Robert Asprin - Myth 14 - Myth-Taken Identity

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MYTH-TAKEN
IDENTITY
ROBERT ASPRIN and JODY LYNN NYE
ONE
FizzZAP!!
A lightning bolt snaked through a crack in the door, barely missing my head. Little lower, and I would
have been fried. Even the tough, green-scaled hide that every Pervect is born with wasn't enough to
make me immune to fire.
This was starting to get serious! I thought they would give up when the two blue plug-uglies realized
they couldn't simply break the door of our tent down, but now they were turning to magik. Who would
have guessed the scrawny management type with them was a magician!
I smelled smoke and realized the lightning bolt had set fire to my favorite armchair. Trying to control
my temper, I reviewed my options. I could wait them out and let them waste their firepower until they
got bored, or I could open the door and tear the three of them into little quivering scraps.
At the moment, I was favoring the second choice. I had really liked that armchair.
Bill collectors!
I never thought one would come here, to M.Y.T.H., Inc.'s old headquarters in the Bazaar at Deva. Not
one of my erstwhile companions was profligate with money; we're all too smart to stiff a creditor and
had plenty of cash to pay their bills anyhow. Of all people, the least likely to attract unwanted attention
over money was my ex-partner Skeeve. Yet the trio on the other side of the flap insisted he'd run up
bills and stiffed the vendors.
"I say, Aahz," a deep voice beside me intoned.
"Chumley!" I said, spinning around. "You scared me out of a century's growth."
"So sorry! Doing a spot of interior decorating?" Chumley asked, nodding toward the burning recliner.
Purple-furred and possessed of a pair of moon-colored eyes of odd sizes, the Troll stood head,
shoulders, and half a chest higher than I did.
"That smoke is bad for the paintings on the walls, what?"
"Don't tell me," I growled. "Tell the three bill collectors outside."
"Bill collectors?"
The Troll's shaggy brows drew down slightly. His brutish appearance was at odds with his natural flair
for intellectual discourse, a typical misconception about the male denizens of the dimension of Trollia
from which he hailed. Trolls deliberately concealed their intelligence, so as not to overwhelm beings in
other dimensions who couldn't handle facing both mental and physical superiority at the same time.
Chumley did good business as freelance hired muscle under the nom de guerre of Big Crunch.
"An error, surely?"
"Sure must be," I agreed. "They come from a place they call The Mall, on Flibber. They're looking for
Skeeve. They say he skipped out on a big fat bill."
"Never!" Chumley said, flatly. "Skeeve's honesty and sense of fair play would never allow him to do
such a thing. I've seen them demonstrated in many an instance when he had a choice to make between
profit and the right thing,
and he has inevitably chosen to do the right thing."
I scowled. Skeeve had let plenty of profit go by the wayside for some pretty outlandish reasons, not all
of which I understood, though I had supported him.
"That's what I thought. Ever heard of this Mall?"
"Not I. Shopping is little sister's purview, what?"
The door behind me shook. They weren't going to get through that door with anything less than
antiballistic missiles, and I hoped that the Merchants Association that ran the Bazaar would notice
before they rolled up a launcher. Chumley threw his not-inconsiderable weight against the flap with
mine, and it stopped quivering.
You may ask how a mere tent could withstand magikal attacks. To start with, most of the tents in the
Bazaar were built to hold out against a certain amount of magik, but our place was special even here. It
might look like a humble and narrow marquee on the outside, but behind the entrance was a spacious
luxury villa occupying a large wad of extradimensional space. In other words, as a guy I used to know
put it, it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. My unwanted guests couldn't burn the place
down or blow it up. For a spell to cross that dimensional barrier would take a lot more firepower than
these guys could ever be capable of summoning up, but the interface that allowed us to walk out of the
door that bridged the gap had to remain fairly permeable, hence my current problem. Except for back
door into the host dimension, Blut, home of vampires and werewolves—a dimension, by the way, that
had once tried to have me executed on trumped-up charges—the only way to walk out was obstructed.
"They're looking for 150,000 gold pieces," I said, with some irritation.
"A princely sum! You are certain that Skeeve couldn't have incurred the debt?"
"Pretty positive," I said carefully.
I hadn't been hanging around with him myself for some months. It was a painful subject, but Chumley
knew that.
"Tananda's been with him for the last several weeks, on
Wuh.* She popped out of here a minute ago, headed for Trollia. You just missed her."
"Oh, blast," Chumley said. The door flap responded with an inward thump, and we shoved ourselves
against it again. "I came here looking for her, don't you know. Mums sent me here to get her. The
redecoration of the home hearth has reached a stage where our dear mater wishes another female's
point of view on choices of color and texture. Still, there is a silver lining to the cloud: I shall be glad
to miss the resulting arguments."
"Go back when the shooting stops, huh?" I deduced.
"Quite right," the Troll agreed. "By the way, if it began as a mere fact-finding enterprise on the part of
our adversaries outside, how did this situation escalate to our present state of hostilities?" He nodded
toward the door.
"I have no idea," I said, innocently. "They asked me where Skeeve is, and I flat out refused to tell
them. Then they got upset. They threatened to ruin his reputation as a deadbeat, and I offered what I
thought were polite and well-thought-out reasons why they shouldn't."
"I see."
Chumley must have run through the scenario in his head. If he imagined a terse argument that got
progressively louder and ended up with the two toughs who flanked the shrimp with the clipboard
reaching into their bulging tunics in a sort of weapon-drawing way, he would have pretty much
captured the sequence of events. We've known each other for a long time, and he was more than
familiar with my temper.
"They are mistaken, of course?"
"Positive. Besides, this ain't his style. They read me a list of things Skeeve's supposed to have bought,
like Trag-fur coats, a skeet-shooting outfit, a twelve-string guitar that was supposed to have been
owned by some famous bard, and just about everything that'd be behind Door #3."
* See MYTH Alliances
I paused and shook my head.
"It's not what Skeeve would splash out on. A home for destitute cats, yes. Fifty percent of a casino,
yes. A bucket of luxury goods adding up to a small kingdom's entire GNP? I don't think so. And
besides, Skeeve never spends money he doesn't have. It's not like him. The signature they produced on
some bills looks like his, but I am sure it's a fake. For one thing, it said 'Skeeve the Magnificent.' Even
when the kid got a big head he usually saved the fancy titles to impress kingdom officials. I mean, he's
surprised me a bunch of times in the last few months, but there's too many inconsistencies in this even
for a Klahd."
"Then it behooves us, don't you think," Chumley said, "to find out who has run up this bill in his
name?"
I glimpsed the D-hopper on the table where I'd set it down. It had been a gift from Skeeve, sent via
Tanda, completely unexpected but totally within the character of the kid's sometimes foolishly
generous nature.
"You bet it does!" I announced fiercely. "Nobody messes with my pa—ex-partner without having me
to answer to. His reputation is worth more than any little bill, or any honking big bill, either. What are
you doing this afternoon? I could use some backup."
"Nothing at all," Chumley said, with a grin. "I would be honored to aid in such an enterprise. But how
do we leave here? The way is blocked, as you point out, and I have very limited skills in the
department of enchantments. Mums sent me here. I expected to have Tanda transfer me back."
"No problem," I said airily, sauntering over and picking up the D-hopper. I smacked it into one scaly
palm and brandished it at Chumley. "Poetic justice sent us a way out."
We barred the entrance to the tent with what remained of the living-room furniture, then bamfed out.
We flipped over to Klah first. Cross-spatial hopping is
how Chumley and I, who otherwise have little in common as species, are both occasionally called
"demons," which is short for "dimensional traveler." Over the centuries the word has become corrupted
in a host of dimensions, which meant that referring to ourselves by that handy designation occasionally
resulted in us being met by angry mobs with pitchforks and torches. In any case our appearance would
speak against us. Nowhere else on Klah, or so I assumed, would one encounter a well-muscled, green-
scaled, yellow-eyed, debonair Pervect or a huge, shaggy, purple Troll.
We made sure to materialize nowhere near the remote forest inn where Skeeve had holed up to study
magik on an uninterrupted basis (well, that was the theory, anyhow), but in the vicinity of the kingdom
of Possiltum, where for a while Skeeve had held a pretty good job as Court Magician, with me as his
"assistant" and financial agent. Chumley and I could provide all the muscle and brains we were going
to need for any information-seeking mission, but we needed an expert on shopping centers.
"You sure we can't haul Tananda loose to help us out at The Mall?" I asked again, as the turrets of the
royal palace hove into view at a distance through a spare haze of trees. "She's the most comprehensive
power-shopper I know."
We started down the hill where we'd materialized, following a sheep trail.
"Not a chance," Chumley said with regret, kicking gorse out of his way with his big feet. "The fireballs
Mums would throw if both of us turned our back on her project now I would simply not like to
consider. What about Bunny? She has considerable skills in the retail-therapy sector."
"It'd be hard to extract her without alerting Skeeve something was up. I don't want to bug Skeeve over
a minor misunderstanding."
Bunny was also a Klahd, but a sophisticated, beautiful, and streetwise one, the niece of a Mob boss
known as the Fairy Godfather.
"Besides, it'd be good to make sure we have someone we can trust looking after him."
I felt in my pocket for a message ball. These handy-dandy little spells, which had been making their
manufacturer rich in the Bazaar, could find whomever you addressed them to, even cross dimensions
to a limited extent. I scrawled Bunny a quick note on the parchment, tweaked the spell into an
outbound globe of golden light, and flung it into the air. It hovered for a moment, then zinged off in
the direction of the inn.
"And you don't want to involve Skeeve personally because ..." Chumley began.
I scowled. There were plenty of reasons, but I didn't want to talk about some of them.
"The last person you'd believe protesting his innocence is the guy you accused, right? That's just what
you'd would expect him to say. It's like saying you're looking for the real arsonist, when everyone can
see the lighter in your pocket. Why, I remember a number of years ago when I was pricing magikal
security for a Gnomish funds transfer service, and one of the little guys whose cash register was
always short kept going on about how he saw some mystery employee taking crates of gold out of the
door just before the supervisor was coming through, and—"
Chumley interrupted me hastily. "So he would be a poor witness to his own defense, eh? That does
leave Massha as our best prospect. Her grasp of bazaars and other vending emporia is unparalleled
except by the aforementioned others."
Massha had originally signed on with us as Skeeve's apprentice, and had recently taken over his gig as
Court Magician. She'd settled in nicely in Possiltum, making friends with Queen Hemlock and
marrying the head of the army, General Hugh Badaxe, one hell of a guy, and a man of impressive
physique to match Massha's own.
The large, round, chiffon-draped figure, definitely female, floated around the small room like a
balloon. The Lady Magician of the court of Possiltum had a knack for- dressing that would be gaudy
even compared to a Mardi Gras float. Her bright orange hair was drawn up into a knot on top of her
head, where it wouldn't war directly with the ruby-colored harem-girl pants and vest that left her wide
midriff bare. Silk slippers in a screaming aqua only added a further jarring note. And around her neck,
wrists, ankles, fingers, and waist hung dozens of gold or silver chains, bracelets, rings, baubles,
bangles, and beads. If I knew our Massha, every single adornment packed some kind of magikal
punch.
"So, what's the deal, Hot Shot?" Massha asked, sifting through her chests of impedimenta for the swag
that packed the most punch.
Colorful scarves were draped all over the room. Necklaces and rings all sparkling with power even to
my disenchanted eyes slithered through her fingers as she sought just the right items.
"You don't drop in very often, and the last thing I ever thought I'd hear fall from your scaly lips is 'do
you want to go to The Mall with me?' I mean, I'm happy to help. I owe you for helping me out on
Brakespear, and plenty of times before that."
"Never mind that," I said, preoccupied with the present predicament. (I knew I was teed off when I
started thinking in alliterations. That poetic bumf was for Chumley or Nunzio. I like to think of myself
as a straightforward kind of guy.) "How come you know all about The Mall?"
"I was wondering the same thing," Chumley added. The Troll was perched on the lid of a huge chest of
drawers, where he was out of Massha's way as she bustled with intent. "Today's the first time I'd heard
about it."
She stopped and gave us the kind of sardonic look you offer to someone who just asked how is it you
know, water is wet, then her face softened.
"Any woman could tell that it's been a long time since
either of you had a sweetie you wanted to buy something special for." Massha chuckled deeply.
"I've been rather busy," Chumley said uncomfortably. If his thick fur had been skin, it would have
been deepening with embarrassment.
"What's your point?" I asked quickly, rather than give her another place to stick a needle. My personal
life, or lack of one, was no one's business but mine.
"Well," Massha said, turning toward us with a handsome rosewood coffer, "if you had ever been there,
you'd know that it is becoming the place to pick up hot items like these."
She grabbed a handful of swag out of the box and thrust it toward us.
I bent forward for a look. Even my jaded eye instantly detected there was something special about the
jewelry. I picked up one piece and took a close look at the stones.
"Unusual cut," I murmured. "Unusual metals, too, if it comes to that."
Cabochon gems with incised slashes across their bases, which made pretty patterns when you looked
down on their dome sides, were set in metals that flashed their own rainbow hues. I had never seen
anything like them, but Massha was right about my not having any good reason at present to shop for
jewelry.
"Hugh bought me these," she said, turning over bracelet after necklace after brooch. Then she
brandished a handful of rings. "And I bought these for myself, each from a different magik seller. This
one's a heat beam, this one can generate minor illusions ... and this one's plain gorgeous. I had to have
it. It'll just knock your eyes out."
We leaned close for a look, then everything went black.
"What the hell just happened?" I demanded.
"Sorry," Massha's voice replied.
In a moment light returned. She looked sheepish.
"I didn't mean to invoke the ring. It really does knock your eyes out, or rather, your vision. It's
temporary. This is the kind of good stuff you can find at The Mall. It's vast,
but they only seem to attract the high-end merchants. The Bazaar has a little of everything, but you're
not going to find whoopee cushions or dragon-whistles in The Mall. What's your interest, since you
have never gone shopping there?"
"It's Skeeve," I said, with a grimace.
"Is he in trouble?" Massha asked, cocking her head and pursing her big lips.
"I don't know," I replied.
I explained my visitors and their purported mission.
"My guess is someone is trying to pass himself off as Skeeve. That's smart and dumb, because no one
is gonna question a wizard is he who he says he is, with the exception of that wizard's friends. I'm
convinced that Skeeve was never on Flibber, or shopped at any Mall. It looks like my confirmation's
here." '
As if to echo my statement, a winking light appeared at the window. I opened the casement, and the
fist-sized globe dropped into my hand. The glow was purple now instead of gold, indicating a reply
was enclosed. As soon as I touched the globe it dissolved into a piece of parchment. The Deveel in the
Bazaar who made them was growing rich— this month; next month some other manufacturer would
undoubtedly figure out how to make them and undercut the first guy.
To my relief the writing on the paper was Bunny's. In the message she said no, Skeeve hadn't budged
from Klah except for his outing to Wuh, he was fine, she would make sure to keep him at the inn for
the duration, and where was this Mall? Women. Some things are just universal.
"That's it. Bunny says the kid's never been to Flibber. The debt's not his, and that's all I need to know."
"So you wish to deliver a warning to the counterfeit?" Chumley asked, aiming one moon-shaped eye at
me.
To the uninitiated, a huge purple-furred Troll with odd-sized eyes might look amusing and relatively
harmless, but no one ever makes one mad twice on purpose.
"I want to do more than that," I said, baring my teeth.
"There's the matter of over a hundred thousand gold pieces. Someone incurred those bills, and I want
them cleared up with absolutely no doubt who is really responsible for paying, because it ain't Skeeve,
and it ain't going to be me or either of you. And someone owes me a new easy chair."
"Agreed," Chumley said. "My goodness, a hundred thousand would put a largish hole in the family
exchequer, what?"
"Whew!" Massha agreed. "With that kind of loot I could buy out the Gimmicks 'R' Us store, shelves
and all. Just let me leave a note for Hugh."
With two sets of magikal means to transport us, there was an Alphonse-Gaston moment until we
decided Massha ought to blink us there. I had a D-hopper now, but no one had the experience with
gadgets like Massha. Using the directions we got from an infosearch spell Massha whipped up using
an antique locket set with turquoise buttons, we popped in practically on the front doorstep of The
Mall.
TWO
The bamf that was the displacement of air heralding our arrival also displaced several bodies. When
we appeared, my arms were pinned to my sides by the sheer press of the huge crowd surrounding the
gigantic white building ahead. Pretty majestic, I thought, taking in as much as I could in one glance.
The building had been constructed of white marble, stretching three stories to the gargoyles that ran
around underneath the lip of the roof made of curved red tiles. A pediment underneath the peak on our
side of the building displayed a frieze with a center figure that looked familiar to me. The place was a
temple to Agora, a goddess of shopping centers who held sway in more than one dimension. As far as I
knew she didn't have any influence in Deva; maybe she'd packed up in disgust. Her centers of worship
tended to be orderly, and the only thing you could say about order at the Bazaar was that it had rules of
engagement that if they pertained to fighting, you'd assume you were talking about street fighting, not
war. I'd never had a tussle with Agora that I could recall. I wriggled to get
loose from the crowd and tried to press closer toward the building.
"Oh, no, you don't get ahead that way!" a shrill female voice cried.
I felt myself grabbed from behind by a host of hands and tossed into the air. A snarl of protest from
Chumley and a shriek of surprise from Massha told me that they had been seized, too. Massha had her
gadgets, so she rose over the top of the crowd as the Troll and I were tossed like water buckets in a fire
brigade until we landed with a thump on the ground behind the horde. Female faces glared at us as we
scrambled to our feet.
"What's going on?" I said, trying to hold on to my dignity and temper.
"A sale!" a female Dragonet exclaimed, fluttering her light blue wings excitedly.
"Is that unusual?" Massha said.
"There's one every day in The Mall," the Dragonet's pale green partner asserted glumly.
"But not at Cartok's," his mate corrected him. "Seven percent off everything in the shop!"
Seven percent didn't sound like much of a discount to me, but most of the shoppers seemed to think it
was a good deal.
"How come there's a crowd out here?" I asked.
"They don't open until ten," the blue Dragonet said. A clock in Agora's belly up on the pediment
showed that the minute hand was still a short distance from striking the hour. "We saw you try to line-
hop. They'll tear you apart if you try."
"We'll stay back here," I said, holding my hands up in surrender.
But one small male with a domed head, deep blue skin, and tall, narrow, double-pointed ears seemed
heedless of the danger. I watched curiously as he shoved his way into the mass of shoppers and
plunged doggedly forward. Got tossed back again and again, landing at Aahz's feet. Had to admire the
little guy's perseverance in the face of an obsta-
cle I wouldn't face myself. Tossed back, clothes torn, the beginning of a bright purple bruise under one
eye.
"That's it," he swore as he landed almost at our feet. He picked himself up and dusted himself off.
"One more time they throw me back, and I'm not opening The Mall."
"I'll help," Massha said.
She levitated downward like a big orange balloon and scooped the little man up in her arms. Lightning
bolts and missiles of various types flew at her from the irate crowd as she flew him toward the front of
the line, but she dodged them all. At the door she let the little man down, then sailed up out of the way
as the twelve-foot-high doors flew open, and the horde of shoppers poured forward.
Massha sailed back to us and settled down, a satisfied look on her face.
"Not a bad thing to start the day with a good deed," she remarked.
"Let's go," I said impatiently, as people surged past us on every side. "C'mon, Chumley."
Massha yelped as a furry shape hurtled past her.
"He's got my purse!" she shouted.
"I'll get him," Chumley offered gallantly, and made as if to dash after the little brown creature. Massha
grabbed the Troll's arm.
"Never mind," she said with a smile. Putting two fingers in her mouth, she blew a sharp whistle.
The bounding creature hauling the orange purse nearly as large as it was let out a cry of despair as the
purse seemed to grow legs. It galloped forward, caught up with its captor, opened its mouth, and
engulfed the creature in one bite, then snapped shut. Massha retrieved the struggling handbag.
"Now what'll I do with it?" she wondered.
"And what is it?" Chumley asked, as we bent over the purse to look. I opened the handbag a crack and
stuck my hand into it. My skin's pretty tough, compared with Trolls and Jahks, being covered with a
handsome layer of scales. The critter tried to bite my fingers, but I got it by the scruff and hauled it out.
"A rat!" was all I had time to say before it went for the tendons in my wrist.
It caught the pressure point under my thumb between its long, sharp front teeth and chomped down. I
snarled in pain. My fingers went limp. Before I could grab the little monster with the other hand and
摘要：

MYTH-TAKENIDENTITYROBERTASPRINandJODYLYNNNYEONEFizzZAP!!Alightningboltsnakedthroughacrackinthedoor,barelymissingmyhead.Littlelower,andIwouldhavebeenfried.Eventhetough,green-scaledhidethateveryPervectisbornwithwasn'tenoughtomakemeimmunetofire.Thiswasstartingtogetserious!Ithoughttheywouldgiveupwhenthe...

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