people were gathered to look at screens similar to computers but somehow not as sophisticated.
'Black and white,' Zol explained, 'not as advanced as in some dimensions, but all-pervasive here on Ronko. I seem to recall having been interviewed some years ago at a media outlet, though I cannot recall precisely where it is.' He turned to Bunny.
She touched the tiny keyboard, and an arrow filled the round mirror. Bunny held the small device level, and gestured over her head. 'This way.'
I glanced into the screens as I passed. The images in them didn't look black and white to me, but a spooky gray blue and chalky white that made the beings pictured look otherworldly. But I was the demon here. Maybe that looked good to the denizens of Ronko.
The television station was a building off to itself at the edge of a big park square. It had been built like one of its own screens, a huge box with a glass front. Inside Ronkonese hurried around three-walled rooms with lights, boxes on wheels and hand-sized padded sticks, which they pushed in front of one another's faces.
I told my story to the receptionist. She gestured us to a seat, and we waited. The lobby had a wall of screens, each showing a different activity. On one, a male gestured with both palms at a map. It had a smiley sun face and a frowny rain cloud facing one another over a dashed line that separated rough halves of the geographical area pictured. In another, a cheerful looking female in a frilly apron held up a cylindrical bottle and a sponge. I guessed she was promoting some kind of cleaning product.
In a while, an eager little Ronkonese female came out to meet us. She was dressed a lot like Bunny often did, in a trim skirt suit with a ruffle at the neck.
'I'm Velda Skarrarov,' she introduced herself, shaking hands with all of us and ending with a pat on Gleep's head. The fact that we all looked very different from natives of Ronko, or that we had a dragon with us, seemed not to faze her at all. 'I'm very interested in your story. Will you come to my studio with me, please?'
We followed her through the chaotic hallways. Velda talked to us over her shoulder as she negotiated her way, striding past busy men in headsets pushing big pieces of equipment. 'I'm an investigative reporter,' she confided. 'They all think I'm insane, a girl trying to make it as a rough-and-tumble journalist, but I know they're wrong.'
'They are,' Zol replied, keeping up with her effortlessly. 'Why, in a few years it will be the norm to see females in your position. Be strong, be intelligent, and when the time comes, be generous to your detractors. They can't see what you do.'
'Why, thank you,' Velda smiled. 'I really appreciate your confidence. Of course I know who you are. I'd like to interview you after I speak to your friend.' 'With pleasure,' Zol assured her.
I didn't like the television station, and I could tell Gleep felt as uncomfortable as I did. A shrill whine permeated every room all of the time. There was no escape from the sound. It made Gleep flatten his ears sideways. I wished mine were as mobile.
'It's the monitors,' Velda informed us. 'They don't like to work, and they want us to know they're unhappy. They don't like to suffer alone.'
'Misery loves company,' Zol intoned. Velda regarded him with the same sheeplike expression Bunny did. I could tell she was falling under his spell.
'Can we get back to the reason we're here?' I insisted, with some heat.
'Oh, yes!' Velda exclaimed, gesturing us into an office, once again with only three solid walls. The fourth was a section of the vast window that made up the front of the building. She showed my friends a line of chairs against a wall, and pointed me at a seat in front of a row of hot lights. 'Please sit there.'
The room was very plain except for a panel behind us that looked like the cityscape we had admired on the way there. Opposite it on the far wall were several big monitor screens, with different scenes on each one.
Two big boxes were wheeled in that looked like siege cannon except that the gun end had a glass lens in it. Each contraption moved on a platform with three or four Ronkonese to steer it. A woman appeared wielding a powder puff and an eyeliner pencil. She applied both to Velda and then to me. Tananda and Bunny, safely out of the way, giggled at my discomfiture.
'Ready?' Velda asked me, as she settled herself in the seat opposite mine in front of the lights. 'Tell me your story.'
I told her the entire tale, beginning with the arrival of Wensley in my study, going on through his description of the Pervects' domination of the Wuhses, our surveillance of them in their lair, their attempt to take over Scamaroni, and our discovery of the new plot against the Ronkonese.
'Those things that we saw in the poster,' I explained. 'We think they're weapons. I believe that the Perverts intend to use your people as soldiers, assembling an army that will be under their absolute command.'
'But Ronkonese are very independent thinkers,' Velda countered. 'We wouldn't make a good army to attack anyone else.'
'But you wouldn't know you were doing it,' I pointed out. 'I told you they've also invented these mind-bending spectacles. If you were wearing those you might march on an unsuspecting enemy thinking you were doing no more than, say, cutting up food.'
Velda nodded sagely. 'I thought those Pervomatics sounded too good to be true,' she said. 'I thought they were just food choppers, like the ads say.'
But I wasn't listening. My attention had been drawn to a Ronkonese female on one of the blue-white screens.
'Today on the Happy Homemaker,' the cheerful female chirped, 'we're pleased to introduce you to the greatest new labor-saving device of the age, the Pervomatic. Just put all your ingredients here on the worktable,' she narrated, piling hunks of meat and vegetables together, 'place the Pervomatic over them, pound on the plunger, and before you know it, you have a hot and tasty Pervert patty, every time! Your family will love them!'
'Food chopper,' I repeated faintly.
'Yes,' Velda said. 'That's what they've been selling them as. But if, as you say, they have the potential to be weapons, then that's a big story! Tell me more. It'll be all over the evening news! You've made my reputation, Mr. Skeeve!'
'I'm sorry,' I blurted, getting to my feet, as the whole reality of my error slapped me in the face. 'There's been a terrible mistake. Never mind. Um. I'm sorry. It's actually a really neat item. You ought to buy it. Uh, goodbye. Please don't run this story.' Velda looked shocked. 'But I have to,' she insisted. 'It's news. It's big news.'
'No. I… you can't. It's wrong. I was wrong!'
'I must speak for my young friend,' Zol interjected, stepping in between me and the glass-eyed cannon. 'This interview is at an end.'
Velda glared at him. 'But we haven't gotten into all the details yet!'
I didn't wait to hear any more. I had to get a breath of fresh air. I rushed out of the studio and into the street. I had to get away. I looked around me wildly, hoping I could remember how to steer the D-hopper to get me home.
But a firm hand closed around my upper arm, and a familiar shape looped around my legs.
'Gleep!' chirped the latter.
'Hold on there, handsome,' insisted Tananda, the proprietor of the aforementioned hand. 'Where do you think you're going?'
'Anywhere,' I replied desperately. 'Away. Out of here!'
'All right, then,' Tananda agreed, with a glance at Bunny and Zol.
The landscape around us vanished.
TWENTY-FIVE
'If you don't want egg on your face, don't make omelets.'
