Myth-Taken Identity

TWENTY-FOUR

Six hours later, Moa reopened Massha's Secret to great fanfare.

The rest of the team had done a terrific job cleaning the place up. A hastily deployed curtain took the place of the splintered dressing-room door. Where the decor had been too damaged to repair at such short notice, Cire had covered it with an illusion. Most of the displays could be resurrected and put to use. All that had lacked, up until one half hour ago, was something to put on them.

I stood behind the counter, ready, still smarting a little from my whirlwind visit back to Deva. In order to get merchandise with only a couple of hours' notice I had had to use that phrase that all Deveels love and no one with any sanity would use: price is no object. I spent half an hour on a brainstorming session with sleepy Deveel fashion designers. To cut the fee somewhat I negotiated partial credit with them, because within a few days all of them would be working for Deveel merchants waiting the remaining two days to break into our market. That wasn't important. The whole idea, I kept reminding myself, was to get what I needed, immediately, to save Chumley, to break the influence Rattila held over Massha, and to keep Skeeve from falling into his power.

I got what I wanted: within a mere five hours they produced twenty dozen garters, all of them very, very special. I figured for my purposes that number would be plenty.

As soon as I had the boxes in hand, I hopped back to The Mall. Parvattani's guards could hardly hold back the crowds already hanging around outside the shop. The avid shoppers oohed and aahed as we hung up the garters. I gave a quick rundown to the Djinnies.

"Mood detector, snack dispenser, MP3 player, poison nullifier, poison ring, love philter, steamer trunk." I stated, going down the rows and pointing to each of the items in turn. "Baby monitor, burglar alarm, perfume bottle, portable safe, memo reminder—and don't forget, when Cire slips you the word"—I stopped behind the counter and showed them a box underneath—"push these goods on whomever he's pointing at. Got that?"

They nodded. These two, Nita and Furina Djinnelli had been hired for the day from The Volcano. Rimbaldi had promised me his two nieces were the smartest salesclerks he had. I was counting on that. Chumley's life might depend upon it. I knew this was our last chance.

At ten on the dot, I nodded to Moa, who cut the ribbon. Accompanied by the reedy strains of The Mall's sale music, the shoppers poured in.

"Ooh! I didn't see these the other day!" an Imp woman cooed, falling all over a powder blue baby monitor garter. "Oh, this would come in so handy!"

"These are absolutely great!" a Klahd agreed. 'These are even better than the first shipments. Too bad they're going out of business!"

"Mine!" shrieked a Deveel.

"Mine!" a Gnome shrieked back, trying to haul a black lace love philter garter away from her. "Mine!"

"Mine!"

By eleven, Ore had tipped the wink to Nita and Furina about a dozen times. I was pretty sure there would be some overlap, since we never could be sure which were the real shoppers in the database, and which were the phonies, but by the end I was certain the ground had been thoroughly seeded.

Take that, you son of a rat, I thought. No one kidnaps one of my friends without suffering the consequences.

And, right on schedule, about half past eleven, Inspector Dota and his merry stiffs arrived.

"Shut this place down," he ordered Massha. "You don't have a right to hold a going-out-of-business sale, because you never were in business in the first place."

I pushed myself in front of him.

"Yeah, de jure we weren't in business, but de facto we should be able to hold a clearance sale, since you're denying us sales during the preprocessing time, and we can't wait around for our identification card to clear."

Dota glared at me.

"Cease all sales at once," he ordered the Djinnies, who were wrapping boxes furiously.

They looked at me. I glanced at Cire, who gave me a meaningful nod.

"Do it." I turned to the crowd of waiting shoppers. The Djinnies backed away from the counter. "Ladies and gentlemen and—whatever: due to circumstances beyond my control the sale is suspended. Any further transactions are illegal."

"Awwwwww!" A woeful cry arose from the audience.

"So, since we can't sell 'em," I began, every syllable making my teeth hurt, but I reminded myself, this was for Skeeve, for Massha, and for Chumley, "you can take whatever items you wish, free of charge."

"Yayyyyyy!"

The woe changed to cheers and whoops of joy. Shoppers began pulling everything they could reach off the displays and walls. The usual fistfights had started, mixed it up, then broken up hastily lest the combatants miss any chance to grab free swag. A group of shoppers got together and stormed the back room, pulling down crate after crate of goods. I felt a wrench as each of them marched out the door carrying merchandise I had paid for and for which I now had no means of recovering the cost.

In no time the store was stripped to the walls.

"You brought that on yourself," the inspector informed me. "I hope you feel satisfied."

I narrowed a baleful eye at him even though I did feel satisfied at that moment. "You've ruined our day. I'm no longer a merchant in this establishment, so I'm no longer under your jurisdiction, so you get your indigo butts out of my legally leased space, or I'm going to teach your bully boys a new place to hide their crossbows."

Inspector Dota gathered his dignity and departed. I slammed the door behind them.

"We are now officially out of business," I announced.

"How could the tax inspectors have gotten on to us so fast?" Massha asked, bemused.

I folded my arms and leaned against the wall, very satisfied.

"Because I called in the tip myself. We didn't need a whole lot of time, just enough to make sure our tracers went out with the right people."

"Aahz," Massha remarked. "You are a genius."

"Save the compliments for when we get Chumley back," I stated, slapping my hands together and rubbing them hard. "Now, let's give 'em a while, and start running down the traces."

"But of course, Aahz," Rimbaldi exclaimed exuberantly, when I took him aside in The Volcano for a private chat. The usual flock of Klahds were gathered, openmouthed, around a salesgirl doing a demonstration on the Gold Pocket Djeans, so no one was looking at us.

"The entire fleet of Djinnelli family carpets will be at your service, whenever you wish. Gustavo has offered weapons. Marco has offered any security arrangements you might need."

"Thanks," I breathed. "I don't know how far or how fast we'll have to move."

"They are yours, though you have to fly to the ends of the dimension, my friend! We are so sorry about the Troll."

I winced at the notion of running all over Flibber. I was already regretting that I had let so many tracers go out. But I was playing the odds. I was betting that experienced thieves like Rattila's would have captured a preponderance of the tagged goods. I hoped we would only have to chase one or two concentrated signals. At the moment The Mall was still full of small traces, scattered in every direction.

"No one saw anything unusual around here yesterday afternoon?" I asked.

"Oh, no," Rimbaldi insisted. "Business was very brisk. Several hundred purchases, two shipments, many rights— it was a good day."

I turned to go. "Just keep your eyes open, will you?"

"Of course," Rimbaldi asserted. "Your mission is our mission!"

Everyone knew what we were doing. Marco, a total convert to our cause, had spread the word privately among his relatives, and Eskina and Sibone had made sure that each and every one of their friends was on board with us.

"Wait until The Mall closes," I insisted when anyone asked me. "Just hang on."

"It's an hour before the place closes down," Massha observed, kicking one foot impatiently in the "husband's chair" in the empty storefront. She jingled her collection of magikal jewelry, supplemented by a few choice purchases she had made that day. "I don't know about your capacity for shopping, but I couldn't have lasted from ten this morning until now. I'm too antsy to wait much longer. I'm worried about Chumley."

"I agree with Massha." I glanced toward Cire, who was playing some kind of interactive game with a guy in another dimension through his crystal ball propped on the counter. "How about it? Are we ready to start running them down?"

"Gotta go, Delos," he remarked to the face in the globe. He snapped the atlas of The Mall down on the counter and put the crystal down on top of it. He passed his hands over its surface, and the ball clouded up. "Okay, I'm ready."

"I, too," Eskina added, showing her sharp little teeth.

Parvattani rose to his feet and saluted me. "The Mall force is at your service, sir!"

"It's just Aahz," I corrected him, with a sigh. "All right, let's move it out."

Cire flew out ahead of us, keeping his eye on the joined orb and map. "My global-positioning system," he explained, hovering about five feet off the ground. "There's a lot of dispersal already," he continued, nearly colliding with a couple of gigantic black insectoids rolling their purchases down the hall with their hind legs. "A few have gone ex-dimension."

"Uh-huh," I acknowledged. It would be a pain to chase them, but we were ready.

"Hmm. A few of your hard-core shoppers are sticking with it. I show a few big clusters of garter signal still here in The Mall."

"Ooh, their aching feet," Massha offered sympathetically, flying alongside Cire.

"Might be the thieves," I suggested. "I figure Rattila's got at least a dozen henchcreatures, and they will have snatched more of our special booty than anyone else. Let's check out the closest traces first. Which is the biggest?"

Cire changed direction at the next intersection, heading toward Doorway K. He and Massha picked up air speed. Eskina and I found ourselves trotting after them, with Parvattani and his troop quick-marching behind.

"This is a really big collection," Cire informed us, excitedly. "I wouldn't be surprised if we found the whole gang right here."

Cire indicated a spot ahead that I recognized as one of the indoor arenas. It sure seemed to be the kind of venue where pickpockets would gather in force. Music louder than usual ricocheted off the rafters, a hoochie-coochie theme. The usual crowd of gawkers formed a solid barrier.

"I'll go check it out," Massha offered, lofting upward, as Parvattani's guards started to clear a way for those of us stuck using ground locomotion. With Eskina clinging to my shoulders, I forced my way forward through a forest of shoulders as high as my head. Occasionally the crowd would hoot with laughter or cheer at what they were watching. I hoped it wasn't another Skeeve appearance. I was not in the mood to deal with it politely.

"Never mind, honey," Massha called down to me.

At that moment, I pushed my way into the center. A long-legged silver-skinned dancer gyrated past me and tipped me a wink with one of her huge, blue-lashed eyes. Her skimpy costume consisted of two large jewels and a floaty wisp of cloth in strategic places on her body, but her arms and legs were ringed with a dozen marabou-trimmed Massha's Secret garters. Once in a while she would peel one off and sling it into the appreciative crowd. She danced close and snapped one under my nose with a sultry expression. The watchers howled with delight. I snarled.

"This is not our problem," Eskina announced in my ear.

"No kidding," I agreed. I shoved my way out of the crowd. Cire hovered on the perimeter, looking embarrassed. "Honestly, Aahz, I had no way of knowing!" "Never mind," I told him. "Where's the other one?" "Corridor O." Cire directed us toward the next largest signal.

In the big open space not far from Doorway P, we scanned the thinning crowd looking for Cire's shopper, hoping it was one or more of Rattila's thieves.

"This one was really greedy," Cire chuckled, heading toward the inevitable music stand. "I'm getting at least twenty or thirty of the tracers on the other side."

We pushed our way past the musicians, now mauling Pervish dance music. I winced at the "Toothgrinder's Waltz" being rendered in 5/6 time and at least five different keys.

A trio of blue-skinned ladies—a Dragonet, a Djinnie, and a Gremlin—stood together amidst scads of shopping bags, mostly from lingerie boutiques. By their gestures they were discussing hats. Since they had three vastly differently shaped heads I couldn't imagine a single style they could possibly agree on.

"I beg your pardon, bella donnas" Parvattani interrupted them with a cordial bow, "but I am with The Mall security force. May I inspect your purchases, please?"

"Certainly not," the Dragonet replied, clutching a small green bag protectively to her chest. "Why would you ask such a thing?

I stepped forward, snapping the credentials Moa had given me out of my pocket. "Pardon me, ma'am. Undercover agent Aahz. We have reason to believe that a notorious shoplifter is attempting to smuggle himself out of The Mall in a bag."

Their eyes went wide.

"In a shopping bag?" the Djinn asked. I nodded. "Mini Mitchell is a dangerous felon from, er, Nikkonia. A Shutterbug. He's been known to snap candid pictures of ladies in their undergarments and sell them to newspapers—"

"Say no more!" the Gremlin stopped me. She pushed her bags at us. "Please, look, look!"

I took a cursory glance through the bags, while Cire scanned them unobtrusively from a distance. He was getting very excited. I held up one sack after another as I finished with it. He shook his head again and again. In the end, I ran out of parcels to inspect, and I had to let them go.

"Thank you, ladies. You're safe from the snoop. Have a nice day."

The three scooped up their shopping and retreated.

"Well!" I heard the Djinn comment, before they were swallowed up by the crowd. "It's good to know they're keeping a close eye out for our safety!"

I turned to Cire, who was still excited.

"What's the matter, did you get a false positive?" I asked. "Why did we let them go?"

The Walroid's face shone with excitement. "Because they weren't giving off the signal. It's still here."

"Where?" I demanded.

Cire pointed one thick finger straight down.

"Under the floor?" Moa asked, when we called him and the other administrators to the scene. "Impossible. This building is built on the slope of a giant volcano. There's nothing under The Mall."

"I don't mean to interrupt—no, sir!" Skocklin interjected, "but, boy, you're not thinkin'." We all turned to the bandy-legged Flibberite in surprise. "'Course there's somethin' under here. There's the cellar."

"But we abandoned it. It was never finished," Moa pointed out. "How good do you think a ring of shoplifters need to have their hideout?" Skocklin asked, scornfully. "You think they care if we hung up drywall? Consarn it, that means they've been right underneath our noses all these years, and we never knew it!"

"Never mind the recriminations," I put in. "How do we get down there?"

"Well, now, you don't," Skocklin announced. "It was sealed up. We discovered a better way to expand, into other dimensions who had some space to lease."

"Someone, specifically Rattila, figured out how to break through your seals," Eskina stated, confronting the Flibberite. How else do you explain this signal?"

"Well, little lady, you're just wrong. It's unlivable. We didn't bother to keep the spells up, tidying the place, or anything, since it wasn't going to be used."

I eyed him as something nibbled at the back of my memory. "What kind of spells?" I demanded.

"Oh, you know," Skocklin mused, "climate control and all. We're sittin' on top of a volcano, after all."

"The Volcano!" I roared.

"Why, dagnabbit, why is the scaly boy gettin' all riled up?" Skocklin's voice faded behind me, as I shot down the hall.

"What's the hurry, honey?" Massha asked. Her levitation belt let her overtake me with ease.

"You were pretty out of it the last time we were in The Volcano," I explained, pumping my elbows to get the highest turn of speed. "Jack Frost was there, arguing with one of the Djinnellis about how hot it always was in there. He said he renewed the cooling spell frequently, but it shouldn't be wearing out that fast unless they were getting a heat leak from below!"

Massha's eyes went wide. "So you think the way down is somewhere in there?"

"It has to be," I asserted. "Where would be a better interface for thieves? Rattila's people wear dozens of different faces. The Volcano's the busiest store in The Mall. People are always coming and going, and they have about ten thousand dressing rooms. Who would notice if somebody went into one and never came out?"

"Pretty convenient, living right underneath your place of business, huh?" Cire wisecracked, huffing along behind us.

"Idiot," Eskina snorted, running past him.