"... They'd kill me if they knew I was here, but we can't take it much longer... I heard you were the only one who could, well, convince them that what they're doing is a bad idea... I mean, I think it's a bad idea, but other people might think I'm wrong ... I mean, I'm willing to concede that I may be wrong ..."
By the time his feet touched the ground I was interested in spite of myself. "Who would kill you?" I asked, curiously.
The sheep-man sputtered, as if embarrassed by his own choice of words. "Did I say that? Well, I mean they'd be unhappy with me. Really unhappy with me. Not that it would be unjustified, my questioning their judgment like this, but..."
Bunny swept in and took the man by the arm. "Why don't you just come and sit down and tell us all about it. Maybe Skeeve can recommend someone to help you with your problem if you talk it out with us. How do you like that idea?"
The sheep-man was almost bleatingly grateful. He turned his large eyes toward her. "Oh, I'd love to! But only if it's all right with you. I mean, I am so sorry to intrude on your privacy. I'd never dream of it normally ..."
Once Bunny had settled him in the inglenook with a hot cup of tea, our visitor was somewhat more composed. I sat in the big armchair between him and Bunny in case he seemed inclined to become hysterical again. He remained calm, if a little incoherent, as he outlined his mission.
"My name is Wensley. I represent the government of Pareley in the dimension of Wuh," he began. "Well, it was the government before ... but I'm getting ahead of myself. My people have never been very worldly. It's terrible to have to admit it, and I don't want to speak ill of others, but I think, well, I think I think that it comes from our never having needed anything much from outsiders before. Our land is fertile, our animals and crops plentiful, our climate more than clement." "It sounds like a paradise," Bunny put in.
Wensley laughed bitterly. "And well you might put it that way, dear lady. It was a pair of dice and a few other devices of the Deveels that landed us in the situation that led to our present plight—but I'm being far too direct." He looked abashed.
"Not at all," I assured him. "Lots of beings have lost money to the Deveels. Does your problem have something to do with gambling?"
"Not exactly," our visitor waffled, with an uncomfortable wriggle. "If our leaders had in truth been gambling, but I think that perhaps in retrospect the games might have been a tiny bit tilted away from strictly fair?"
"If they were Deveel-run, there's no way they would have been fair at all," Bunny stated firmly. "At least, not to anyone from outside their own dimension. Deveels are in business strictly to earn money—all of it, if they can."
"Well," Wensley hesitated, relieved that someone else had put it more strongly than he seemed inclined to, "it might have been a little like that. Our representatives were persuaded to put our treasury surplus into a game of chance or two. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a can't-miss proposition. If we made a large wager, the returns were to be astronomical. They put the idea up as a referendum to the population ..."
"Pareley isn't a kingdom?" I asked.
"Why, no," Wensley replied, surprised. "Well, it was. That didn't seem at all fair as a system of government. When the old king abdicated, his son announced that he didn't feel wise enough to tell his people what to do, so he wanted everyone to have a voice in deciding how to run the country. That way none of the wisest ideas would be lost, you see."
"And no one would have to take the blame for bad decisions?" Bunny concluded wryly.
"I suppose so," Wensley conceded. "Everyone seemed quite happy about it at first. Then it became rather cumber- some, collecting everyone's opinions on every single matter of state. It was only logical that those of us in a large geographical district should pool our opinions and have them presented by one person, although for anyone living close to the border between two zones it was difficult to decide which group one ought to give one's opinions to, and some ended up putting in their suggestions twice ..."
"Why did they send you?" I interrupted. Even a small sample of this brand of logic was enough to cross my eyes.
Wensley looked modest. "You see, I'm considered—by some—to be more decisive than most. But I don't know if that's true. It might be. I don't really know."
"Go on," I prodded him.
"Er, yes. Well. Naturally, in retrospect it would have been worthwhile to have checked whether the odds were quite so good as we had thought in the beginning, but no one felt it was right to question the motives of our visitors. They seemed so willing to help us increase our treasury!"
"I bet they did," I smirked. "Did they take all your money?"
"Not all of it," Wensley hastened to assure us. "Well, most. We could still scrape by. I think they felt sorry for us. So they sold us this." From inside his tunic he brought out a D-hopper. It looked functional but in poor condition. "A marvelous device," he said enthusiastically. "Everyone wanted to have a chance to try traveling to other dimensions—imagine, before the Deveels came we never knew there were other dimensions! I think perhaps we would have been better off never knowing, because, well, travel can be so expensive, you know ..."
I nodded.
"Your people saw all kinds of new things and went on a buying spree. It happens."
I knew, because when I first went into the Bazaar at Deva I wanted to buy everything I saw, too. It was lucky for me that I didn't have any money to spend. I still ended up with a baby dragon. "That's right," Wensley confirmed. "And the payments we owed for our purchases and the D-hopper turned out to be more than we could handle. To be honest, Wuhses have never been very good at negotiation. Among ourselves we agree all the time."
"So you're on the run from bill collectors?" I asked.
"No, no! We always pay our debts. That wouldn't be fair, to cheat someone out of their hard-earned wages ... well..." Wensley paused. "... out of what we owed them. It's not their fault we weren't experienced enough to handle such..."
"Cheats?" Bunny suggested.
Wensley blushed to the roots of his pale hair. "Oh, let's not call them that. But we ran out of money. Almost completely. We needed help."
"I'm not a financial advisor," I stated.
"We don't need a financial advisor," Wensley pleaded, his eyes huge with woe. "We found financial advisors. Now we need help getting rid of them."
Bunny and I looked at one another, then back to our guest. "Why don't you just ask them to leave?"
"We ... can't," Wensley quavered, dropping his gaze to the ground. "You just don't tell the Pervect Ten to leave."
I raised my eyebrows. This was starting to sound interesting. "Perfect Ten? They're beautiful women?" I started to picture myself the heroic intercessor between the Wuhses and their lovely foes. They'd be so grateful that I stepped in to clear up a misunderstanding. I didn't need to study all the time, did I?
Wensley made a face. "I suppose they are beautiful... though I have to admit that I might be prejudiced against green scales and yellow eyes, and then there are the big teeth ... really off-putting, but I might not understand the aesthetics of ..."
My ears pricked up. "Wait a minute—not perfect, Per-vect? You went to Pervects for investment advice?"
"Really, it started out as a consulting contract," Wensley said desperately. "They came highly recommended. Ten of them came in and within no time ripped out the entire organization we had in place. They assessed our debt structure and our earning potential, and steered us onto a new course. Under their guidance we started small businesses, and they sold the goods to other dimensions. Pretty soon they made us open factories and controlled our expenditures. Within a couple of years we were out of debt again. But now they're pretty much in charge of everything. We can't get them to go away."