MYTH-FORTUNES

ROBERT ASPRIN & JODY LYNN NYE

Chapter 1

I sat back in my chair with my feet propped up on Aahz's desk. My baby dragon, Gleep, lay curled underneath the bridge of my legs. Whenever Samwise, a pink-faced Imp with blunt little horns on his bald head, in a hideous checked black-and-yellow suit too wide across the shoulders for anyone but a Troll, made one of his frequent exclamations, Gleep would raise his green head sleepily, checking to see what the fuss was. When it turned out to be another bombastic sales pitch, he went back to sleep. I wished I could do the same, but I had promised Aahz I would sit in on this one. I didn't mind. There was no place in any dimension I would rather have been.

It had been a couple of weeks since M.Y.T.H., Inc., had put itself back together. Oh, there were changes. Everyone had some getting used to it to do, especially me. And Aahz. But I thought and still think that it was for the best. Trying to come out of my self-imposed retirement had not been the booming success I had hoped it would be. Try as I might, I kept stepping on the toes of the people I most cared about. Still, in the end, I was back in M.Y.T.H., Inc., with my friends and trusted colleagues, though not as its president. I'd lost that privilege, but I found that I was happier in my current, and I hoped permanent, position as partner. The others seemed as glad to have me back as I was to be there. They had chosen a new president: my former assistant, Bunny. I couldn't argue with the decision; I had relied on her intelligence, tact, and organization for a long time. M.Y.T.H., Inc., would benefit from her talents. Bunny had some new ideas that she was putting into operation, most of them received without argument from the other partners. On the whole, it had been a good reconciliation.

We had opened a second office a few miles from this one, our original location. When the lease on the remote site was up in a few months, we'd vote on what to do with it. At the moment, it was used for private meetings with clients who didn't want to be seen entering the narrow tent in the Bazaar at Deva that was well known as the home of M.Y.T.H., Inc. It also was a home away from home for Buttercup, my war unicorn. In the Bazaar, owing to cramped conditions, a lot of establishments opened out at the rear into extradimensional space, extending them as far as the host dimension would allow. This tent backed onto a gloomy, low-magik dimension called Limbo. By contrast, the secondary office occupied a piece of Ombud, a pleasant and pastoral dimension mostly populated by farmers and low-technology craftsmen, not unlike Klah, where I grew up. Buttercup occupied a field behind the farmhouse that was our small tent's presence in Ombud. I almost wished I was there at that moment, lying in the sun in the grass, with Buttercup here in my place, prodding the Imp with his single, well-sharpened horn to make him get to the point.

"So what kind of business proposition is it?" I asked, no longer bothering to be subtle.

"Profitable," Samwise declared, with the lift of an arched black eyebrow. If a red-skinned Deveel—Deveels were the natives of the dimension in which M.Y.T.H., Inc., operated— made the same gesture it might have come across as elegant or menacing. In Imps, a smaller, lighter-hued race, it came across as supercilious. Even their horns and pointed tails didn't hold any menace. "But I wouldn't expect a Klahd like you to understand an intricate arrangement like this one."

I glanced at Aahz. His yellow eyes were half-lidded with unconcealed boredom.

"Pal," he said, in a low, genial tone that I recognized as the one he used just before he ripped someone's head off, "as a salesman, you're a washout. Did you ever make a successful deal by insulting the partner of the guy you're trying to sell to? Didn't you listen when I introduced you? This is Skeeve the Magnificent, the most famous Klahd magician of all time."

The Imp turned from hot pink to pale ecru. "No offense intended!" he said hastily. "I mean, Mr. Aahz, it is you Perverts who are masters of the complex scheme."

"That's Per-vect!" Aahz snarled. Samwise blanched to off-white.

"Of course. I misspoke. Sorry. No intent to offend. Klahds are usually, er, more straightforward, if you get my drift."

"I've heard enough," Aahz said lazily. "Skeeve, does your dragon want an Imp for lunch? Or a snack?"

"I don't like him to eat too many Imps," I said, patting

Gleep on the head. Gleep blinked his big blue eyes at me. "They give him gas. I don't want him blowing out the back of the tent."

"Too bad." Aahz grinned, showing a mouthful of four-inch pointed teeth. "Think Guido could use a little target practice?"

"Maybe," I replied, keeping one eye on the Imp. "He's getting rusty without live targets to shoot at."

"You can't do that!" Samwise exclaimed. "What will people say if I don't leave here?"

"I don't know," Aahz said, leaning back and flexing his talons which were, if not as impressive as his teeth, imposing when compared with the minor claws of an Imp. "Did you leave any advance directives? Or a note saying where you went? I doubt anyone's going to miss you much, the way you manage to make friends everywhere you go." He grinned.

The Imp swallowed heavily. I tried to look innocent, good Klahd versus bad Pervect, but it's tough to be an innocuous presence with a live dragon snoring under your chair. Samwise sputtered.

"Look, all I want to do is make you a deal. A great deal! A once-in-a-lifetime deal!"

Aahz yawned. "You have a hundred words or less to make your pitch, or you can take a walk. I'm a busy man, and I don't hear any bulldogs being fed—or dragons."

"What's a bulldog?" I asked. The picture that appeared in my head was intriguing, but almost guaranteed to be wrong based upon my experience with Aahz and his colloquial expressions.

Aahz turned toward me with an expression of irritation that slowly relaxed into a grin. "Kid, I gotta tell you, I missed that. Show you later. Samwise, your hundred words starts now."

The Imp took a deep breath. "Mr. Aahz, when I said that this was a once-in-a-lifetime deal, I meant just that: only once in a lifetime does something this fantastic come along! Have you ever thought what your contribution to the future was going to be? I come to you today with an offer—no, two offers. One's a straight business deal. I need the help of an organization like M.Y.T.H., Inc., to watch over the day-to-day operations of my little company. The other offer is immortality, or the next best thing. You might not have thought about your legacy, but I want to offer you. ..." He clamped his mouth shut.

"What legacy?" Aahz roared, lunging forward. I was pretty curious about it myself. "You're just going to stop there?"

"Sorry, but you only gave me a hundred words!" the Imp squeaked, trying to pull his tie out of Aahz's grip. Aahz let go and thrust the Imp back into his seat.

"Okay, you can finish, but with the minimum verbiage. Talk. What kind of immortality? Are we talking

about eternal life? Because I've talked to some immortals, and believe me, it's not all it's cracked up to be."

"Well, unfortunately, it's not within my power to provide anyone with eternal life," Samwise said, straightening his tie. "I'm more in the monument business. But they're monumental monuments!"

"Describe them in concrete terms," Aahz said. "No excess verbiage. We're going to have to have the place vacuumed as it is. What do the monuments look like?"