Nedira threw a nod to Vergetta, picked one of their invisibility cloaks off a hook on the wall and vanished out of the chamber. It was the closest they'd come to current information, and they wanted to check up on it before it changed hands again.

Cashel was led out, still pleading his innocence but bleating earnestly that he would never again take anything that didn't belong to him. Vergetta popped Wensley out of his spherical prison.

"Honestly, darlink," she told him, "would it be so bad if anyone told us the truth? You have anything else you want to say?"

Wensley pressed his lips together and shook his head.

"Wait a minute," Caitlin spoke up, "Nedira's coming back."

The motherly Pervect was among them a second later. Vergetta had to pop Wensley back into his prison so as not to distract the stable boy, who wore an awestruck expression when he realized he was in the presence of the full force of the Pervect Ten. Shaking her head ruefully, Nedira held up a bag.

"Banana-skin shoes. The Deveel who sold them to him is probably still laughing."

"'Slippers,'" Vergetta groaned. "That's such an old one, honey, it plain amazes me that you fell for it. But you're just a kid. What'd you pay for them? A silver piece? They're not worth more than a copper or two, and usually they come with a free banana inside each one."

"Four gold pieces a pair," the boy managed to get out.

"Aaagggh!" Tenobia shrieked, waving her fists. Coolea fled behind the chair for shelter. She pounded on the table. "Every junk seller in all the dimensions must be looking out for you morons, to unload the most useless trash they've got!" She gestured angrily at the others. "I feel like locking him up and throwing away the key."

"No," Oshleen smirked, grinning widely enough to make the Wuhs sway with fear, "send him back and make him ask for a refund."

"The Deveels?" the boy gasped. "No! No! Oh, please, good dames, spare me! Not a refund!"

"Good idea," Nedira agreed with her allies. She grasped Coolea by the shoulder. The two of them disappeared.

"Slippers!" Tenobia pointed a finger at the glass sphere on the table. "You people make me so furious I could eat you, except your lily livers would give me indigestion! After all we've done for you!"

The little figure in the snow globe on the table looked thoughtful.

"All right," Vergetta grunted. "Let's try and get some business done."

A shaggy-coated herdbeast bleated in my ear. We were sitting among them in the shadow of the king's statue in the park at the other end of town from the castle, on the energy line that supplied power to the Pervect's computer. I had disguised the four of us as beasts to blend in.

Unfortunately, that was earning us some unwanted attention, Tananda especially. Whenever I used an illusion spell to make us look like the denizens of a dimension, she always insisted on being made a beautiful whatever-it-was. In this case, that meant she was the prettiest ewe in town, and every ram in the field was doing his best to get her attention.

Bunny was less enamored of sitting in the middle of a smelly feed lot, and didn't care what kind of a herdbeast she looked like. Normally she would be neck and neck with Tananda, insisting on the current standard of beauty, but at the moment she was watching Zol avidly as he linked his little notebook to the Pervect's magik mirror. I noticed that Bytina having touched Zol's computer, now had exactly the same pictures appearing in her little looking glass. It seemed that infinite links could be made very easily.

"The ironic thing," Zol began, as his long fingers flew over the button board, "is that the easiest way into a system is through its security gates. The least safe mode for a computer is when it is operating."

"Stands to reason," I replied. Though I knew nothing about computers, I knew something about systems. "When you're in the midst of a mission, the last thing you have time to do is watch your own back."

That was why I had partners. At the moment I was in the "back-watching" position, and Zol was gathering the information we needed.

Zol gave me a luminous smile of approval. "Precisely, Master Skeeve! I never ceased to be amazed by your capacity for comprehension."

I smiled back, a little uneasily. Not that I didn't enjoy basking in the little gray man's fulsome praise, but after having to pry compliments out of my former associates with a crowbar I mistrusted someone who threw off accolades whenever… he felt I'd earned one. He seemed just a little too easy to please. He didn't seem to notice my discomfort.

"Now, by looking at the active components, the open books on the desktop, so to speak, we can see what they have been doing today. Hmm… they have a weather-prediction program… that one they are using hasn't got the latest updates. The prognostication section has a flaw. It foretells firestorms when it means light rain. It's given rise to panic in some dimensions, as you might guess. Yes, see here?" he pointed at the center of the mirror. " 'Partly sunny, with widespread devastation toward evening.' There's a partial letter home… and the operator has played over five hundred games of solitaire, with a 7:1 win-lose ratio." "Whew!" I whistled. "I'd have liked to hire her as a dealer for the casino our partnership once owned. She must have very fast fingers."

"Oh, they aren't physical cards, Master Skeeve; they're magikal projections. You can play hundreds of different card games on a magik mirror like this. Unfortunately, in everything but solitaire, your virtual opponents tend to cheat."

"Just like real players," I nodded.

"But among all of this detritus they are working on plans," Zol said, his huge dark eyes reflecting the light coming from the small square mirror. "We are in the enviable position of being able to monitor their every move. See this? Men, machinery, logistics, principles of generalship… They must be out for empire-building. This is bigger than I ever dreamed possible. Marvelous!"

"Marvelous?" I echoed.

Zol beamed at me. "Yes, seeing how the minds of Pervects work. Released from the ease of their own dimension's comforts, they set their sights on spreading then-influence across the multiverse. What an opportunity to observe! Untrammeled ambition! How the two halves of their nature intersect! They seek to Pervert the course of the future in these places, to Pervect their vision."

"Well, it won't do," I snapped. "This isn't an experiment, it's all these people's lives. Their real lives. It cost our friend Wensley his life, in case you have forgotten."

"I'd forgotten how straightforward you Klahds are," Zol offered sincerely. "Please accept my apologies. I became too enthusiastic a scholar, and forgot to be a loving, caring being. I am so sorry." The big dark eyes turned sad.

"He's not upset, Zol," Bunny hurried to assure the author. "Are you, Skeevie?"

I winced. She knew how much I hated to be called Skeevie, so she must be trying to make a point. "But what do we do?"

"You must use that Klahdish sensibility," Zol told me. "Confront them. Head them off and prevent them from achieving their latest objective."

I peered over his shoulder. "Can we tell where they're going this time?"

"Yes, indeed," Zol replied, enlarging a map so I could easily read the name in the center. "Ronko."

"It slices. It dices. It cooks. It even cleans itself if you dunk it in water," Paldine expounded to a roomful of potential distributors.

Ronko ought to be the ideal dimension, she had argued to her companions; they loved gadgets of all kinds, putting even Perv in the shade when it came to techie-toys. She leaned over the Formica podium with one of Niki's inventions in her hand. The development of the dimension was at about the era of early sitcoms, perfect for a gadget like hers.