"Of course," Grimble shot me a sidelong, rep- tilian glance, then went back to leering at Bunny.

"You always did have exquisite taste in ladies, Skeeve."

Still annoyed at Bunny's treatment by Queen Hemlock, I wasn't about to let the Chancellor get away with this.

"Grimble," I said, letting my voice take on a bit of an edge. "Watch my lips. I said she's my administrative assistant. Got it?"

"Yes. I ... Quite."

The Chancellor seemed to pull in on himself a bit as he licked his lips nervously, but he rallied back gamely.

"Very well. Let me show you our expanded operation."

While Grimble might have been essentially unchanged, physically or morally, his facilities were another matter entirely. He had formerly worked alone in a tiny, cramped cubicle filled past capacity with stacks and piles of paper. The paper was still there, but that's about all that remained the same. Instead of the cubicle, it seemed he was now working out of a spacious, though still windowless, room ... or, at least, a room that would have been spacious if he had it to himself.

Instead, however, there were over a dozen indi- viduals crammed into the space, apparently pre- occupied with their work, which seemed to entail 28.

nothing more than generating additional stacks of paper, all covered by columns and rows of num- bers. They didn't look up as we came in, and Grimble made no effort to halt their work or make introductions, but I noticed that they all had the same fevered glint to their eyes that I had originally assumed to be unique to Grimble.

"It seems that the current financial crisis hasn't caused many cutbacks in your operation," Aahz said dryly.

"Of course notI' Grimble replied easily. "That's only to be expected."

"How's that?" I said.

"Well, Lord Skeeve," the Chancellor smiled, "you'll find that accountants are pretty much like vultures ... we thrive when things are worse for other people. You see, when a kingdom or company is doing well, no one wants to be both- ered with budgets, much less cost savings. As long as there's money in the coffers, they're happy. On the other hand, when the operation is on the skids, such as is currently the case with Possiltum, then everyone wants answers ... or miracles . . . and it's up to us irritating bean- counters to provide them. More analysis means more man-hours, which in turn means a larger staff and expanded facilities."

"CharmingI' Aahz growled, but Grimble ig- nored him.

"So," he said, rubbing his hands together like a blow-fly, "what would you like to address first?

Perhaps we could discuss our overall approach and strategy over lunch?"

"Umm . . ."I said intelligently.

SWEET MYTH-TERY OF LJFE.

29.

The horrible truth was that, now that I was actually confronted by Grimble and his paper mountains, I didn't have the foggiest notion of how to proceed.

"Actually, Grimble," Bunny said stepping for- ward, "before we think about lunch, I'd like to see your Operating Plan for the current year, the calendarized version, as well as the P and L's and Financial Statements for the last few months . . .

oh yes, and your Cash Flow Analysis, both the projections and the actuals, if you don't mind."

The Chancellor blanched slightly and swal- lowed hard.

"Certainly. I ... of course," he said, giving Bunny a look which was notably more respectful than his earlier attentions. "I'll get those for you right now."

He scuttled off to confer with a couple of his underlings, all the while glancing nervously back at our little group.

I caught Aahz's eye and raised and eyebrow, which he responded to with a grimace and a shrug. It was nice to know my partner was as much in the dark as I was regarding Bunny's requests.

"Here we are," Grimble said, returning with a fistful of paper which he passed to Bunny. "I'll have the Cash Flow for you in a moment, but you can get started with these."

Bunny grunted something non-committal, and began leafing through the sheets, pausing to scru- tinize each page intently. More for show than anything, I eased over to where I could look over her shoulder. In no time flat, my keen eye could 30.

Robert Aspirin tell without a doubt that the pages were filled with rows and columns of numbers. Terrific.

"Um ... I do have some spread sheets to support some of those figures if you'd like to see themI' Grimble supplied uneasily.

Bunny paused in her examinations to favor him with a dark glance.

"Maybe later," she said. "I mean, you do know the origin of spreadsheets, don't you?"

"Umm . . ." the Chancellor hedged.

"They were named after the skins used by trappers," Bunny continued with a faint smile.

"You know, the things they dragged after them to hide their tracks?"

For a moment Grimble stared at her, bewil- dered, then he gave a sudden bark of laughter, slapping her playfully on the shoulder.

"That's good!" he exclaimed. "I'll have to re- member that one."

I glanced at Aahz.

"Accountant humor, I guess," he said with a grimace. "Incomprehensible to mere mortals. You know, like 'We'll make it up on volume' jokes?"

"Now that's not funny," Grimble corrected with mock severity. "We've had that line dumped on us all too often ... in complete sincerity.

Right Bunny?"

I couldn't help but notice that he was now treating Bunny with the deference of a colleague.

Apparently her joke, however nonsensical it had been to me, had convinced the Chancellor that she was more than my arm ornament.

"Too true," my assistant said. "But seriously, Grimble, getting back to the problem at hand, .

31.

we're going to need complete, non-camouflaged figures if we're going to get the kingdom's fi- nances back on course. I know the tradition is to pretty things up with charts and studies of his- toric trends, but since we'll be working with insiders only, just this once let's try it with hard, cold data."

It sounded like a reasonable request to me, but the Chancellor seemed to think it was a radical proposal . . . and not a particularly wise one, at that.

"I don't know, Bunny," he said, shooting a look at Aahz and me one normally reserves for spies and traitors. "I mean, you know how it is. Even though we usually get cast as the villains of bureaucracy, we don't have any real power to implement change. All we do is make recommen- dations to those who can change things. If we don't sugarcoat our recommendations, or slant them so they're in line with what the movers and shakers wanted to hear all along, or clutter them up until the Gods themselves can't understand what we're really saying, then there's a risk that we end up being what gets changed."

"Nobody really wants to hear the truth, eh?"

Aahz said, sympathetically. "I suppose that's typi- cal. I think you'll find it's different this time around. Grimble. If nothing else, Skeeve here has full power to implement whatever changes he thinks are necessary to bring things in line."

"That's right," I said, glad to finally be able to contribute to the proceedings. "One of the things I think we should do as soon as possible is cut 32.

back on the size of the army . . . say, maybe, by one-half?"

Knowing the Chancellor's long-time feud with military spending, I thought he'd leap at this suggestion, but to my surprise, he shook his head.

"Can't do it," he said. "It would cause a depres- sion."

"I don't care if they're happy or not!" Aahz snarled. "Let's get 'em off the payroll. The Queen's agreed to stop her expansionist policies, so there's no reason we should keep paying for an army this size."

Grimble gave my partner a look like he was something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe.

"I was referring to an economic depression," he said tersely. "If we dump that many ex-soldiers on the job market at the same time we're cutting back on military spending, it would create massive unemployment. Broke, hungry people, particularly those with prior military training, have a nasty tendency to revolt against those in power . . .

which, in this case, happens to be us. I think you'll agree, therefore, that, in the long run, huge cutbacks in the military force is not the wisest course to follow."

I was rapidly developing a greater respect for Grimble. Obviously there was more to this bean- counting game than I had ever imagined.

"We might, however, achieve some savings through attrition," the Chancellor continued.

"Attrition?" I said. I had decided that, if I was going to be any help at all in this effort, it was time I admitted my ignorance and started learn- ing some of the basic vocabulary.

33.

"In this case, Lord Skeeve," Grimble explained with surprising patience, "the term refers to cut- ting manpower by not rehiring as people termi- nate at the normal rate ... or, for the army, that we stop adding new recruits to replace those whose term of enlistment is up. It will still cut the size of the army, but at a slower rate more easily absorbed by the civilian work force."

"Can we afford to do it slowly?" Aahz said, seemingly unfazed by his earlier rebuke. "I was under the impression the kingdom was in dire straits financially."

"I believe I had heard some rumor that we might be raising our tax rate?" The Chancellor made the statement a question as he looked at me pointedly.

"I'm not sure that will do any good," Bunny said from where she was reviewing the figures Grimble had passed her.

"Excuse me?" the Chancellor frowned.

"Well, from what I'm seeing here, the big prob- lem isn't income, it's collections," she said, tap- ping one of the sheets she was holding.

Grimble sighed, seeming to deflate slightly.

"I'll admit that's one of our weak suits," he said, "But ..."

"Whoa! Time out!" I interrupted. "Could some- one provide a translation?"

"What I'm saying is that the kingdom actually has a fair amount of money," Bunny said, "but it's all on paper. That is, people owe us a lot on back taxes, but it isn't being collected. If we could make some inroads into converting these receiv- ables . . . that's debts owed to us . . . into cash.

34.

which we can spend, the kingdom would be in pretty good shape. Not stellar, mind you, but enough to ease the current crisis."

"The problem is," Grimble said, picking up the thread of her oration, "the citizens are extremely un-cooperative when it comes to taxes. They fight us every inch of the way in admitting how much they owe, and when it comes to actually paying their tax bill . . . well, the variety of excuses they invent would be amusing, if we weren't going bankrupt waiting for them to settle their accounts."

"I can't argue with them there," Aahz smirked.

"It's the duty of every citizen to pay their fair share of the cost of running the kingdom through taxes," the Chancellor said testily.

"And it's the right of every individual to pay the lowest possible amount of taxes they can justify legally," my partner shot back.

For a moment, it sounded like old times, with Aahz and Grimble going head to head. Unfortu- nately, this time, we all had bigger fish to fry.

"Check me on this," I said, holding up a hand to silence them. "What if we see if we can kill two birds with one stone?"

"How's that?" Grimble frowned.

"Well, first, we implement your suggestion of reducing the army by attrition . . . maybe hur- rying it along a little by offering shortened enlist- ments for anyone who wanted out early ..."

"That might help," the Chancellor nodded, "but I don't see ..."

"And," I continued quickly, "convert a portion of those remaining in the service into tax collec- .

35.

tors. That way they can be helping to raise the cash necessary to cover their own pay."

Grimble and Bunny looked at each other.

"That might work," Grimble said, thought- fully.

"It can't do much worse than the system that's already in place," Bunny nodded.

"Tell you what," I said loftily. "Kick it around between the two of you and maybe rough out a plan for implementing it. Aahz and I will go discuss it with the Queen."

Actually, I had no intention of visiting Hem- lock just now, but I figured it was as good a time as any to escape from this meeting . . . while I had at least a small victory to my credit.

I.

Chapter Four:.