- http://www.meishamerlin.com/Myth-IonImprobableExcerpt.html
If this book is your first exposure to the Myth-Adventures of Aahz and
Skeeve, there is no reason for you to read this note. Proceed directly to
the main body of the work and enjoy.
If, however, you have been following this series for some time, some
explanations are in order. Specifically, as to why you are now holding this
volume instead of the long awaited, long promised episode titled Something
Myth I.N.C..
As was noted in Authors Note of the previous volume, Sweet Myth-tery of
Life (which was also late in being written), I have been going through some
difficult times in my life. Since that volume was released in 1994, much of
those difficulties revolved around a five to six year death duel with the
IRS over back taxes. The less said about that, the better.
When that matter was resolved in April of 2000, I re-applied myself to
writing the two overdue Myth novels, only to find myself in a dilemma. The
first problem was that it had been over seven years since I had written Aahz
and Skeeve, and it was extremely difficult after that long a hiatus to
recapture the style and rhythm of the narration and dialogue that had made
the series unique. To complicate things, the story I was attempting to
convey, titled Something Myth I.N.C.., was the most complex tale I had
attempted in the Myth series, as it not only involves multiple viewpoints,
but also occurs simultaneously with events contained in Sweet Myth-tery of
Life..
After nearly half a year of wrestling with these difficulties a friend
of mine made a suggestion. Specifically, why not write another, simpler
story first...something from Skeeve's earlier days with Aahz. That would
enable me to relearn the Myth writing style, after which I could tackle the
more convoluted story Something Myth I.N.C..
The result is the volume you are currently holding. Sequentially, it
occurs between volumes three (Myth Direction) and four (Hit or Myth). If the
plan holds, it will be followed VERY shortly by Something Myth I.N.C..
As always, thank you for your loyalty and patience.
MYTH-ION IMPROBABLE By Robert Asprin
"Here we go again!"
C3PO
When my teacher/mentor Aahz grumbles or rants about my being stupid or
having done something stupid, I make a big show of being apologetic, but it
really doesn't bother me all that much. I figure it goes with the territory
and is part of the price of learning magik.
I mean, first of all there's the point that Aahz is older than I am and
has been around more. A lot more. He's an experienced dimension traveler, or
demon' for short, and compared to his knowledge and experience I really am
stupid and naive.
Then, too, the dimension he hails from, Perv, is noted for it's
short-tempered, hostile inhabitants. Other dimension travelers tend to avoid
Perv whenever possible, and give the green, scaly Pervects a wide berth when
encountering them in other dimensions.
To cap it all off, while he was once an accomplished magikian himself,
Aahz lost his powers when we met (Another Fine Myth). Watching me fumble and
stutter while learning what are to him some of the simplest, most
rudimentary spells, all the while being aware that, at least for the time
being, he's dependant on me in the magik department, is bound to make him a
bit testy from time to time.
I can understand and accept it when I do something he thinks is stupid.
When I do something that, in hindsight, I think is stupid...that's another
matter entirely.
We were ensconced in the Royal Palace of the kingdom of Posseltum,
enjoying my cushy position as the Royal Magikian, a job that Aahz had
coached me through the auditions for. That is, Aahz was enjoying it. For him
it was comfortable surroundings and a steady, generous salary. For me it was
living in constant close contact with a grouchy demon who seemed determined
that I practice my magik lessons night and day.
Needless to say, this gets boring after a while. The few adventures I
had been on since I had apprenticed myself to Aahz had wetted my appetite
for travel, and I was eager for more. Unfortunately, Aahz steadfastly
refused to even start teaching me how to dimension travel on my own, saying
it was far too dangerous for someone with my meager magikal abilities.
That's when I decided to try something really stupid. I decided to try
to outwit Aahz and trick him into taking me dimension traveling again.
An item had come to hand that just might be the ticket, so one
afternoon when he seemed a bit bored himself, I sprang it on him.
"Aahz," I said, holding out a folded piece of parchment to him. "I
think you should take a look at this."
Aahz glared at the paper in my hand as if it might bite him. And when
someone from Perv glares, it is really something to see.
"And just what is that?"
"It looks like a map." I shrugged.
Actually, I knew it was a map. While Tanda and I had been jumping
dimensions, shopping for a birthday present for Aahz, I had been offered
this map by a beggar on a street corner. Since Tanda had been, at that
moment, off talking to some sort of businessmen of that dimension, I had
bought the map for a few coins, thinking it would be a fun small gift. I had
stuck the map in my belt pouch, and then proceeded to forget about it
because of all the problems with the Big Game three dimensions later.
Actually, forgetting about the map was entirely understandable, since Tanda
ended up captured and our main focus was on freeing her. And the only way we
could free her was by winning the game. So forgetting the map was
reasonable. I had had enough on my mind.
But today, while getting searching through my pouch for something else,
I found the map. While I honestly didn't know what it was, I thought it
might be what I needed to bait Aahz into taking me dimension traveling
again.
Aahz still wasn't about to touch the parchment. He motioned to the
fire.
"Throw it in there and then get back to your practice."
"I'm done with my practice." I said.
"You're never done with your practice."
I ignored him and pushed on.
"Besides, I paid good coins for this map."
That was my trump card. If there's anything Aahz hates it's wasting
money. He got angry with me every time my dragon, Gleep, tore up something
while playing and the cost of repairs were taken from my wages. When it came
to my money, Aahz was in complete control. And by the way he talked, we were
always broke and about to go hungry.
"A scam, I'm sure," Aahz said, turning away. "Just like you to waste
money."
I frowned. This was going to be harder than I thought. Normally, if
there was any chance of making money at anything, he jumped at it.
Then it dawned on me I hadn't told him what the map led to.
"Aahz," I said to his back.
He didn't move. Instead he just kept staring out the window at the
courtyard.
"Aahz, you might really want to look at this. It's a map to a creature
called a cow."
"So?" Aahz said, shaking his head. "Remember the last time we were at
the Bazaar at Deva? Where do you think that steak you ate came from?"
I stared at him. I had no idea steaks came from creatures called cows.
I had just assumed they came from creatures called steaks. Trout came from
trout, salmon came from salmon, and duck came from duck. It was logical.
Besides, there were no cows in this dimension. At least none that I had ever
met.
"Well," I said, glancing at the parchment in my hand, "this is a map to
a golden cow that lives in a golden palace and gives gold-laced milk."
Aahz slowly turned to stare at me, his eye slits as if he were trying
to figure out if I was actually joking or not. Then in two steps he was in
front of me, snatching the map from my grasp.
"So there really is such a golden beast?" I asked while he studied the
paper.
He didn't respond, so I stood and watched him stare at the map. The
writing on it was odd, actually. It didn't show roads, but more like
dimensions, and energy points, and vortexes. Most of it I didn't understand,
and almost none of the map had names on it, but there was a massive amount
about jumping from dimension to dimension that I didn't understand.
Aahz had told me once there were so many dimensions, no one knew the
total number, and it was easy to get lost and never make it back when
jumping from dimension to dimension. After my shopping trip with Tanda to
thirty or forty different dimensions, I was starting to believe him.
Finally he looked down at me, a frown on his ugly face. And when Aahz
frowned, which was a great deal of the time, he looked like an animal
snarling. His green skin and bright eyes and sharp teeth could be very
intimidating if a person wasn't used to it. Luckily, I was.
"So where exactly did you get this?" He fluttered the parchment in my
face as he asked the question.
"Bought it from a man on a street corner," I said. "I think it might
have been some beggar."
"What dimension?"
"Not a clue." I shrugged. "One of the many Tanda and I visited. You
could ask her."
Aahz frowned even more at that.
"What made you buy it?"
Again I shrugged.
"I honestly don't know. I thought you'd have fun with it for your
birthday, and the guy said I was the first traveler he'd seen in a long time
who might be able to use it and live to tell the tale."
"Could he see through your disguises?" Aahz asked, staring at me.
I tried to remember back to the day. I had used my standard disguise
spell, and on that dimension, the spell had not been hard. Most of the
residents stood four feet tall, and had two feet. Compared to disguising
Tanda and me as a slug on one of the previous dimensions, that had been
easy. But the beggar had clearly picked me out of a crowd, and he seemed out
of place in the short people, being almost five feet tall.
I looked at Aahz and nodded.
"Maybe. But I don't know how he could have."
Aahz waved his hand in disgust.
"Apprentice, there are a thousand ways, especially with someone so
unpracticed as you."
I said nothing. No point in even trying to defend my talents. Aahz
always won those conversations by making me try something I couldn't yet do.
And that was just about everything when it came to magik. But making
disguises was my best ability.
Aahz spun around and moved back to the window, keeping the map with
him. He stood there, staring out over the courtyard, letting the silence in
the room just build and build. And if there was one thing I hated more than
anything, it was the sound of someone thinking, without telling me what they
were thinking about.
"So is there such a golden cow?" I asked, moving over and standing
beside him in the big window so he couldn't ignore me.
In the courtyard below the window Gleep was running in circles chasing
his tail. Thank heavens he wasn't near anything, because when a dragon
started chasing his tail, things got knocked down, trampled, and just flat
destroyed. Especially a young dragon.
What was even more amazing was that Aahz didn't seem to be noticing
what Gleep was doing. Clearly the map meant something to him.
"The golden cow?" I asked again "Is it real?"
Aahz slowly turned and looked at me.
"A myth. There are a lot of them in the different dimensions."
"You're kidding! You mean there is more than one golden-milk-giving-cow
myth?" Considering that I had never heard of a cow before today, I found
that a little hard to imagine. I'm not sure exactly why I thought even one
golden cow was easy to imagine, but dozens of them were just too much. Maybe
there was an entire dimension with a race of them.
Aahz sighed. When he sighed like that, it usually meant I was being
extra stupid or dense.
"Every tenth dimension has a myth about an animal or person doing
something with gold. One has a goose laying golden eggs, another has a fish
touching things and turning them to gold, another has a duck with golden
feathers."
"One heavy bird," I said, trying to imagine the duck covered in gold.
Aahz sighed again.
"The feathers become gold when they fall off."
"Got you," I said. "You ever been near or seen one of these golden
animals?"
Aahz laughed, his demon-sound shaking the room.
If I had, would I be here, in this dump of a palace, with an apprentice
as stupid as you?"
I had to admit he had a good point, but I didn't really want to agree
with him.
"So that is a sham map," I said.
"Most likely," Aahz said, staring out at the courtyard where Gleep had
now managed to catch his tail. He bit it so hard, the poor dragon jumped and
looked around, startled. Gleep was smart in many ways, but not about his own
tail.
I glanced over at Aahz. When he said most likely', and didn't look at
me, it meant he thought there may be a slight chance the map was real.
"Why only most likely?" I asked.
"Because," Aahz said, "I saw a golden deer dropping once."
"Deer dropping?" Again I had no idea what he meant.
"Deer poop," Aahz said, his voice showing he was getting very tired of
my stupid questions. "Deer turds. Deer crap. Deer excrement. One dimension
has a myth about a deer that drops gold. I saw one of the droppings. And..."
He stopped, still not looking at me. In all the time we had been
together, I had never seen him like this before.
"And what?" I asked.
"And I saw part of a solid gold elk antler at the Bazaar at Deva."
I was stunned. A deer that shit gold and an elk that had golden
antlers.
"So the map might actually be real?"
"I doubt it," Aahz said, glancing at it.
"But you don't know for sure, do you?"
He shook his head.
"Not for sure."
"So we're going to check it out?"
He looked down at the map in his hand, then folded it and stuffed it in
his pocket.
"I'll be back in an hour."
He pulled out the D-Hopper and twisted it to a setting. Back before he
met me and lost his powers he used to be able to jump through the dimensions
without the use of a D-Hopper. Now he needed the help and he hated it.
"Wait!" I shouted. "You can't go looking for it without me."
"I'm not," Aahz said. "And get that dragon of yours under control
before he breaks something again and we have to pay for it. Be ready to go.
One hour. And the dragon doesn't come with us."
With that Aahz was gone, vanished off to another dimension with a faint
BAMF.
By the time Aahz got back I had Gleep in his stall in the stables and
had arranged for someone to feed and walk him until I returned from wherever
we were going.
I was standing near the foot of the bed in my room when suddenly the
air next to me sort of went BAMF again. Not real loud, but startling when it
happened two feet from you. I jumped. Aahz was back, and he had my favorite
demon in the entire universe of demons with him.
"Tanda!" I shouted, stepping toward the beautiful creature with the
long green hair and a body that could stop a parade with a deep breath.
"Skeeve!" she shouted back, laughing.
Then she put me into a hug that I hoped would never, ever stop. Now
granted, it had only been a month since I had last seen her, drunk as a
skunk at Aahz's birthday party. But every time I saw her I figured it was a
great excuse for a very long hug. And she sure didn't seem to mind, either.
Tanda was a former assassin and member of the guild. I wasn't sure what
she did now besides shop and go on adventures. What's more, I didn't really
want to know. We were friends, and that was enough for me.
Aahz cleared his throat after far too short a time in her wonderful
hug. He did seem to mind that she didn't mind. Oh, well. I still believed
she liked me better than him, and that was all that mattered.
She pushed me back and looked at me sternly, her wonderful eyes glaring
at me with mock anger.
"Why didn't you tell me you had bought a treasure map?"
"Actually, I was going to when we stopped for the night," I said with a
shrug, "but then the game and you getting captured and everything sort of
pushed the map out of my mind."
"So do you remember how many dimensions before Jahk you bought it?" she
asked.
I knew exactly how many, since I had done the disguises in every
dimension on the trip. "Three," I said.
"You're absolutely sure?" Aahz asked, his golden eyes staring at me
like they were about to shoot daggers.
I held up my hand.
"Jahk, the dimension with the Big Game."
I pointed at my thumb.
Tanda nodded and Aahz just glared, his expression of annoyance making
me take my time.
"Counting backwards," I said, pointing at my index finger, "the
dimension before that was where we had to look like a form of three-nosed
pigs."
I wiggled my index finger at both of them.
Tanda nodded. "Yeah, fun place."
"Not really," I said.
Aahz's glare got deeper, so I went on.
"Before that was the dimension where we had to be eight feet tall and
have three legs." I pointed at my middle finger.
Tanda laughed. "That was a fun dimension, too. Wasn't it?"
It hadn't been, since walking on three legs is something that is a
factor harder than trying to fly by flapping your arms and jumping off a
cliff. But I ignored her this time and went on.
I pointed to my next finger.
"Dimension where we had to be four feet tall and where I bought the
map." I held up the three fingers. "That many in front of the game
dimension."
I wanted to add that I could go over them again if Aahz wanted, but he
was clearly not happy at me, so I didn't offer.
Tanda smiled. "I thought so. Mini."
"So what's so special about that dimension?" I asked.
It hadn't seemed like much to me, although Tanda had not wanted to stay
long there on our shopping trip.
"Actually," Aahz said, "it makes this map more likely to be real."
"Almost certain." Tanda laughed.
"You're kidding?" I asked. "You really think there is a golden cow out
there?"
"I didn't say that," Aahz said. "I just said the map was likely to be
real."
I frowned and Tanda laughed.
"Mini is populated by Minikins, who have this awful power of never
telling a lie about anything. They do not do well at the Bazaar at Deva, for
obvious reasons."
"But what happens if the guy who sold it to me wasn't a Minikin?"
"If he had been there for more than a day, he had to tell the truth
about the map as well. That's why we got out of there so fast. Truth is not
a good influence when you are shopping."
At that I had no first hand knowledge, but I figured Tanda was the
expert.
"Come on," she said to Aahz. "Dig out the map. We're wasting time.
Let's do this."
"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Aahz asked as he pulled out
the parchment, unfolded it, and put it on the bed so all three of us could
look at it.
I had no idea what I was looking at, but Tanda seemed to. She pointed
at the upper left corner.
"That's Minikin's Dimension."
Even I knew that, since it was labeled Mini.
"So we start there?"
Aahz nodded. So did Tanda, for which I was grateful. If they both
agreed, at least we had something solid.
Tanda ran her finger along the only line leading from Minikin. It ended
at a dot that was labeled Vortex #1. She studied that for a moment, then
glanced at Aahz.
"You have any idea what that means? Or where it's at?"
"Not a clue," he said.
Now I was stunned. It wasn't often that my mentor admitted he didn't
know something. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time that it had
happened, if ever. I wanted to point that out to him, but this just didn't
seem to be the right time, so I went back to studying the map.
I could see that on the map Vortex #1 had six lines leading off to six
unlabeled points on the paper. And lines leading off of each of those points
to other vortex dots. There were seven more vortexes listed, and a big "x"
marking the cow in the lower right corner of the map. Only one line lead
from Vortex #8 to the cow.
It was clear that there was no straight line from Mini to the cow. And
no right path. From the looks of it, we could go any of a dozen different
ways, through different points labeled vortexes, taking different lines. If
nothing else, this was going to be an interesting puzzle.
Aahz had told me that dimension-hopping was dangerous because a person
could hop to an unknown dimension and never get back. I wondered now how
safe it was going to be following a map through some of these dimensions,
especially when even the map was confusing.
"Well," Tanda said, turning to Aahz. "It looks like we're going to need
some more help if we're going to find this golden beast."
Aahz looked at her and then slowly shook his head.
"You can't be thinking what I think you're thinking."
"I'm thinking it," she said.
"No!" Aahz said, his voice firm. I knew for a fact that when he said no
like that there was no changing his mind.
"Yes," Tanda said, smiling at him with a smile that could melt a
belt-buckle right off a guy's pants. She reached up and touched one of the
green scales on his cheek.
"No," Aahz said, but this time it wasn't as firm. Not even a Prevect
could stand up against Tanda's charms.
"Yes," she said, turning the smile up one more notch and stroking
Aahz's green neck just below his ear.
I was glad she wasn't doing that to me. As it was, just watching I was
almost a puddle on the floor. And I didn't even know what they were arguing
about.
Aahz wasn't faring much better. He shook his head, then said, "It's a
mistake."
"How else are we going to find what dimension to jump to from Minikin?"
She stroked his cheek and then moved right up against him.
No sentient male being could have withstood that attack.
Aahz didn't.
I was sweating hard just watching. Much more and I would need to change
into one of my clean shirts.
"All right," he said, his voice so soft I could almost not hear it.
But trust me, this is a mistake."
"Oh, we're not showing anyone the map," Tanda said, moving away from
Aahz and turning down her convincing body language and smile to a normal
level.
Both Aahz and I took a deep breath.
"Then why?" Aahz asked.
"We're just going to find out what, or where a vortex is?" Tanda said.
I couldn't stand it any longer.
"Would someone please tell me what this is all about?"
"No," Aahz said.
He picked up the map, then took me by the arm and stepped over beside
Tanda. A moment later we were in the Bazaar at Deva.
Copyright by Robert Asprin