Par blinked once, but nodded. He didn't need further explanation. Good. He was trainable. By the time we left he ought to be a better security officer than he was when we came. With a look to Moa for permission, Par disappeared out the door.

"So that's all settled," Moa said, with a sigh of relief. He signed to the nearest guard, who moved toward the sideboard. "Let's drink on it."

I grinned. "That's an offer I never refuse."

FIVE

"I've seen and heard enough," the voice in Strewth's ear squeaked. "Get your tail back here."

Hidden among the crystal decanters on the heavily carved wooden sideboard, the white-footed mall-rat backed slowly away from his listening point. Suddenly one of the Flibberites moved a hand toward Strewth. The rat panicked and scurried out of reach. The hand halted and settled onto one of the bottles. Strewth chittered.

"Missed me again, you big nincompoop!" he squeaked. "Nyah nyah nyah!"

Following the Master's standing orders, Strewth left a personal calling card on the shelf of the liquor cabinet, then slunk through the hole he and his fellows had chewed in the back and clambered down the concealed hole in the wall to an orange-curtained enclosure in the store adjacent to the office.

The hideout lay many corridors distant from his current location. It'd be good to use longer legs to get there. Strewth huddled under the bench in the dressing room and flipped quickly through the stack of cards he kept in a pouch on his back, chose one, and recited the incantation.

A second later, a big, burly Moolar with an impressive spread of pointed horns shoved back the drape and strode out into the shop with his hooflike thumbs hooked into his silver concha-laden belt.

"No, didn't see anything I wanted back there," he drawled.

A dozen mothers reacted to his appearance with alarm.

"Peeping Tom! Pervert! Monster!" they shrieked, battering him with their shopping bags. "What were you doing in there? Our precious children! Someone call the security guards!"

"No, don't," Strewth protested. "Coo! Er! Gosh! I didn't do anything to your children. Hey!"

The mothers paid no attention to his protests.

"Guards!" they shrieked. "Help! Monster!"

Strewth ran for the door. The mothers grabbed pieces of display and even the arms off mannequins to batter him. Strewth shielded his head as he dashed into the crowd, looking for a place to hide so he could change identity again.

"Strewth!" he exclaimed, as he shook off the last pursuer some eight or nine storefronts away.

As he ducked underneath a velvet rope in front of the Magik Lantern Emporium, a mother Imp shook a pink fist at him. Her other hand clutched a sniveling Impling rubbing his eyes with one fist. The moment she was out of sight, Strewth scooted behind a tent flap and changed the Moolar face for an Imp in a yellow-checked suit.

"I didn't know it was a children's clothing shop! Last time I was in here it was a haberdasher's!"

"Fool! Get back here!" Rattila's laughter rang in his ears all the way to the hideout. At the concealed entrance Strewth disembodied and wriggled through the rathole into the Master's presence.

"All right, so it was stupid," the white-footed mall-rat said, straightening up to his full one foot eleven inches in height.

Rattila crouched over him from his throne of garbage, gazing down at him with glowing red eyes. He was twice the size of a mall-rat, his black fur gleaming in the faint light, his curved claws yellow. He pointed to the badge on his chest that read leader.

Strewth cowered down into the steaming muck. It was always hot in the Rat Hole, which raised the level of stink occupying it to a virtually visible state. It was a nasty, dirty, wet hole, full of the ends of worms and an oozy smell, as if a hundred layers of compost had been distilled down into its very essence, a huge contrast to the oppressive cleanliness in The Mall above. It always reminded him of home, Rattila was fond of saying to his followers.

"You made a mistake," the lord of the rats hissed. "You were not supposed to be observed. That was not a quality withdrawal from your listening post."

"Yeah. No. Sorry," Strewth said, groveling in the dirt. Did Rattila have to use such big words? "But the administrators didn't see me. Or their guests."

"How good was that? A whole storeful of women saw you. They could have followed you. We don't want anyone accidentally finding their way here," Rattila asked, leaning forward threateningly, "now, do we?"

Strewth groaned. It was going to be another lecture.

"No, Ratty. We don't."

"Don't call me that!" Rattila recoiled, rolling his eyes toward the stalactites hanging from the ceiling. "Will you never learn the correct way to address me?"

"Sorry, Ra—I mean Rattila. Mighty Rattila. Lord Rattila." The mall-rat sighed and launched into the litany. "King of Trash, Marquis of Merchandise, Collector of Unguarded Property, Magikal Potentate Extraordinary, Rightful Holder of the Throne of Refuse, and, er, Ruler of All Rats and Lesser Beings."

The red eyes slitted with pleasure, and Strewth breathed with relief. Sometimes coming back to the hideout gave him more of a thrill of terror than his daily rounds of shoplifting. Rattila's fur crackled with power, something that had always struck Strewth as not quite normal. But then, nothing down below had been normal for years.

The Rat Hole would have surprised the shoppers who passed through The Mall every day. It extended off in every direction except up, several levels that covered nearly the whole footprint of the vast building. It had only one entrance, concealed virtually under the Flibberites' very noses, but that never stopped them carrying tons of loot down into their domain.

The hard, cold fact was that once somebody was carrying a piece of merchandise in the corridor, everybody else assumed that it had been purchased. The trickiest bit, the one that gave Strewth the emotional high he loved, was conveying the object of his desire from a store shelf or hanger all the way to the door of the shop it came from. That nourished him more than food or drink, none of which they ever paid for, either. But responsibility was a new thing, imposed upon them when Rattila had arrived. In exchange for doing tasks, they were having more fun than they had ever had.

One of the most important duties was keeping an ear on the administration. Moa and the other executives had a magik-repelling stronghold on the floor above the children's store. Rattila had tried several times to plant a bug in the offices to hear what was being said, whether the greenies had figured out who he was or how his operation worked, but the bugs always died. The insects sent a delegation to complain, and though they still professed loyalty, refused to allow any more of their contingent to go up to the executive suite.

Instead, Rattila was forced to send a rat spy up to watch and listen in person, under the desk or on the sideboard or behind one of the picture frames. He also established listening posts in the security stations, in the buying office, and even in the janitorial department. He hadn't kept hold over The Mall for so long without having infiltrated most of the departments. Nothing went unobserved for long.

"What else do you have to say about the visitors?" Rattila demanded.

"Nothing but what you saw and heard," Strewth said. "Thanks to that Pervert, they know about the cards."

"But they do not really know what they mean!" Rattila laughed heartily.

Strewth hated when he did that. He thought he was so superior, coming from another dimension. If he was so great, how come he hadn't been born a Flibberite?

"Because I am Ratislavan, of course, and that's superior to any other dimension!"