungry!» «Yeah,» snapped Trickster, «and you don't even know what for!» «What?» Trickster let go of Jinndaven's arm and folded his hands primly in his lap, his nose in the air. «Tell the others I'll be along.» Jinndaven eyed him warily. «When?» «When I finish completing the greatest experiment of all time.» Jinndaven bit his lower lip, his curiosity aroused. «Surely you're exaggerating.» «Nope,» said Trickster and went back to watching the tangle of black briars. «But what do you care? You're hungry,» he said in perfect whining mimicry of the Greatkin of Imagination. Jinndaven swore under his breath. His curiosity had just gained on his hunger. And Rimble knows it, too, Jinndaven thought sourly. Calling on the Presence to protect him from Rimble's meddling—a prayer that had yet to be successful—Jinndaven took a deep breath and said, «All right—I'll play. What's the difference between contrariwise with an 'i' and contrarywise with a 'y'?» Trickster turned to look at him, his smile broad. «That's my boy,» he said nodding enthusiastically. «The difference is a teensy, weensy psychic shift. Which translates into Reality as a genetic transpositional element.» There was dead silence. And shock. Jinndaven stiffened so sharply that he fell over in the snow. He scrambled to his knees, took Rimble by the shoulders and shook him. «A mutation on the eve of the Panthe'kinarok?» he cried. «Have you forgotten the mortals? Have you?» Trickster extricated himself from Jinndaven's strong grasp gingerly. «I haven't forgotten anything,» he retorted. «Least of all the mortals. In fact, it's them I'm thinking about.» He grinned. «I've finally found a way to motivate their 'selfish DNA.' We're talking Fundamental Change. Big Time. Very big time.» Rimble shrugged. «One or two more psychic adjustments here, and my latest Improoovement will be ready to fly.» Jinndaven frowned, then seeing the look of absolute mischief in Trickster's pied eyes, Jinndaven paled. «What kind of adjustments, Rimble?» «Well, I just need a little help—» «What kind of help?» asked Jinndaven, wishing fervently that Themyth had sent someone else to find Greatkin Rimble. Trickster winked at him; then before Jinndaven could bolt, Trickster began humming an entrancing little tune, purposefully punctuating it with explosive laughter and drunken smiles. Jinndaven's breathing turned shallow. He made a hasty ball of his lavender handkerchief and began dabbing frantically at his brow and neck. He tried to get to his feet but was swiftly prevented from doing so by Greatkin Rimble. Grabbing Jinndaven's arm with his strong, claw-like grip, Trickster grinned seductively at the Greatkin of Imagination. Then Trickster farted. The sound of it was so loud that the hapless Jinndaven lost his balance and fell backwards into a snowdrift. This sent Trickster into hyena-like giggles. Then, still sitting cross-legged, Greatkin Rimble began to rock from side to side singing the following verse in an unexpectedly pure tenor, the quality of his voice as sweet and piercing as that of a young boy: Will you turn the inside inside-out, And be sanely mad with me? Will you master the steps of my turnabout, And come to my ecstasy? When he finished, Trickster met Jinndaven's eyes briefly, his expression suddenly wistful. «It's a reel,» he said, his voice full of yearning. Jinndaven, who was used to Trickster's quick changes of emotion, (and terrible puns), replied drily, «A real what?» Trickster instantly shrieked with laughter, threw open his harlequin greatcoat, and exposed a gilded penis sheath two feet long. Pretending to masturbate, Trickster moaned and said, «It's a real hard! Care to come? No? But why not? My ecstasy is sobering.» Jinndaven turned scarlet. Well aware that any portion of Trickster's anatomy was subject to change without notice, he stared bug-eyed at the length of Trickster's penis sheath. «I hope you don't intend that thing for me!» Trickster sniffed haughtily, and covered the gilded penis sheath with the black and yellow front of his greatcoat. «Don't be absurd, Jinn. You've neither the courage or capacity.» Jinndaven scowled, his pride stung by his brother's waspish tone. Still, he had to be careful how he responded to this jab of Rimble's. He didn't want to find himself in bed with Trickster. At least not right before the Panthe'kinarok. It would cause talk and there were the mortals to think about. Jinndaven bit his lower lip and shook his head. Tonight of all nights—on the evening of the Panthe'kinarok, he thought raggedly—when the Presence opened the Everywhen, and all things that the Greatkin did and thought translated into Reality! Jinndaven swore. Leave it to Rimble to speak of transposition and «selfish DNA» at such a time. Trickster, who was watching Jinndaven closely, whispered, «Change can be inconvenient.» Jinndaven snorted. «Inconvenient or no, I'd like to point out that my 'courage and capacity» are both substantial. For whatever you have in mind. I am the Greatkin of Imagination,» he added with bruised dignity. Trickster smiled. «I'm sorry, dear fellow,» he said patting the bulge
