Myth-Fortunes m-19

by Robert Asprin

  I should have guessed that the Deveels' trick of using extradimensional space had spread to other places. What we walked into was a small stone hut, but inside Samwise had spared no expense. An atrium with a triangular skylight soared above us. On the gleaming gray marble wall ahead, the words "And Company" stood out in high bronze letters. A girl with a wonderful, curvaceous figure but small, round ears, a thick snout, and beady, piglike eyes occupied the reception desk. Like all the other Ghords we had seen, she wore a white linen headdress; a thin, pleated robe; and a fancy beaded necklace. She was dealing with a large, angry Gorgon woman who held onto a smaller male by his forearm. Snakes whipped around the woman's head in fury.

  "You're kidding! Oh, I don't believe it." The Gorgon pushed away from the desk and stormed toward us, dragging her small and apologetic husband along. The few snakes left on his head waved feebly. "Can you imagine?" the Gorgon fumed at us. "Can you imagine? I wanted to buy one of these tombs for my husband—but they say he has to be dead before I put him in it! Of all the nerve. Come on!" She dragged

  her husband away. He stumbled behind her like a toddler.

  "Reminds me of one of my girlfriends," Aahz said fondly, watching her go. "Yeah, those were the days."

  I knew from experience how formidable Pervect women could be. I didn't want to generalize, but I couldn't imagine dating one myself.

  "This is my receptionist," Samwise said, leading us to the desk. "Any calls?"

  "No, sir," the girl said. She glanced at Aahz and primped the edge of her headdress with an upturned hand.

  "Hey, gorgeous," Aahz purred, leaning over the desk to gaze into her eyes. "Howya doin'?"

  She beamed at him, showing peg-shaped teeth at the corners of her jaws.

  "Miss Tauret, these are the people from M.Y.T.H., Inc. Will you have refreshments brought into the main conference room?"

  "Certainly, sir." When she rose from her desk, I saw that her shapely legs ended in thick, cylindrical gray feet.

  Samwise led us down a wide corridor. On the walls, images of buildings had been incised and painted. I read a couple of the labels as I went by. A very gaudy, high-rise building was marked "Carnival Warehouse, Vaygus." A white, almost featureless cylinder said, ".Info Ctr ©, Kobol." A tiny canvas tent was named as "Shaharwadi Empire Headquarters, Deva."

  "I think I've seen that one," I said, pointing at the third image. "I bought some stuff-sacks there. The place is huge!"

  Aahz glanced back at it. "Yeah, I've been there, too. Nice place. Your work, Samwise?"

  The Imp shrugged, a little embarrassed. "Uh, no. These were done by the last architect to own this office, Ahmahotel. He retired a couple of years ago. Here we are. Have a seat."

  We perched on stools around a high, white tabletop. Samwise unrolled a huge yellow parchment. He did his best to smooth it, but its wrinkles wouldn't let it lay flat. The plans looked like they had been deliberately crumpled up, then flattened out.

  "This looks exactly like the building next door," Aahz said, frowning. "If this is a scam, it's a pretty inept one."

  "No scam, Aahz, I swear to you!" Samwise turned the paper around so we could both see it. "It's really different."

  "It looks the same to me," I said.

  "Well ... it was designed by Diksen, too," Samwise admitted. "But he discarded it! He had a lot of good ideas. He's a very creative guy. I knew he wouldn't mind."

  "Uh-huh," Aahz said. "Does he know you're using a plan that you plucked out of his waste-papyrus basket?"

  "Oh, yeah, no problem," Samwise said. I thought he was talking just a little bit too fast, "He drew it up. It didn't work for him. He threw it away. I rescued it and adapted it. He didn't say I couldn't. What's the

  problem with that?"

  "I don't know yet," Aahz said. "Tell us and save us all a lot of time."

  "You said you worked for him," I pressed. "Why aren't you with him any longer?"

  "I had big ideas of my own," the Imp said, describing arcs in the air. "Plenty of big ideas."

  "Such as?" Aahz asked.

  "Financing," the Imp said, with his arms spread triumphantly. "Diksen had to stump up for that whole thing out there by himself. I came up with a much better idea to build my dream pyramid. It's a cooperative venture. Every buyer helps find more buyers. The more they bring in, the lower their buy-in becomes. It's a win-win proposition."

  Aahz groaned. "That's just what I was afraid of. Why didn't you tell us that in our office in the Bazaar and let me say 'no' then? C'mon, kid, we're leaving." He stood up.

  "Aahz, just listen!" Samwise begged.

  BOOM! The floor lurched out from under me. I pushed away from it with a handful of magik and retrieved Aahz before he hit the ground. Samwise was tossed sideways. He grabbed onto a hank of air and steadied himself.

  "What was that?" Aahz demanded as soon as his feet were back on the ground. "An explosion?"

  "No, nothing like that, I'm sure," the Imp said. He hurried out into the hallway. A Ghord with the face of a bull rushed toward him. He whispered in Samwise's ear.

  "Oh, no," Samwise said. He strode toward the doorway, but it was too late. A fist-sized knob of black buzzed in the door and hit him smack in the chest. It backed up a handspan and zipped up to the Imp's eye level. It shook a tiny finger in his face.

  "Have I not told you a thousand times? It has happened again!"

  Samwise took a pace back and rubbed the point of impact. "Beltasar," he said weakly.

  I regarded the newcomer curiously. Since my first visit to the Bazaar at Deva, I had made friends and acquaintances that ranged from the size of a building down to the size of my thumb. I had thought at long distance that Scarabs were all black, but Beltasar was an iridescent blue with complicated designs incised on her shell in bright coral, turquoise, and gold. Her large, round eyes were also turquoise, and they were fixed with disapproval on the Imp.

  "Another stone came right off our backs!" she exclaimed. "Unauthorized use of an unregistered magician on a union site will get you fined ten gold pieces per incident."

  "There aren't any magicians working today," Samwise squawked. "It has to be your fault. You dropped a stone? Whose was it? What will my clients say?"

  "They'll say you run a dangerous operation," Beltasar said, firmly. "It landed on your building."

  "What?" Samwise yelped. He hurried outside, the Scarab flitting next to him. We followed.

  Chapter 4

  "All that matters in real estate is location, location, location."

  —Imhotep

  Outside, the air was full of flitting Scarabs, all humming with alarm. The Ghord laborers, too, had all stopped working. They had gathered around the building to look at the accident. I turned to gawk. One of the carved blocks lay at an angle on top of the And Company office building, flattening a corner of the structure to rubble. I couldn't believe how large it was up close. Klah was full of family cottages smaller than this single piece of rock. It must have weighed tons. Nothing short of a major cataclysm or magik could have tossed it from the top of the partly-built pyramid. It would take heavy lifting equipment to move.

  I peered inside the office. It was unaffected, since it didn't exist in this dimension. The secretaries and clerks continued about their business with only an occasional glance out the door at us. Miss Tauret gave me a broad wink and went back to her papyri.

  "Could've thrown it over here themselves," Aahz said suspiciously, looking the accident up and down with an expert's eye. "Pretty nifty action. No way to tell what direction it came from. Take a look at the power lines."

  I shook my head. "No fluctuations that I can see, but those lines are strong. Any magik that was dipped out of one wouldn't leave a trace. Or it could be an overload. That black line just under our feet is bucking like a bull goat."

  "We could have been killed!" exclaimed a Ghord with a long bird beak. "It is one of the ancient curses! Someone must have left gum on the paving stones!"

  The rest of the crew
joined in with their panicked suggestions of the cause of the disaster.

  "What are you doing?" Samwise screamed at his staff, waving his arms. "Go back to work! Beltasar, get this rock off my office!"

  "Sign a work order," Beltasar said, crossing her upper two sets of arms. "My people get regular hourly pay plus hazard pay plus off-site supplement."

  Samwise groaned and smacked his forehead with his palm. "All right, all right! Get the paperwork ready. I'll sign it. What choice do I have?"

  I didn't notice any satisfaction, smug or otherwise, on the Scarab's little face as she whipped a document from under one wing, flicked it open, and handed it to him. "Sign here. We'll have it off your building in two wags of a Sphinx's tail."

  The Imp resignedly took the pen she proffered.

  "Not so fast." Aahz pushed in between them. "You brought me here to check for holes in your operation." He turned to the Scarab. "He signs nothing from this day forward unless it goes past me first."

  "Fine," Beltasar said.

  Aahz scanned the page. He grunted and shoved it toward Samwise. The Imp signed it.

  Tucking the document back under her wing, Beltasar flitted away.

  "You see what I'm dealing with?" Samwise appealed to us. "Thanks for agreeing to help."

  "I'm not committing," Aahz said. "But if we do take you as a client, I can't watch you make bad decisions in front of me."

  Aahz and I stood back as a swarm of USHEBTI workers poured down from the worksite and ascended the side of the small stone building. If I hadn't seen them do it before, I wouldn't have believed it possible. As Beltasar shrieked out orders, the wave of black dots spread out around the fallen slab. Slowly, as if under its own volition, it moved away from the broken side of the building. I looked closely, both with my open eyes and my mind's eye, and I didn't see a trace of magik. The Scarabs were just that strong.

  "I could help them," I offered.

  "No!" Samwise exclaimed, palms out in alarm. "Thanks, but no thanks. If you interfere with the Scarabs, they'll strike, and I'm already months behind schedule. Look, come out with me and see the rest of the site. I think you'll like it."

  We passed in through a narrow gate. Beside it was a large sign.

  This is an And Company Construction! We pride ourselves on Providing a Safe Working Environment. Days Since Last Accident . . .

  There was a blank underneath. The number '43' had been written there at one time, but it had been scratched out. The numbers that had replaced it over time included 8, five, two, one, one, one-half, and at the moment the sign proclaimed "Eight hours since our last accident!" As I passed, a hawk-faced Ghord came over and dejectedly drew a line through it with a pencil. I looked uneasily at Samwise. He ignored the Ghord, me, the sign and anything except the existing construction work.

  "Isn't it wonderful?" he exclaimed, waving his arms at the heap of rocks.

  I was unimpressed.

  The guards and the other employees regarded us with suspicion as we followed Samwise to the foot of the pyramid.

  "This is Phase One," he said. "It's already eighty percent sold. We're starting Phase Two pretty soon. It'll be even more exciting than this one!"

  Aahz looked up at it, his fists on his hips.

  "What a tower of junk," he said.

  "No, it isn't!" Samwise protested. "You have to let it grow on you, Aahz."

  "If anything like that grew on me, I'd have it removed," Aahz retorted.

  "You just need to see it from a better angle," the Imp said. "This way."

  I followed him to the left, past heaps of sand and gravel, small bundles of personal items, and a Ghord with a monkey's face grilling vegetables over a smoking fire. The three layers of carved stones didn't strike me as exciting— far from it. To me, it was just an upright graveyard. Still, there was something I couldn't define. As we got closer, the unprepossessing chunks of incised stone took on a new glamour. I reached out to touch the carvings on one of the monoliths that even on its side rose above my head. It tingled under my fingers. Alone, they were just inanimate hunks of mineral. Together, though, they created their own magik. I took a deep breath. I felt almost as if I could hear voices from the past, tingling bells, the call of horns, the bray of animals and voices, voices, voices. I took my hand away, and

  the sounds and tingling stopped.

  "That's amazing," I said.

  Aahz didn't seem to find any wonder in it.

  "It's just a heap of rocks," he said flatly. "Why would anyone invest a silver coin in it, let alone thousands?"

  "Ah, but this isn't the best way to view it," Samwise insisted. He beamed at Aahz. The crisis was over, and he was a salesman again. "Now, follow me. Please stay out of the way of the workers. I have to pay them an interruption fee if they have to pause more than 1.5 seconds to let someone by who is not on the payroll."

  "You sure have to put up with a lot of regulations," I commented.

  "The Deveel is in the details," Samwise said with plaintive resignation.

  "In other words, some Deveel wrote your employment contracts," Aahz growled. "That'll cost you extra if we have to untangle it."

  "Whatever it takes, Aahz," Samwise said. He patted the stone I had touched. "See, down here are the economy stones. A whole family can have the eternity of their dreams for not much more than a year's income in Imper. Engraving and other services are extra, but can be arranged for in perpetuity. I think you will find we don't have a single unhappy customer."

  "Uh, what's your . . . occupancy rate?" I asked. In Klah, stepping on someone's grave was punishable by a curse.

  Samwise turned to me. "Do you mean, has anyone taken up permanent residence here yet? No, young sir, not yet. Barring accidents, I doubt that will happen for many years. By then, I hope the Valley of Zyx will take its place among the dimensions' greatest destinations! Now come with me. This always wows the customers."

  He felt around with one foot, then began to climb, step by step, up an apparently invisible set of steps. I looked more closely with my mind's eye and saw that a staircase had been constructed of magik. It reached upward at a diagonal, leading to a point high above us where it intersected with three other tiers of steps.

  Aahz stumped upward, unfazed by stairs he couldn't see. I kept some magik available in case I needed to keep myself from falling. I was good at flying, after years of practice, but I hated having the floor drop out from under me.

  "You can see what a great location we have here. We're positioned in the heart of the western portion of the valley. Over the hills to the east is the city of Aser, the seat of the empire. It comprises a marriage of old and new, a city of millennia with a new outlook. Why, the Pharaoh herself is a big fan ..."

  "Just the facts, pal," Aahz interrupted him.

  "That is a fact, good sir!" Samwise exclaimed. "Why, all the best people are going to be interred here. Only the best. They are the most forward-thinking of consumers, wholehearted supporters of the cooperative scheme. Dying is the new living!"

  Supported on the invisible steps, we walked right over the heads of the Ghord stonecarvers. I'd always

  been fascinated by artisans who used skill instead of magik. Dressed in the same kilt and headcloth I had seen on everyone in Ghordon, they knelt before the slabs in place, hammer and chisel in hand, tapping away. I thought there was already plenty of ornamentation on each of the stones, but the craftsmen and -women worked away at minute details, almost bringing the images to life. In fact, a hawk-headed female incised on a nearby stone turned to look at me. When it did, the two female Ghord carvers kneeling at the rockface glanced over their shoulders. They giggled. One leaned forward and tapped something on the stone wall with her hammer and chisel. The other bent to read it, then hammered out a small carving, which her friend read. They giggled again. So did the image of the hawk-faced woman. I grinned at them awkwardly. What was so funny? I'm told I'm not bad looking. I had run a company. I had faced insane wizards. I had made friends and enemies across
the dimensions. So what they were laughing about?

  I really didn't understand women. All my choices in the dating field thus far had been bad ones.

  "C'mon, kid," Aahz called. I hurried to catch up.

  Chapter 5

  "You can take it with you."

  —Tutankhamen

  Samwise was still talking. "... So I said to myself, who wouldn't want their very own monumental tomb? Everyone has to die sometime. So why not find like-minded individuals, with money, of course, to create that fantastic piece of real estate in time for . . . in time for . . . " The Imp sought a suitable euphemism.

  "... Their permanent nap?" Aahz supplied.

  "Mister Aahz!" Samwise said, shocked. "I have the greatest respect for my clientele. It's something that everyone's going to need eventually, even Vampires; and Ghordon is a dimension at easy access to Limbo as well as Klah and Deva. It can't miss!"

  Aahz gave Samwise a wary eye, but I put it down more to his dislike for Limbo than the idea of a modest commission per sale. We could do well financially out of the deal. I just kept thinking there had to be a catch.

  We passed the top tier of guards. They bowed to Samwise and looked us over pretty carefully. Though most of them were Ghords, I was surprised to see a Titan, a Troll, and a few other surprising species represented.

  "You do a little hiring from outside the dimension," I mentioned casually, tilting my head toward the Titan. Aahz's eyebrows rose when he saw him. Titans—gigantic, well-muscled and silver-skinned—had notoriously bad tempers. They disliked working for anyone but themselves. Rumor had it that they even ate their own children if they were displeased. I took that last with a grain of salt. After all, I had heard some pretty disgusting rumors about Pervects. Most of them weren't true, no matter how much Perv spent on P.R.

  "Oh, yeah," Samwise said. "They are here to work off the cost of their own pyramid tombs—their piece of the rock, so to speak."