“Oh, Skeeve, I need your help!”
“For what?” I frowned. “Did something happen on your vacation?”
Bunny looked abashed. “I wasn't on vacation. I asked for a few days off so I could see my uncle. Don Bruce asked me to do him a favor. He said I was the only one he could trust to do it.”
Her uncle, Don Bruce, the Fairy Godfather of the Mob, had for years employed M.Y.T.H. Inc. to look after its business interests in the Bazaar at Deva. He'd sent Bunny to me in hopes that I'd marry her, to make ties between his operation and mine closer. I prefer to choose my own girlfriends, and I admit I had sold Bunny short when I first met her. Since then I'd come to appreciate her intelligence. She was our accountant and book-keeper. If Don Bruce had sent her on an errand, it was probably a tough one.
“He sent me to get a device called a Bub Tube for him from a dimension called Trofi,” she continued. “I tried, Skeeve, but I just can't get it. It's too much for me.” Her face contorted, and she burst into tears. “I really can't do this.”
I hunted up a clean handkerchief and pushed it into her hands. “I can't believe Don Bruce would send you into a really dangerous situation without backup.”
“Oh, Skeeve, I wish it was dangerous!”
“What?” I asked. “Why? What do you have to do?”
She lifted her face, now smudged with black and green. “Primp, parade, put on enough makeup to cover a dragon, sing, dance, wear a swimsuit in front of a panel of ogling judges, and, throughout the whole thing — smile!”
“That's demeaning,” I said, shuddering. In her place I would rather have faced an active volcano.
“That's what I mean,” Bunny wailed, wringing the handkerchief between her hands. She was normally so composed. I was worried. “I hate it”
“Couldn't I just go in, as a businessman, and meet with the owners of the Bub Tube face-to-face? I could probably negotiate for it. After working with Aahz for so many years I've gotten pretty good at it. If Don Bruce is involved, money should be no object…” She shook her head. I frowned. “I could steal it. My skills are pretty rusty after all this time, but now that I've been practicing magik …”
“It's been tried, Skeeve. Everything has been tried. There's no other way to obtain it. In this dimension there are no business meetings. Only contests. I have to win this beauty contest to get the Bub Tube. It's humiliating.”
I sat back. “Well, that shouldn't be a problem,” I said. “You're beautiful.”
“That's not enough. Every other contestant is cheating broadside, you should excuse the expression, and I can't win. My uncle is counting on me. Will you help me? I could ask Tanda or Massha, but I'm ashamed to tell another woman what I'm going through. I'd rather trust you.”
“Of course,” I said. “But if I can't help negotiate, the only thing I can offer is moral support, and a little magik.”
Bunny looked resigned. “That may be the only thing that will help me win.”
I put together a kit of magikal items that I thought would be of some use. I put food out for Gleep and Buttercup. Bunny assured me that I could come and go between Trofi and Klahd without a problem, so I didn't have to call on any friends to look after them. I would have brought them along, but they'd have added too much to the chaos.
And chaos it was. The D-hopper delivered us into the middle of a shrieking crowd. I jumped, thinking that the shrill voices were raised because of a threat, but it turned out to be the normal voices of several hundred females, all of them with anywhere from one to a dozen attendants primping and coiffing them.
I looked around at the set faces of the contestants. There were several horned and red-skinned Deveel females clad in black and red to accent their complexions. They shot sultry glances at anyone who met their eyes. Pinky-red Imp women, stubbier and less sleek, dressed in dated fashions and too much makeup, sashayed around. A blue-skinned girl I recognized as a Gnome was holding still for four beauticians, each dabbing a different shade of makeup onto her face. She seemed fuzzy, as if she was going in and out of focus as I watched. I noticed a few Klahds, including one man dressed up, not very effectively, as a woman. Plenty of other dimensions were represented. All of the entrants looked determined and a little desperate.
“This must be one powerful magik item,” I commented.
“It is,” Bunny said. “It's up there.”
She pointed to a dais at one end of the vast chamber. High above it on a golden platform was a bulging, rectangular piece of glass with a magickal image flickering behind it I peered at it, and found my gaze caught. Even at that distance I had to make a conscious effort to drag my eyes away from it.
“It causes people to stare helplessly at it for hours,” Bunny said. “My uncle doesn't want it to fall into the wrong hands.”
“Whose?” I inquired.
“Well… anyone's but his.” But the way she hesitated made me think that there was someone specific he wanted to keep it away from. Bunny, if she knew, wasn't going to tell me.
I studied my surroundings. The room, a high-ceilinged chamber lined with mirrored doors on three sides, was a staging area. The center of the fourth wall featured a huge staircase flanked by thick black-velvet curtains leading up into a darkened area. Dozens of makeup tables were laid out in the center of the room. Each was occupied by a beautiful woman, or one of many beings who were undoubtedly considered beautiful in their own dimensions, but to my eye could scare the pith out of a reed. Not far from me sat a huge female Pervect, like Pookie, but nearly a foot taller and half as wide. Considering that Pookie was slender, this one looked unnaturally thin. When you added in the mouthful of four-inch fangs, she looked like a smiling dragon. Wearing lipstick. I gulped. “How can I help?” I asked.
“You've probably noticed how much magik is flying around here, Skeeve. I need you to keep me from dropping too far behind in the contest.”
I felt around for lines of force. Bunny was right a hugely powerful force line ran directly underneath the building, leading toward the staircase. I wondered if the place had been constructed with it in mind. I was able to tap in without difficulty, and discovered that many fellow magicians were doing the same.
“But you know I haven't made too much progress in my lessons yet,” I said. Bunny was the only one of the staff of M.Y.T.H. Inc. that I had brought with me to the isolated inn where I meant to buckle down and study. “The only thing I'm really proficient in is illusion, plus a few very minor tricks.”
“That may be all I need,” Bunny said. “I need to stand out in this crowd, and that won't be easy.”
“But you're…” There was no point in denying the truth. I swallowed and plunged onward. “You're the most beautiful woman in this room. If it's really a beauty contest, you'll win it hands down.”
“If it was that simple,” Bunny said, “I would never have brought you into this. I would have done it for my uncle, and no one would ever know. But I admit I'm out of my depth.”
“Well, I'll do my best,” I said. “Where do we begin?”
“First is the beauty parade,” Bunny said. “It begins in an hour. Ill need you to cover my back.”
Her back wasn't covered, nor was most of her body, during the beauty parade. She wore a brief, bright red bathing suit whose color pretty much matched my face. I was far more embarrassed than she was. Bunny disappeared into a changing room and emerged in a robe. When she shed it I thought steam would come shooting out of my ears. Her outfit started inward from her shoulders and downward from her collarbone and upward and downward from her navel, and left no inch of her spectacularly long, slim legs to the imagination. My hands itched to encircle her waist, which looked small enough that my fingers could meet around it. Above and below, her feminine attributes were … undeniable, yet very much in proportion. On her feet she wore shoes with such high, narrow heels that they made her taller than me.
Bunny's suit, if you could call three wisps and a few strings a suit, was modest compared with many of her fellow
contestants assembled backstage. An Impish woman with a figure I'd once heard Aahz describe as zaftig had on three narrow strips of dark green cloth and an expression that if I gave in to the impulse to put my hands around her waist I'd shortly have no hands at all. It was no trouble at all to restrain myself. A bevy of red Deveel women glittered in silver, black, gold, and copper suits. The Pervect wore a suggestion of golden yellow to match her eyes. A sharklike female, clad in one strip of cloth far down by her tail, swam by in the air. Magik, I remembered with difficulty. That was why Bunny had called me in.
Once she'd donned her… er … suit, she had to put on cosmetics, lots of them. The green stuff she larded around her eyes, she assured me, was harmless, as was the black stuff. The pale cream paint she rubbed onto her cheeks and forehead, I thought, must be a protective layer for the women's faces, because some of the contestants were layering it on so heavily that there was no chance of a hint of sun contacting skin. A huge, insectoid woman wearing a yellow polka-dotted garment had matching goo of bright yellow for her mandibles, with lines of black to accent her multiple eyes. Behind her stretched a queue that had to be hundreds long.
“There's only one prize?” I asked.
“Just one,” Bunny assured me, stroking tar onto her eyelashes and making them stick out like combs. She put the applicator away and looked at me. Strangely enough, under the bright lights all the cosmetics did make her seem very attractive — at a distance. If you got close up, you could see where all the various colors intersected, like a mosaic.
“What happens to all the others?”
She glanced around disapprovingly, then leaned in to whisper. “A lot of them stay around and marry. Trofi has no business interests but contests, but they do a great deal of matchmaking. Males from hundreds of dimensions prize Trofi wives above all others. Sensible men don't bother to come here. It's not worth it. Trofi wives are all what you might call ‘high-maintenance.’”
Well, I wouldn't, because I didn't know what the expression meant, and there was no time to ask for an explanation. Perhaps it had something to do with the costumes and cosmetics, both of which had to be adjusted and added to on the way to the flight of steps.
Up above, it was dark. I was aware of thousands of pairs or sets of eyes glittering in the reflected glow of spotlights swinging above the stage. There was a orchestra fanfare, then all the lights dropped but one. I peered over the edge. A lanky male Deveel, deveelishly handsome in a long-coated black suit and shiny shoes, held a short baton close to his face. He sang into the bulbous top end, and his voice was projected magickally all over the vast arena.
“There she is! / How beautiful! / Your queen of love! / How magikal! / How beautiful and magikal! / Your queen of love she is.”
I found myself humming along. It was catchy. There was a hint of enchantment in the tune, causing me to crane my head to see as the Deveel stretched out his hand toward the steps. The first contestant, a serpentine woman with blue skin, ascended.
The crowd breathed an admiring sigh as the woman slithered gracefully around the stage on the arm of the Deveel host. So far, so good, I thought. The Pervect female ahead of Bunny hissed, showing her long teeth, then flicked her wrist in a meaningful gesture. She was casting a spell!
On the stage, the sighs turned to titters. I glimpsed the smooth head of the snake woman as it dipped low, far lower than I suspect she intended, then vanished entirely. The audience broke out into a laugh.
“She tripped!” Bunny whispered to me.
“Did she fall or was she pushed?” I whispered back, indicating our neighbor by a tilt of my head. Bunny's eyes widened, but she hid the expression quickly as the yellow gaze slid toward us.
The snake woman's cheeks were glowing royal blue by the time she got back to the steps. She shinnied down the railing, cursing under her breath, and was met by a wriggling mass of supporters, all exclaiming how unfortunate it was she'd suffered such an accident. The Pervect smiled smugly, a terrifying sight.
A Deveel woman glided out next. Around her head flitted tiny winged salamanders in rainbow colors, shedding gleaming lights on her face.
“Is that allowed?” a Klahd female demanded furiously, though I could tell by the aura around her that she was wearing magikal enhancements, too, to lift up and add perkiness to a wide bottom, her best feature.
“You see what I'm up against,” Bunny murmured. I concurred. Trofi contests were no game for the faint-hearted.
The Deveel made it almost all the way to the exit when her salamanders started belching fire. Battering at the multicolored blazes burning in her hair, the Deveel made a hasty retreat. I leaped forward to help, but as soon as she hit the stairs she put out the fire with a dampening spell.
Bunny was seventeenth in line. I kept an eye out for ill-wishes and attack spells until she was in the hands of the host. Applause broke out as she stepped gracefully around the stage, the light flashing against her long, smooth legs. The audience hooted and whistled. She smiled, and a thousand little bursts of light broke out in the darkness.
I felt disturbance brewing in the lines of force from not one, but several points. Thankfully most of them were amateurish. I blocked many of them with a turnaround spell that I'd learned from Tananda, causing the effect to rebound upon the caster. An Imper woman three back in line jumped up and down, her shoes burning from the hot-foot she'd meant for my friend. An eight-legged arachnid girl stumbled on all eight feet, falling on her fur-covered derriere. Her mandibles clicked angrily.
A hand picked me up by my throat and turned me in mid-air.
“Gack!” I exclaimed to the Troll glaring into my face. I flailed with both hands, trying to signal that I wanted him to put me down. He paid no attention.
“Hey, youse,” he said, bringing a shard-toothed mouth close. “Take girl and go home! Not go, you be sorry!”
I knew from long association with Chumley, a friendly Troll who worked under the nom de guerre Big Crunch, that most Trolls were more intelligent than they sounded. I kneed him in the nose and braced myself as he dropped me.
“Do you know who I am?” I hissed, glaring up at him. “I'm the Great Skeeve. Perhaps you've heard of me? Bunny there is under my protection. You leave us alone, or youll never be able to set foot in the Bazaar on Deva again! Do you know what I mean?” I gave him a gimlet-eyed stare that I'd seen Aahz use to quail opponents.
It worked. The Troll, while not completely stupid, was no dragon-poker player. He'd heard about me, though obviously not the latest news.
“So sorry,” he said, backing away. “I… don't hurt me, huh?”
Behind him was a Trollop, the female of the species, in a moss gray-velvet bathing suit, who gave me a glare. I kept my guard up, not wanting her to get close enough to read me. Tananda, Chumley's sister, was a powerful magician in her own right. This Trollop could probably wipe up the floor with me. I counted on my reputation, plus the fact that she was going to have to go onstage in a moment. We locked eyes, but I won. She dipped her gaze, and turned away, pretending she didn't see me. “Awww!”
The cry from the audience told me I'd missed something. Bunny returned, her hands over her face. Her makeup had taken a direct hit from a malicious spell, and was running down her face in dark streaks. Her hair was soaking wet, and her bathing suit was beginning to shrink. Someone had cast a quick Rainshower on her while my back was turned. I threw her robe around her and hustled her out of the arena.
“I'm so sorry,” I apologized, escorting her hastily past her grinning co-contestants. The next female, a granite-skinned being in a solid steel bikini, stepped up onstage, with a look that dared anyone to interfere with her. “I wasn't expecting so many attacks at once.”
Bunny walked along smiling, with her head held high, as if nothing was wrong in the entire world. Night had fallen over the town. I followed the torches toward the inn where Bunny had taken rooms for us. Once we were out of sight of anyone involved with the contest, she allowed her shoulders to sag.
“I should have warned you,” she said. “No one's fighting fair. If they're not using spells to puff themselves up, they're using them to knock others down.”
I frowned. “What do the rules say?”
“Strictly forbidden,” she told me. “No magik of any kind to enhance your talent or beauty, or to attack others.
But they're not stopping it In fact, I think the judges are enjoying it”
“What about protective spells'?” I asked.
“Not mentioned,” Bunny said. “I guess they'd never believe that anyone capable of using enchantments wouldn't use everything they've got. A lot is at stake here. The Bub Tube is unique throughout the dimensions. At least now.”
“Well, if they're not enforcing the rule, then we're free to use magick, too,” I said. “Ill do everything I can, and leave you free to concentrate on winning.”
“Touuuuu-cccchhhh meeeee, it's so eeeasy to leeeee-eeve meeeee …”
An Imper female in a tight evening dress belted out the climactic melody of her song, sounding like a dragon in heat. The sound went right through my head and out the other side. I gritted my teeth but applauded politely, because her entourage was watching the audience carefully, and I didn't want to draw negative attention to Bunny.
“Cats,” Bunny murmured, half to herself.
“Not a chance,” I whispered back. “They never sound as horrible as that.”
Day Two was the talent contest. So far we'd seen contestants juggle — fire, plates, clubs, balls, and themselves — dance, in every style from slow country dancing to spastic jerking that I thought signaled mass magikal attack on the woman onstage; art; acting; declamation; twirling a shiny metal stick; bird song imitations; bird flight imitations; standup comedy; dragon-taming; knife-throwing; and a thinly disguised striptease act in which the Pervect female started a seductive dance fully clothed while a salamander crawled along the hem of her dress, burning it away in a spiraling strip. The Gnomish female did conjuring, an act that caused smug grins among the contestants until the judges determined that she wasn't using any power at all. Each of her tricks was pure prestidigitation, sleight of hand. I was really impressed. If anyone was serious competition for Bunny, it was she. Maybe, once this was over, I could find her and ask her to teach me some of those illusions — useful to impress one's opponent in situations where lines of force were scarce.
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